# Chapter 13: The Last Guide
In that instant, Yunar gripped the notebook hard enough for his knuckles to turn white.
He got up from the bed with sharp movements, nearly tripping over his own feet. Alya was still sleeping deeply, oblivious to the storm happening inside him.
He opened the bedroom door and stepped into the living room, closing it behind him carefully so as not to make noise.
The living room was drowned in the half-light of the still-young morning. The half-closed curtains allowed only thin rays of light to enter, illuminating dust particles floating lazily in the air.
Yunar stopped in the centre of the room, turning slowly, taking in every corner, every detail. The furniture familiar yet strange. The photographs on the wall that he recognised but didn't remember being taken. An entire life that wasn't really his.
"The only way," he murmured to the empty room, his voice low but loaded with urgency.
He looked down at the notebook in his hands. The words written there pulsed in his mind like a beating heart.
"Who are you?" He asked the pages, as though the invisible author could hear him, as though the words could answer.
He turned another page with trembling fingers.
And there, in handwriting that was definitely not his — letters slightly tilted, more careful than his own — was written:
*"You will recognise the mountain. The same place."*
Yunar's eyes went wide, his breath catching in his throat.
The mountain.
The memory exploded in his mind with full force. Him and Eren climbing that mountain years ago, young and naive, chasing a strange glow. Finding the fragments. Finding the white-haired man dying.
*The same place.*
Without thinking, without planning, without even stopping to put on a jacket, Yunar flung open the front door.
The sound echoed through the silent house, but he was already running.
---
His feet struck the pavement with force, the frantic rhythm echoing through the still-empty morning streets. He turned corner after corner sharply, nearly slipping on puddles left by the night's rain.
Cars were beginning to appear on the streets as the city woke. Yunar weaved around them without slowing — a sharp brake here, an irritated horn there. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered except getting there.
He crossed neighbourhood after neighbourhood, his lungs burning, legs protesting, but the adrenaline keeping him going. The notebook was still pressed against his chest, protected as though it were the most precious thing in the world.
Finally, after what felt like hours but was probably only twenty minutes of frantic running, the urban landscape began to give way to something wilder.
The forest.
Yunar slowed only enough to keep from tripping on the roots that jutted from the ground. The trees rose around him like ancient sentinels, their intertwined branches forming a canopy that filtered the morning light into irregular patterns.
And then, through the dense vegetation, he saw it.
The mountain.
It wasn't high. It never had been. But it rose against the morning sky with a presence that seemed larger than its physical elevation suggested.
Yunar stopped completely, breathless, sweat streaming down his face mingling with tears he hadn't even noticed were falling.
"How... is this possible?" He whispered to himself.
This mountain shouldn't exist in this reality. He was certain of that. He was certain of so many things that now seemed uncertain, but this... this should have been impossible.
And yet, there it was.
Identical to the one where he and Eren had found the grimoire years ago. The same incline. The same rock formations. As though it had been copied and pasted from one reality to another.
Taking a deep breath, trying to calm the heart that was beating like a war drum, Yunar began to climb.
---
Each step was a battle against legs already at their limit. But he kept going, gripping exposed roots, climbing over stones, pulling himself up with pure determination.
When he finally reached the top, he almost tripped and fell.
Because there, lying in the centre of a small circle of stones, was the man.
The white-haired man.
He was on the ground, exactly as Yunar remembered seeing him years before. But this time, it was happening in real time. His skin... was disintegrating.
Slowly. Painfully.
Tiny particles were separating from his body, floating in the air like that cosmic dust — lilac, violet, brown, the same impossible colours as the fragments. Starting at the extremities, his fingers already half dissolved, spreading gradually to the rest of his body.
The man turned his head slightly when he sensed Yunar's presence. His eyes — still intact, still alive — found his.
And then he smiled. A weak smile, but a genuine one.
"So..." His voice came out hoarse, each word costing visible effort. "You managed to understand the message."
He coughed, and blood stained his pale lips.
"I suppose my handwriting isn't that bad after all."
More blood. Streaming from the corner of his mouth, dripping onto the stone floor.
The fingers of his right hand disintegrated completely, turning to dust that was carried away by a breeze Yunar couldn't feel.
"You can come closer," the man said, making a weak gesture with what remained of his left hand.
