Elisa had arrived in a new universe.
Now she stood between two twin moons trapped in a cycle of death and rebirth. Around her, a storm of liquid light danced as though the sun itself had melted.
Before her, a rift slowly opened. It was not large, but its shape trembled like a wound unwilling to close.
It was the nineteenth.
With the hat in her hands, Elisa felt the now-familiar pressure in her chest. Every closure was another weight added to her soul.
A tiny death.
A possibility erased.
"How many are left…?" she whispered tiredly, though she expected no answer.
She pointed the hat toward the fissure. A ray of silent darkness emerged from within it, covering the opening like a veil of shadow.
And the rift…
Closed.
Only the echo remained.
The echo of something that no longer existed.
In another reality, Astrid walked through a world made of living geometry, where mountains breathed and trees spoke in languages no human could understand.
There, an opening glowed between sky and earth.
Astrid raised her brooch. The object answered with a golden vibration, its core opening like a heart preparing to beat.
And then, the rift fused together with another universe.
A gentle union.
An integration.
A new world was born, an amalgamation of two realities that should never have touched.
"This is how things truly heal," Astrid said. "Not by closing… but by accepting."
At that moment, Astrid felt a presence behind her.
One that felt… familiar.
"Are you really sure about that, sister? Because to me it looks like all you're doing is trying to escape the fate you know you were meant to have. You can convince yourself that uniting all universes into one will redeem you, that it will erase all this guilt you feel for surviving and create a better world for everyone… but deep down you know nothing you do will change the fact that all of us died. In the end, you're only doing this because you're terrified and because part of you wants to die as badly as you believe you should have."
Astrid did not turn around.
She already knew perfectly well what stood behind her:
An illusion.
Unlike Elisa, every time Astrid used the brooch she did not feel weight, nostalgia, or similar emotions. Instead, her fears and regrets materialized into illusions that reminded her of her past.
Astrid had already grown used to them.
Now she merely ignored them.
And yet, she could never avoid being affected by them. She knew they were not real, that they were not truly her family.
But it still hurt every single time she heard them.
The brooch could unite entire universes and create new life, but ironically, it could not bring back the beings or worlds she had lost.
She had already tried.
She had already attempted by every possible means to restore her family and her world.
But she never succeeded.
Astrid remained silent, shedding a single tear as she opened a portal toward another world.
As both of them walked through the universes they inhabited, separated by realities and time, a question began to grow within Elisa's heart:
What is lost every time I seal a rift?
A universe?
A life?
A possibility?
Am I preventing dimensions that could have flourished from ever even beginning?
Elisa found herself within a dimension where time moved in spirals. The beings there did not live in straight lines, but in existential circles. They were born, died, and reborn while knowing exactly what would happen—yet remained incapable of stopping it.
One of them approached her, a creature made of thinking clouds and liquid eyes.
"Why do you close these openings?" it asked.
Elisa did not answer immediately. She stood in silence for several seconds before finally replying.
"Because if I don't, everything will collapse," Elisa answered.
"My world and my people have already collapsed. What difference would it make if you sealed that opening?"
Elisa fell silent.
She sealed the rift quickly and left without answering.
At a floating station located on the edges of universal consciousness, Elisa stared at a mural carved into cosmic stone. It depicted two opposing figures: one wearing a hat that absorbed stars, another holding a brooch that multiplied them.
Both touched each other with a single finger.
Between them:
The multiverse.
Below the image was an inscription written in a dead language:
"Only through contradiction is balance born."
Elisa looked at her reflection in the mural's black crystal—at the hair and eyes whose colors no longer matched the ones she once had. The first time she saw them changed, shock and tears had overwhelmed her. The transformation had been caused by the Cosmic Pieces and their cosmic radiation, and had it not been for the hat, the effects would have altered far more than her appearance.
But it had been enough for Elisa to understand she would never be the same again.
This was her life now.
Elisa continued staring at herself in the crystal's reflection and, for the first time…
She did not fully recognize herself.
And so she asked a question while looking at the hat.
"Why me? Why did you choose me? Why did I have to be the one to find you in that forest? Why do I have to be the one sealing these rifts? …Why do I have to be the vessel of nonexistence…? I swear I want to change, I want to accept myself, but it's easier said than done. I want to fulfill the dream I always had but… how?"
Elisa remained silent while staring at herself in the crystal, as though she truly expected an answer from the object.
But nothing came.
She lowered her gaze in discouragement and sighed.
She summoned her ship once more through a portal and entered a room she had not visited in a very long time:
Her plushie room.
There, Elisa kept several stuffed toys she had owned since childhood. On her planet, having always been treated as a pariah, those small toys had been her only companions—the only ones who hugged and comforted her.
And when she escaped that world, aside from the hat, they were the only things she took with her.
Elisa picked up her favorite plushie and hugged it for several minutes.
A small tear rolled down her face as she felt the effects of using the hat to seal the rifts. The pressure inside her grew stronger and lasted longer each time, and so she decided she needed at least a small rest.
She went to her room and lay down on her bed to sleep for a while.
