# Chapter 15: Separation
When Yunar opened the door to Eren's apartment, it was like crossing a portal into another world.
The glow came from the bedroom — not ordinary light, but something completely different. Cosmic colours that shouldn't exist together but that somehow formed an impossible harmony. Lilac bleeding into violet, violet merging with brown, and other shades that human eyes were never designed to fully process.
The luminosity pulsed like a beating heart, expanding and contracting in a rhythm that seemed to synchronise with something deep and primordial.
Yunar stopped in the doorway, completely paralysed.
Traces of tears were still on his face — some dry, forming crystallised trails, others fresh, still falling slowly down his cheeks.
And there, directly in front of him, floating approximately half a metre above Eren's unmade bed, were the fragments.
Joined. Collided. Vibrating steadily with that supernatural light that filled the entire room, making shadows dance on the walls in shapes that defied Euclidean geometry.
On the floor, just below them, was the grimoire. Its pages open, as though they had been consulted recently, though Yunar knew nobody had been there in a long time.
He took a step forward.
Just one.
His foot touched the wooden floor with a sound that seemed to echo louder than it should, reverberating not just through the physical space, but through something deeper — as though echoing across dimensions.
Another step.
The cosmic colours pulsed more intensely, as though responding to his approach.
One more step.
Yunar didn't look away from the fragments. He was completely transfixed, hypnotised by that impossible light, by that promise of choice and consequence.
Step after step, he drew closer.
His hands were shaking violently now. His entire body was shaking — not from cold, but from something far deeper. Fear, perhaps. Or resolution. Or both simultaneously, intertwined in a way that couldn't be separated.
Finally, he stood before them.
Close enough to feel the warmth emanating from the fragments — not a physical heat, but something that warmed from the inside out, as though he were touching the very essence of reality.
Slowly, with deliberate movements as though stepping into ice-cold water, Yunar extended his hands.
His fingers touched the surface of the joined fragments.
In the instant he made contact, a wave of sensations hit him. Thousands of images exploded in his mind simultaneously — fragments (never more fittingly named) of possibilities, of realities that were and that could have been.
He saw Sara smiling. He saw Hana growing up without him. He saw Alya crying for something she couldn't remember. He saw Eren still alive in some alternate timeline. He saw versions of himself who had made different choices, living different lives, loving different people.
And then, cutting through all the chaos, a voice echoed in his mind.
Alya's voice.
Clear. Pure. Carrying that absolute sincerity that had always defined her.
*"I love you."*
The voice echoed as though coming from a place beyond time, beyond space — a memory of eternity, an echo that would exist forever even after its source was erased.
Yunar's arms nearly lost all strength.
For a moment — an infinitesimal moment that seemed to stretch for years — he almost let go. Almost let the fragments fall. Almost chose differently.
"I love you too," he whispered to the void, to the memory, to the woman sleeping in another reality without knowing she was about to be erased. "I love you."
Tears fell freely now, dripping onto the dead fragments in his hands, dripping onto the wooden floor, soaking his clothes.
His arms began to move.
Slowly.
So slowly that each millimetre seemed to take an eternity.
"Forgive me," he whispered, his voice breaking completely. "Forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me."
He repeated it like a mantra, like a prayer, as though the repetition could somehow soften what he was about to do.
Then his fingers stretched.
Gripping the fragments firmly.
And he pulled.
---
The sound that echoed when the fragments separated was not something that could be adequately described with human words.
It wasn't a snap. It wasn't a tear. It wasn't a scream.
It was something fundamental being broken. Reality itself protesting against something that shouldn't happen, against a violation of its most basic laws.
The sound reverberated not just through the apartment, but across dimensions, across timelines, across every version of reality that contained echoes of those two fragments.
The light in the room went out.
Not gradually. Instantly. As though someone had flipped a cosmic switch.
The darkness that followed was absolute, deeper than any night, more complete than any void.
And then, slowly, ordinary light began to return — the faint, mundane light of street lamps filtering through the window.
Yunar was on his knees on the floor.
He didn't remember falling, but there he was, kneeling as though in prayer, each hand holding a separated fragment.
They no longer glowed. The cosmic colours had vanished completely. Now they were just pieces of grey, lifeless crystal, like frosted glass, completely ordinary.
And Yunar wept.
He wept as he had never wept before. Not the involuntary tears that always came. These were different. These were conscious, deliberate, born of a pain so deep it seemed to have no bottom.
Tears streamed intensely, falling onto the dead fragments in his hands, dripping onto the wooden floor, soaking his clothes.
Violent sobs shook his entire body, making him fold in on himself until his forehead touched the cold floor.
Because he knew.
At that exact moment, in another line of reality, something was changing.
---
## In Another Reality
Alya woke up.
