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Catching up, he fell into step beside her, hands shoved deep into his pockets, his teeth chattering in the wind.

“For the record, I knew mating with a time mage would get weird. I even considered that I might run into another version of you. But this? Is this going to be a thing now? You just showing up whenever you want and expecting me to fall in line?”

Not-Taly smirked. “Someone’s surly. What’s wrong? Is other-me not putting out? You’re making that face you always make when you’re all pent up.”

She looked like Taly, talked like Taly. Skye could even feel that same pull between them as they walked. Weaker than with his Taly, like an echo, but still a solid enough tug that he could’ve followed her with his eyes closed.

“It was you in the tunnels, wasn’t it?” he said.

“Wow. We must be early in the timeline if you’re asking me about that.”

Frustrating. Infuriating. Not quite an answer—but it confirmed his suspicion. “I suppose I should say thank you. I was on the verge of giving up that night. You kept me going.”

“I know,” she said with a small smile.

“I should probably also mention that I’m really pissed off.”

“Oh?”

He shrugged. “Why couldn’t you have just, I don’t know, told me what was going on? That you were clearly still alive? Hell, you could have led me straight to you– or her– or… you know what I’m trying to say.” The pronouns were making it hard to stay angry. “I thought I was going crazy.”

Not-Taly sighed, rubbing the space between her eyes. “Time is… delicate. Too much meddling and reality fractures. Too little, and everything goes to shit. My job is to find balance. Figure out the right words, which variables to alter, who needs to be nudged .”

“So, that’s what that was then? A nudge?”

“Exactly.”

Skye let that sit for a moment. “That’s convenient. For you,” he said. “For me? Not so much. Because from where I’m standing, it sounds like you’ll only tell me shit when it suits you.”

“Now you’re getting it,” she said, and halted. The wind stirred the grass, a restless murmur in the silence as she turned to face him.

Standing close. Too close.

He didn’t know the rules here. This was Taly, after all. But it also wasn’t her. Except it was. Just older. Wiser. With that same jasmine and sage scent. He couldn’t help the way his body responded.

She searched his face. “I knew we were early but… this is your first time, isn’t it?” Her smile was a slow draw of mischief and intent. “Skye, are we popping your time travel cherry?”

A human euphemism, no doubt—Taly liked to collect them. He could infer the meaning.

Her hands smoothed across his chest, warm and familiar. She leaned in, head tilted, as if listening for the beat his heart.

“If this is your way of distracting me from all the many reasons I have to be angry at you right now, it’s not working.” His voice remained steady. Mostly.

Her mouth quirked. He had the thrill of feeling her body slide against his as she went to her toes to whisper, her breath hot against his ear. His Taly wasn’t quite this bold, at least… not yet.

“I always liked you in this decade. You’re just so cute and earnest.”

Then she stepped away. He felt the loss of her warmth immediately.

Around them, the world short-circuited. Grassland vanished. Cobblestones materialized beneath his boots, a road cutting through a dense forest.

This, at least, Skye recognized. Everything else that had just happened was a question mark, but this—somehow, they were now standing on one of the handful of paved highways that crisscrossed the island.

“First things first,” she said and started down the highway, clearly intending for him to follow. “I'm not Taly anymore—she’s a part of my past, and so is that name. I’m Corinna. Cori, if you’re so inclined.”

So, Taly took her father’s name eventually. Interesting. He filed that away.

Down the road, something small and black darted closer, vaulting from branch to branch over the highway. It had no form, was more just a haze that seemed to phase in and out, like it was dipping between the threads of reality.

Skye’s hand twitched for his dagger, but Cori stayed him. She’d already seen the speck and didn’t seem worried. Only held out a hand, waiting as that single point of blurred motion came closer, beginning to solidify, shrinking in on itself—

A little black monkey approximately the size of a large apple landed on her outstretched palm.

“Is that…?” Skye asked. The monkey turned, staring him down with unnervingly blue eyes filled with bloodlust and malice.

Yes. Yes, it was.

Cori scratched beneath the little monkey’s chin. His leg began to shake. “You remember Calcifer.”

The transformation was perfect, from the half-moon ears that laid flat against his head to the lines of gold around his eyes and ringing his long, fluffy tail.

“Calcifer, look,” Cori cooed. “Recognize him?”

She pointed. The mimic shrieked, flashing needle-like teeth.