Maybe then she would feel better.
Elisa opened her eyes.
But she was not awake.
She stood inside what felt like a lucid dream, and suddenly she heard a voice behind her.
Her younger self.
"It's you! I finally get to see you again. You have no idea how difficult this has been. I… I'm so tired. I swear I want to become the person you want me to be, but I don't know how. The more I travel, the more I doubt myself and… I can't stop feeling like I'm wrong. I want to become better, but I feel like I'm not even myself anymore. The hat even chose me to become a goddess, but… why me? What am I supposed to do? What does it expect from me?"
"Oh, Elisa…"
Her younger self looked at her with a comforting expression.
"No matter whether you're good or bad, you're still yourself. You're still possibility. You're still capable of changing everything. Just because things happened that changed you doesn't mean you can't fix things anymore. It only means the options changed. But what hasn't changed is the reason that pushed you to come this far. I already told you, Elisa—don't forget me. Don't forget why you're here doing all this. The hat chose you because of that. Because you're you… it wanted you."
Elisa smiled and laughed softly while tears slid down her cheeks and she wiped them away.
"Heh… you know, I don't understand you. You're supposed to be the younger version of me, and I definitely wasn't this mature or kind. You're more like some sort of superego. I don't know whether to take you as divine help or a sign of schizophrenia."
"Hehe, I guess people see what they want to see. But who says you weren't like me—or that you still aren't? I already told you: despite everything, you're still yourself, Elisa. I am you, and you can keep improving. Elisa Holdstar is standing right in front of you. You just have to reach her."
Back in the real world, Elisa smiled peacefully in her sleep and remained resting quietly for several hours.
Meanwhile, on her own path, Astrid had reached another universe.
She too was beginning to feel the effects of her mission.
Not every world accepted fusion.
Some screamed.
Others imploded.
Some…
Fought back.
"I can't stop," she said alone, her forehead pressed against the brooch. "I'm going to fix this multiverse. I'll do it for everything that was lost."
Astrid tried to maintain her composure, but increasingly she felt her method becoming less effective.
Yet she refused to yield.
She could not yield.
This was the only true way to fix everything.
What she was doing was not perfect.
But she believed it was necessary…
No.
She did not believe it.
"IT IS necessary… right?"
At that moment, Astrid caught sight of another hallucination.
Herself.
A younger version of herself without the brooch—one who looked far happier.
Astrid froze, unable to speak.
"Yes, it's necessary. But not to save the multiverse. It's necessary so you can keep even the smallest reason to continue living, isn't it? To cling to some purpose that makes you feel like you weren't incapable of protecting what you loved most. To redeem yourself for everything you lost."
"Just shut up…" Astrid stammered.
"Don't you understand? It doesn't matter if you 'save' the multiverse because you couldn't save the only thing you truly cared about. Astrid… don't you realize you already failed? You already lost EVERYTHING."
"Shut up!!!" Astrid shouted while covering her ears and squeezing her eyes shut.
"Wouldn't it be easier to simply give up? You just have to accept there's nothing left you can do. Even if you unite every universe into one, you still won't be able to guarantee they'll be safe because YOU will be the one responsible for protecting them—and you can't protect anything."
"SHUT UP!!!"
"JUST GIVE UP AND DIE ALREADY, ASTRID!!!!"
"SHUT UUUUUP!!!!!!"
Astrid unleashed a blast of light at the illusion, causing it to disappear.
But the attack continued onward.
And struck a distant planet.
Destroying it completely.
Astrid stared in horror, unable to comprehend what she had done.
She had blown an entire planet apart.
She remembered Velhara.
And in that instant, she collapsed, covering her face as she began hyperventilating.
"Noooo!! What have I done!? No, I… it's fine, it was only one world. I still have to save all the others. I'll save them. I will. This was just a mistake, and I'll fix it."
Astrid could almost hear the voices of her family—and her own voice as well—laughing at her and telling her to give up.
The sound made Astrid begin screaming just to drown them out.
"I CAN FIX EVERYTHING!! THIS MULTIVERSE WILL BE SAVED, AND IT WILL BE SAVED BY ME!! I WILL FIX THIS WORLD!!"
And in the vastness of existence, the universe she stood in began to tremble.
"I AM ASTRID EVERSHINE!!!! THE LAST VELHARIAN ALIVE!!!! THE GREATEST PRODIGY OF THE MOST EVOLVED RACE IN REALITY!!!! THE ONE CHOSEN BY THE BROOCH OF MULTIVERSAL CREATION!!! THE ONE CHOSEN TO BECOME THE GODDESS OF EXISTENCE, AND I AM THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN FIX THIS WORLD!!!!!"
All creation was on the verge of turning completely upside down.
Not because of the rifts.
Not because of the fusions.
But because of the clash of wills that was approaching.
A choice.
A divided destiny.
Two forces destined to confront one another, not out of hatred, but because of irreconcilable convictions.
And while the rifts closed…
…and worlds fused together…
…Astrid was beginning to realize that she was not saving the multiverse.
She was fixing it.