Yunar took one hesitant step forward, then another. He dropped to his knees beside the man, exactly as he had done years ago — but this time, with understanding. This time, knowing what was happening.
"How are you still alive?" The words tumbled out. "I saw you dying. That day. I held your arm. You were dead."
The man let out something between a laugh and a pained sigh.
"Yes," he said simply. "When I used..."
He coughed violently, more blood.
"The fragments. I wanted to leave that reality." His eyes became distant, as though looking through time. "It was difficult for me to deal with the death of my wife and my parents."
More coughing. More blood. His left forearm began to dissolve.
"So I ended up in your reality."
Yunar processed the words slowly, assembling the puzzle in his mind.
"As you have seen," the man continued, his voice growing weaker, "the cost is greater than anything."
A long pause while he struggled to breathe.
"But somehow..." He coughed again, the sound wet and horrible. "The fragments do not allow you to die anywhere that is not your original reality."
Yunar trembled. His entire body trembled with the understanding of what that meant.
"And when someone used the fragments..." The man looked directly into Yunar's eyes. "When they brought you here, I was also pulled back to my original reality. This one."
Yunar just stared at him, unable to find words, his body shaking uncontrollably.
The man coughed more blood. His left shoulder began to dissolve.
"In that instant, I connected to you. For a few seconds." He smiled again, faintly. "But as you can see..."
He coughed, and this time the blood was thicker, darker.
"I cannot reach you. My body won't allow it."
His voice was growing more distant now, as though he were being pulled away even while physically still there.
"So I took advantage of that second to leave you the message to come find me."
Yunar finally found his voice, trembling as much as the rest of him.
"Why did you write that phrase?" He asked desperately. "What does 'the only way' mean?"
The man breathed deeply — a painful, wet sound.
"That the only way..."
A pause. More blood.
"Is when you are in your reality, you need to separate the fragments. That way you will remain in your reality."
Yunar's eyes went wide.
"All the people you know here..." The man continued, each word coming more slowly. "Will forget you."
He coughed violently, his torso beginning to disintegrate now.
"But if you want to stay here, you need to bring the fragments here and separate them within this reality."
Another agonising pause.
"And that way, the people in your reality will..."
The disintegration reached his neck. His voice was almost inaudible now.
"Forget you."
The disintegration had consumed his body completely. Only his head remained, and even that was beginning to come apart at the edges.
"The choice..." He said with his last strength. "Is yours."
And then he was gone.
Completely.
Turning into nothing but dust that floated in the air for a moment before disappearing as though it had never existed.
---
Yunar collapsed to his knees where the man had been moments before.
His hands touched the stone floor — still warm where the body had rested. But there was no blood. There was nothing. Only stone and the ghost of a presence that no longer existed.
In that instant, tears began to fall.
Not the involuntary tears that always came. These were different. These were conscious, deliberate, born of a pain and an understanding so deep that there was no other way to express them.
Yunar looked up at the sky.
The sun was rising fully now, painting everything in shades of gold and amber. Birds sang somewhere in the forest below. The world kept turning, completely indifferent to the collapse of personal universes.
And he understood.
He understood everything.
The impossible choice that now rested on his shoulders like the weight of entire worlds.
Choosing Sara and Hana — his real family, his first love, the daughter who carried his blood — meant that Alya would forget he had ever existed. The woman who loved him unconditionally in this reality, who welcomed him, who stayed by his side even without understanding why he cried, would simply vanish from his life as though she had never happened.
Or choosing Alya — remaining in this alternate reality, building a life with her — meant that Sara and Hana would forget him completely. His daughter would grow up without a father, without any memory that he had ever existed. Sara would live her life believing she had always been alone.
One choice.
Only one.
And there was no right answer. There was no path that didn't leave emotional ruin in its wake.
Yunar pressed his fists against the stone floor until his fingers ached, until he felt his skin scrape against the rough surface.
And he wept.
He wept as he had never wept before.
Because for the first time, he fully understood the depth of what Eren had done. The curse that had been placed upon him.
It wasn't just about losing a family. It was about choosing which love to destroy. Which life to erase. Which reality to
abandon.
And there was no right answer.
There never had been.
The tears fell, soaking the stone beneath him, while the sun kept rising and the world kept turning — indifferent and eternal.
---
*END OF CHAPTER 13*