Elisa opened another portal and descended once more.
The rift had dragged her into universes beyond any known limit. They were no longer worlds separated by time or logic, but pure fractures in existence itself—dimensions where the laws of reality had completely dissolved.
Forbidden places.
Places never meant to harbor consciousness.
There, the hat did not vibrate with energy…
It vibrated with fear.
The first world she entered was a graveyard of thoughts. A dimension where every idea forgotten by a living mind took form… only to wither away instantly.
The hills were made of broken dreams, the rivers flowed with words never spoken.
And in the sky, thousands of faces screamed names no one remembered.
Elisa walked cautiously, but soon she felt her own memories beginning to fade.
Her name became blurry.
Her purpose, confusion.
She had to cling to the hat just to remain sane and avoid losing herself within her own thoughts.
Only then did she manage to seal the rift, though at the cost of another tear she could not understand the reason for shedding.
The next opening dragged her into an inverted universe, one where time disintegrated everything and thoughts transformed into horrifying deformities. There, beings built their bodies from what others thought about them.
Elisa was attacked by creatures made entirely from borrowed hatred, formed from the fears certain versions of her had inspired in other worlds.
She saw a version of herself whose rejection and isolation on her home planet had driven her to destroy it.
Another whose desire to be recognized and accepted by everyone caused her to lose herself completely.
And another whose hunger for knowledge and power led her to place her entire universe beneath her feet.
"What… the hell are you?" Elisa asked incredulously, her voice trembling.
"Please… Elisa, you know us very well… but not completely," one of the malformed beings answered.
"We are you… but shaped by the way our worlds saw us. You know everyone always rejected us, feared us—not only on Aetheris, but across the universe itself. This is the way everyone saw… Elisa Holdstar," another said.
"You… you look so good. Why couldn't I have become like you?" whispered the last distortion.
Elisa froze in place as her dark counterparts lunged at her with a mixture of envy, rage, and contempt. Elisa dodged and tried to fight back, but every time she prepared to strike, she stopped herself.
She was facing the cruelest images of herself.
And despite everything…
She did not want to defeat them.
The distorted versions charged at her once more, but Elisa immobilized them with a single word.
"Stop."
Her voice was serious and resolute as she slowly walked toward them.
The alternate versions roared and struggled to move while Elisa approached closer and closer.
But instead of attacking them…
She hugged them.
"I… I'm not an ideal version of myself either… I don't have a good story either. You shouldn't envy me," she said softly before looking at her brown hair.
"I'm a deformation too."
The distortions could not understand why Elisa was doing this. They roared louder, trying to break free, but Elisa only tightened the embrace more and more.
And without realizing it—without intending to—they slowly began to calm down.
"I am a deformation. I'm the one who caused the entire multiverse to be in danger. I'm the Traveler of Catastrophes, and despite all that… I don't hate myself. And I don't care if your universes rejected and hated you, because I promise you that I don't. You are me, and I… I swear that I love you, even if it's still hard for me to love myself."
The distorted versions fell silent.
Then they began to cry, returning Elisa's embrace before slowly starting to glow and disintegrate, as though they had been purified.
But before disappearing completely, all three told the original Elisa one final thing:
"Thank you for being a deformation too."
Elisa smiled melancholically and sealed the rift, allowing the dimension to stabilize slightly. Before leaving, she noticed another version of herself appear nearby:
Her younger self.
The two looked at each other without speaking and embraced for several seconds. When they separated, the younger version smiled and said:
"I feel jealous of you."
Then she too began to glow and disintegrate.
Elisa left the place with renewed determination.
But that confidence quickly faded as she remembered the horrors she still had to face.
At another rift, she fell into a bottomless sea where fragments of unborn universes floated endlessly: nebulas of worlds never created, inhabited by incomplete beings who did not even know they were alive.
And with every passing second, Elisa's own existence faded more and more.
A faceless child took her by the hand.
"Are you going to forget us too?" it asked in a broken voice.
Elisa barely managed to seal the rift before the child—and that entire cosmic ocean—was reduced to absolute oblivion, nearly taking her with it.
But nothing prepared her for the final place she was dragged into.
A dimension corrupted at its very core, where existence itself had been infected.
Everything pulsed.
Everything was soft.
As though the universe had skin…
And a heartbeat.
There, every step was a mistake.
Every breath, a wound.
Colors screamed.
Shadows bled.
And at the center stood a colossal rift… so wide open it almost seemed to laugh.
Elisa became more and more terrified.
She could not stop wondering:
If these universes were already this horrifying…
Then how corrupted must the First Existence have truly been?
Elisa tried to seal it.
But the hat did not respond.
And then she saw it.
Something…
Something was emerging from the rift.
A fragment of the original error.
A remnant of the Failed First Existence.
A monster without shape, yet filled with presence. Something that should never have been seen. Something that should never have existed.
Elisa was horrified.
She tried to run, driven by a primal instinct for survival. Every part of her body screamed that she needed to flee or she would die—not because the being was stronger than her, nor because it was terrifying.
But because of how corrupted it was.
A being with an aura and presence so malformed that existence itself decayed simply because it stood there.
Elisa ran with all her strength while space corrupted and disintegrated in its wake.
The hat trembled as though begging her to let it go.
Her feet broke apart.
Her soul shook.
And in that moment, when no hope remained—when she was about to be corrupted by that creature—
A golden light exploded outward.
Elisa was ripped away from the place in a blinding flash.
The dimension, the rift, and the monster sealed shut behind her with a howl that sounded not like something alive…
…but like the multiverse itself weeping.
When she opened her eyes, she found herself in a stable dimension.
Peaceful.
With ground, sky, and…
Silence.
Standing before her was Astrid.
Her brooch still glowed.
"You're not invincible, Elisa," Astrid said firmly. "But that doesn't make you weak."
Elisa was still breathing heavily, covered in dimensional ash.
"You saved me…" she whispered weakly.
"Because we're not finished yet."
Before Astrid could continue, Elisa noticed that she was eating something and asked in confusion what it was.
"Oh! Right, where are my manners? Want some? These are delicious."
Astrid extended her hand toward Elisa, who realized it was only a handful of wild berries.
"Huh? But they're just berries. Nothing special," Elisa said.
"Heh, so that's what they're called. Berries. Though it annoys me a little hearing you say they're nothing special. My race, unlike yours, doesn't eat. We feed directly on stellar energy. That and a few other things are evolutionary advantages my people possess. So these berries—and something I ate some time ago called bread and oranges—are the only things I've consumed since I began my journey through the multiverse and learned new concepts like eating."
Astrid looked down at the remaining berries and smiled faintly.
"You know, it's strange how something can be completely ordinary to one person and a treasure to another. I suppose everything depends on perspective."
Elisa stayed silent.
Astrid finished the last berries, wiped her mouth, and stepped forward.
"Anyway, changing the subject… I think it's time we talked."
"About what?" Elisa looked at her with a mixture of uncertainty and fear.
"About what we are.
Why we're here.
And what we're supposed to do."
The wind of that world began to blow.
Both of them fell silent, staring at one another.
Like two halves that still did not know whether they were meant to unite…
…or destroy each other.
And so, while the universe held its breath waiting, the debate was about to begin.