The transition from sleep to waking was strange — not gradual as it normally was, but abrupt, as though something had pulled her back to consciousness.
She blinked a few times, disoriented, her vision slowly focusing on the unfamiliar ceiling above her.
*Unfamiliar?*
She frowned, sitting up slowly. She looked around, trying to recognise where she was.
A bedroom. Not hers. The bed was unmade, the sheets twisted around her body in a way that suggested movement during the night.
Automatically, she turned her head to the other side of the bed.
Empty.
But there was something strange. Her mind insisted — with a certainty that made no logical sense — that someone should be there. That moments ago someone had been there. That she hadn't been alone.
But the memory was fog. The harder she tried to grasp it, the more it slipped through the fingers of her consciousness.
Alya pulled back the sheets and stopped.
She was undressed.
Completely undressed.
Her heart accelerated. She looked around frantically and saw her clothes — neatly folded on the pillow on the other side of the bed, as though someone had arranged them with care.
But who? When? Why?
With hands trembling slightly, she picked up her clothes and began to dress quickly, her movements mechanical and confused.
"Where... where am I?" She whispered to herself, her voice coming out hoarse.
She finished dressing and stood up, swaying slightly. Her legs were weak, as though she had run a marathon, though she couldn't remember doing anything of the kind.
"What am I doing here?"
The questions came out louder now, filled with growing panic.
She walked to the bedroom door and opened it, the sound of the hinges creaking seeming too loud in the silence of the house.
She stepped out into the living room.
And stopped abruptly.
A woman was there.
Hair completely white, pinned in a low bun. An apron tied at the waist. An expression of complete confusion on her weathered face.
Something about her was... familiar. As though Alya had seen her before. But where? When?
The fog in her mind pulsed painfully, trying to form memories that couldn't solidify.
The woman spoke first, her voice filled with surprise and a touch of alarm.
"Who are you, girl? Why are you in my house?"
Alya opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"I..." Her voice came out weak, uncertain. "I don't know."
And then she felt it.
Something warm streaming down her cheek.
She raised her hand to her face and touched the moisture. Tears. She was crying.
But why?
A drop fell from her chin, hitting the wooden floor with a tiny sound that echoed in the silent room like thunder.
"Why..." Alya whispered, touching the tears with trembling fingers, completely lost. "Why am I crying?"
She looked at the woman, as though she might have answers.
"Why do I want to cry?"
The woman took a step forward, her own expression shifting from alarm to something softer — maternal concern, perhaps.
"I feel like I recognise you," she said slowly, her eyes half-closed as though trying to remember something that was on the tip of her tongue. "You're a friend of my... of my..."
She stopped. Frowned deeply.
"My son—"
And then her expression changed completely. Total confusion settled across her face.
"Wait." She shook her head, as though trying to shake away thoughts that didn't make sense. "I don't have a son."
The words hung in the air between them.
Alya stared at the woman, tears still falling silently, and something inside her — something she couldn't name or understand — broke.
She didn't know why. She couldn't explain it. But she felt as though she had just lost something immensely important. Something she would never be able to recover.
"I'll go now," she said finally, her voice coming out flat, empty. "I'm sorry for all of this."
She didn't wait for a response.
She turned, walked to the front door, and opened it.
Morning light flooded in, blinding and cruel in its normality.
Alya took one last look back — at the house, at the woman, at the room where she had woken up with no memory of how she got there.
And then she left.
The door closed behind her with a soft click.
She stood on the pavement for a long moment, completely lost, not knowing where to go or what to do.
The tears kept falling.
And somewhere deep inside her — so deep that her consciousness couldn't reach — a part of her soul wept for something she never knew she had.
For someone she never knew she loved.
For a life she never knew she lived.
And never would.
---
## Back at the Apartment
Yunar remained kneeling on the floor for hours.
Or perhaps minutes. Time had lost its meaning.
The dead fragments were still in his hands, now just grey, lifeless stones.
The tears eventually stopped — not because the pain had lessened, but because his body simply had nothing left to give.
He stayed there, empty, hollow, feeling the weight of a choice that should never have been necessary.
He had saved one family.
He had destroyed another.
And there was no undoing it.
There never would be.
Slowly, with mechanical movements, Yunar stood up.
He placed the fragments on the table — dead objects now, incapable of causing more damage, incapable of reuniting or separating.
Just crystals. Nothing more.
He walked to the door in silence.
Left the apartment.
Descended the stairs.
And began the long walk back.
Back to Sara.
Back to Hana.
Back to the only reality that remained.
Carrying with him me
mories of a love that nobody else remembered.
Of a woman who would never know she had been loved.
Of a life that had been erased as though it had never existed.
And the tears — those cursed, involuntary tears — kept falling.
As they always would.
Forever.
---
*END OF CHAPTER 15*