Kye didn't feel pain.
Not at first.
The thread curled inside his mind like a dream half-remembered, its cold weight humming in silence. No warnings flared. No systems flagged. No violent visions flooded his senses.
But Zeraphine saw it in his posture—the way he stood too still. The way his shoulders folded inward, ever so slightly, as if bracing for a memory that hadn't yet arrived but already knew where to land.
"What did she give you?" Zeraphine asked, voice low.
He didn't answer right away.
Instead, he turned.
And looked at the map.
The Chronicle flame had gone dormant, the usual gold glow now flickering with dull gray-blue embers. The newly integrated thread pulsed faintly—like a wound testing the air.
"She didn't give me a memory," Kye finally said. "She gave me a decision I haven't made yet."
Zeraphine blinked. "What kind of decision?"
"The kind that splits the Chronicle."
He walked slowly toward the corridor's exit. The silk walls had begun to contract behind them—folding not to seal, but to protect what was now gone. Aleira's presence had dissolved. Not erased. Fulfilled.
And still, the thread pulsed.
With every step Kye took, the future reshaped around it.
He didn't see visions.
He felt certainty uncoiling—like knowing a friend is about to lie, or knowing someone you love will leave.
"I thought prophecy was the danger," he murmured. "But it's memory that breaks you. Not because it forgets. Because it waits."
Zeraphine moved beside him.
"We don't have to follow it. Not yet."
"I know," he said. "That's what hurts most."
He stopped.
Looked at her.
"There's something this thread is asking me to do. And I know exactly who it hurts if I do it."
She didn't ask who.
She didn't need to.
The Chronicle flared once—brief, like lightning beneath skin—and Kye's traceband shivered with an update:
> THREAD: ALEIRA METH [ARCHIVED]
BRANCH NAME: CONSEQUENCE ANCHOR
STATUS: HEAVY-LINKED
EFFECT: CHOICE WILL CARRY PERMANENT LOSS
Zeraphine touched his hand.
"Then don't choose it. Let it wait."
But Kye stared at the thread glowing under his skin.
"No," he said. "The longer it waits, the heavier it becomes."
He pressed his palm to the Chronicle's core.
And it opened—not physically, but narratively.
A page unrolled across reality, written in something that pulsed like blood.
> ARTICLE XXVIII: Some truths do not want to be known. They want to be acknowledged and left unspoken. We do not speak them for their beauty. We speak them to share the hurt.
The moment it etched itself, the world around them shifted.
Not space.
Relationship.
Zeraphine stepped back.
Kye met her gaze.
And she understood.
"You just chose the version where I leave," she whispered.
Kye's voice cracked. "Only for now."
The Chronicle burned.
And the path ahead opened.