The air was different.
Evelyne noticed it first in the color of the sky—a gradient of indigo bleeding into silver, as though the stars hadn't yet gone to sleep. The Rift had been sealed, but the world hadn't simply reverted. It had... adjusted. Rewritten itself with the vow she and Alaira had forged at its heart.
Evelyne stood atop the cliff overlooking the capital. It was not the one she remembered. The architecture was familiar but refined, softened. Towers bore banners of unity rather than conquest. The distant chimes of the city below were not bells of alarm, but of peace.
She turned. Alaira was already watching her, arms folded, sword strapped to her back—not out of caution, but habit. Her eyes held none of the skepticism or confusion that Evelyne had feared. They held memory.
"You remember," Evelyne whispered.
Alaira nodded. "Of course I do. You tied me to your vow. To your anchor. Whatever this world became, we were meant to find each other."
Relief surged through Evelyne so swiftly it weakened her knees. She fell into Alaira's embrace like a wave collapsing onto the shore.
"I was afraid," she murmured into the fabric of her cloak. "Afraid I'd lose you to time."
"You rewrote time for me, Evelyne." A faint smile. "I think I can meet you halfway."
They stayed like that for a moment too long—no longer bound by urgency, but by choice. Eventually, Evelyne stepped back and surveyed the horizon.
"What now?" she asked. "The Rift is closed. This version of the Empire is... stable. But is it real?"
"It's as real as what we made it," Alaira replied. "But we need to understand what survived the rewriting. Who remembers. What rules have changed."
A messenger approached from the winding trail below—young, winded, cloaked in the livery of the new Council. His message was simple: Evelyne had been summoned.
Not condemned. Not interrogated. Summoned.
In the Council Hall—no longer a place of tribunals and verdicts, but now a dome of crystal and gold, carved with runes of restoration—Evelyne faced the eleven who now governed the fate of the continent. And among them stood a familiar face: Chron.
But even he was different. His gaze was no longer burdened with inevitability. His presence hummed with purpose, not fatalism.
"You changed the story," Chron said, smiling faintly. "And in doing so, preserved the world."
Evelyne tilted her head. "And now?"
"Now, you lead," he said simply. "Not as a villainess. Not as a pawn. But as the woman who rewrote fate and proved that even the doomed can become the divine."
Silence filled the chamber.
"I didn't do it alone," she said. Her voice was firm.
Chron nodded. "Then lead with her."
Alaira stepped forward from the shadows at the edge of the hall. Her presence was unshakable, magnetic. Where Evelyne had rewritten fate, Alaira had anchored it.
"We'll need to rebuild," Evelyne said. "Not just cities, but memory. Trust. The idea that change isn't something to be feared."
Chron simply gestured to the world beyond the windows. "Then begin."
As they stepped out of the hall, sunlight warming their path, Evelyne turned to Alaira once more.
"Would you still follow me," she asked, "even if we're no longer running from death?"
Alaira offered her hand. "Only if we're walking toward life."
And Evelyne took it.