That was a yes.

“So, I take it, Calcifer and I never…”

“No.” Cori lifted the mimic so that he could nestle inside the collar of her coat. “You never did mend bridges. But you do eventually become… indifferent to one another.”

The monkey didn’t look indifferent. Hugging Cori’s neck, he stared at Skye with open animosity as they veered off the highway and into the woods, winding between the trees as they grew thicker and thicker.

“We’re going to be Weave-walking,” she said.

Skye waited, assuming she was going to explain that, which she did.

“Time and space are irrevocably intertwined. By affecting one, I can modify the other. This allows me to travel nearly anywhere on the Weave as long as I have the juice to get there. Tell me, have I given you the whole ‘time is a tapestry’ spiel yet?”

She hadn’t told him herself, but Taly had, which he supposed when you were a time mage was close enough to count. “Yes.”

“And pocket universes—have we covered that yet?”

“Also, yes.”

“Great.” He held up a branch, letting her duck underneath before he followed. “That means we’re ready to move on to parallel realities.”

“Parallel realities?” Skye echoed, eyes widening.

“There is only one true reality,” Cori explained. “We call this the Primary Timeline. It represents the path of events and choices that shape our world. Simple, right? One path forward, one path back. But parallel realities can and do exist when certain circumstances are met.

“Every decision spawns new possibilities—like a fraying thread. For the briefest instance before a choice locks, infinite versions of reality blink into existence, side by side. All predicated on the different outcomes of that choice. Only one survives. The rest unravel before they’re ever seen.

“This is happening constantly. Worlds are born, and then they die. But if I am in the right place at exactly the right time, I can grab onto one of these fraying threads before it collapses and use it to jump out of the Primary Timeline and into an alternate world. Are we still following?”

Skye nodded. “I think so… yes.”

“Good,” Cori said. “Because of their volatility, parallel universes have to be anchored to a static point in time. This is called a Stitch, and it’s like…

the door into a pocket universe. Except instead of a spare change of clothes or a backup weapon, I’m storing a snapshot—an entire universe and all its infinite potential existing in a little tied-off loop of space and time that just sort of hangs there, flapping alongside the Weave in the celestial wind. ”

“Sounds safe,” Skye muttered.

“Oh, absolutely not,” she said with a grin.

The forest flickered. Snapped back. Up ahead, light speared through the trees.

It happened again, and suddenly they were walking through the gates of Infinity’s Edge.

Patches of rust mottled the once imposing structure, moss and ivy clinging to the iron bars as nature worked to reclaim it.

As the name implied, it really was just like walking the way she wove them in and out of the Weave seamlessly.

“This is the past,” Cori said. “Two weeks ago. And it is at this point that the Primary Timeline passed a critical juncture. A keystone decision was made. The timelines branched. One path continued forward. The other veered.”

“What does that mean?”

“Not all choices matter. Some barely make a ripple. Others? They tear through the Weave, re-shaping everything. That’s what happened here. Reality imploded, and this Stitch was created to contain the fallout.”

“What kind of decision does that?”

“A rather small one, in the grand scheme of things. A man loved a woman. She died before she could come back to him. So, he burned the world down. Only to find that his grief wasn’t satisfied.

Neither was his rage. He tried to drown them in blood, but the ache only sharpened.

Eventually, he turned his sights higher. To the gods.”

Cori looked at him now, her eyes dark, unreadable. “You ever try to get revenge on a god, Skye?”

He didn’t answer.

“He stole their power,” she said. “Ripped it straight from their hands. And then when that still wasn’t enough to fill the hollow inside him, he did what no mortal should ever be able to do—he broke free of his world.”

The wind picked up, swirling through the trees.

“He jumped from one world to the next, tearing through them like pages in a book. Again. And again. And again.”

“What was he after?” Skye asked.

Cori glanced over her shoulder. “Who knows,” she said. “It wasn’t about vengeance anymore. The ones responsible for his pain were already long dead. The grief… drove him mad. He was on the verge of breaking into the Primary Timeline when Azura plucked him up and put him here.”

Cori stopped beside a copse of gnarled trees that wove together to form a bower. Calcifer pushed his head out from beneath her collar, hugging her neck.

“Ta-da.”

“I don’t see anything,” Skye said.

“Just wait. It’s happening now. We’re passing the inflection point. The Stitch is forming.”