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The shimmer thickened again until it was hard to tell if I was walking or simply drifting forward, carried by a current I couldn’t see.

It wasn’t air I moved through anymore. It was magic, dense and whispering.

It curled along my shoulders and spine like a new memory pressing in, like the breath of the past warming my neck.

Then, suddenly, the path opened.

No fanfare. No dramatic reveal. Just space.

A vast, circular clearing formed beneath a sky that shimmered gold and gray at once, like dawn caught in hesitation. Four paths split outward from the center like the points of a compass, each one lined with a soft, pulsing glow.

At the center stood a pedestal made of dark stone, smooth as still water. On it, a single object lay: a piece of parchment, blank and waiting.

But what caught me first wasn’t the paths.

It was the figures standing in each.

Familiar.

Unnervingly so.

To my left, down the first path, stood Celeste.

She looked exactly as I remembered—jeans, cozy sweater, wind-tossed hair, a soft smile that crinkled her eyes. Her hands were outstretched, palms up.

“Come home,” she said. “Rest. Let go for just a while. You don’t have to carry everything.”

The ache in my chest swelled.

My daughter.

The part of me that craved softness, safety, and connection. The life that wasn’t laced with spells and prophecy.

To the right, down the second path, stood Keegan.

Strong, steady, hands tucked in his jacket pockets. His eyes were serious, but not cold. He said nothing. He didn’t need to. The promise was in the way he stood—unmoving, ready. A force of support I could lean on. His presence pulsed like a heartbeat: With you. Always.

Strength. Loyalty. Grounding.

To the far edge of the third path stood Gideon.

Of all of them, he was the only one I didn’t expect.

He stood just outside the glow, half in shadow, his blue eyes glinting with something I couldn’t name. Not a menace. Not safety. Just… knowing.

“I can tell you why it all happened,” he said, voice low, coaxing. “Why the shimmer grew. Why the circles break. Why your magic aches when you look at me. You want answers, don’t you?”

And I did.

Oh, how I did.

The mystery. The pain. The weight of all the why and how that had never been given shape. He offered them like a gift I wasn’t sure I could refuse.

And then—

Behind me, the fourth path pulsed.

But no figure stood there.

Instead, the Academy itself rose in ghostly silhouette, with its towers glimmering like starlight, its arches folding and unfolding like breath. And though it didn’t speak, I felt its offering.

Possibility.

Legacy.

Responsibility.

And something else I didn’t quite understand. Perhaps a need or a hunger, even but not malicious. Just ancient. As though the Academy itself was unfinished, reaching for something only I could give, but had yet to define.

I stood at the center, surrounded by pieces of my soul, and suddenly I didn’t know who I was supposed to be anymore.

Celeste beckoned again, her voice warm. “You’ve done enough, Mom. Come back to the life you loved. Be with me. Let this go.”

Keegan said nothing, but I could feel his steadiness behind me, like a sheltering wall that had waited long enough.

Gideon tilted his head. “You think strength is in pushing through. But sometimes, strength is knowing the shape of what you’re fighting. Let me show you.”

The Academy shimmered, as if hearing everything but responding in silence.

I closed my eyes.

The calling pressed against my skin.

Each path called to something different inside me.

Celeste, the daughter I loved beyond words. The life I had put on pause, the softness I missed with every breath.

Keegan, the man who saw the worst parts of me and didn’t flinch. The quiet, powerful gravity that kept me rooted when my soul wanted to run.

Gideon, the reflection of questions I had buried. The dark edge of my knowing, tempting, cruel, and honest.

And the Academy, the legacy that had chosen me and believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself. The home I hadn’t sought but now couldn't imagine leaving.

I let the ache rise.

Let the fear settle in.

And then I whispered, “Why can’t I want more than one?”

But none of them answered.

Not really.

Because this wasn’t a test of loyalty.

It was a revelation of need.

And every version of me stood somewhere down one of those paths.

I stepped toward Celeste first—because, of course, I did.

My daughter. My beginning. My heart. Her arms wrapped around me in imagined warmth, and for a moment, I wanted nothing more than to stay there. To forget the calling and to forget the weight, so Icould be just her mother.

But the moment lengthened… and the shimmer tugged.

Not away.

Just forward.

I turned to Keegan.

His eyes didn’t plead. They trusted. I wanted to stay with him, too. To let the journey end here, before it broke me more than it already had. But something inside me whispered, He would walk with you to the end. But he isn’t your ending.

And that truth stung.

I faced Gideon.

His gaze didn’t waver.

And I saw, for the first time, the boy he might have been. The fracture beneath the cruelty. The yearning for understanding twisted into something terrible. But standing before him, I felt the thread in my chest tighten.

Answers were not always healing.

Sometimes, they were chains.

I turned away, remembering Keegan’s words.

It wasn’t my job to fix someone who didn’t know they were broken.

The shimmer rustled behind me like a cloak being drawn.

I faced the path to the Academy.

And though no voice spoke, the air around me said Come not because you’re told—but because you choose. Come because you are ready to become what no one else can be.

My pulse quickened, and my knees shook, but I stepped forward.

And as I did, the other paths faded—not in anger, but in quiet reverence.

Because they were never meant to be chosen.

They were meant to be seen.

And the path opened before me like a breath finally exhaled.

“No,” I whispered, the word surprising me even as it left my lips.

It echoed in the shimmer around me, not like a denial, but like a challenge.

“I don’t agree with this,” I said louder now, facing the path that had tried to close behind me. “I don’t want to choose just one.”

The path pulsed, confused. Perhaps even irritated.

“I want all of them,” I continued, taking a shaking step back toward the center where the paths had met. “I want my daughter’s comfort. I want Keegan’s strength. I want Gideon’s answers. I want the Academy’s legacy.”

The shimmer wavered, shifting from gold to silver to a deep, roiling violet. The sky overhead seemed to buckle.

And something cracked, not a sound or a physical shatter, but something inside the path gave way.

The pedestal in the center, where the blank parchment had waited, crumbled into dust. The mist around me exploded outward as if shoved by a hurricane wind, and every path that had faded reappeared in a blinding surge of color and magic.

But they no longer stood apart.

They were moving toward each other, merging as the path twisted under my feet.

Roots rose like veins, and trees from different timelines clawed through the ground in fast-growing spirals, as their branches knitted together into impossible canopies.

The shimmer itself thickened into columns of light—some hot with sunfire, others cool with starlight. My bones ached under the weight of it.

“Maeve!” someone called, but I couldn’t tell if it came from outside or inside.

Or from myself.

The vision of Celeste didn’t vanish. Nor did Keegan. Nor Gideon. Nor the echoing silhouette of the Academy. They began to bend, to blend, like reflections in rippling water as my body burned in a painful heat of decision.

A piece of Keegan’s shadow folded into the stones of the Academy. Celeste’s laugh drifted like birdsong into the trees. Gideon’s knowledge, dangerous and dark, threaded through the roots that I stood on.

I stood in the center of it all at the breaking point as they bound together.

The shimmer screamed now, not in pain, but in resistance.

One path.

One choice.

That was the rule.

But I didn’t want rules anymore.

I wanted truth, and truth was messy.

It wasn’t one road. It was the whole, twisting, beautiful map of experience, life, and the choices that came with it.

“I don’t want to become a pillar of one path,” I said aloud, voice rising through the wind and the magic surging around me. “I want to become the bridge between them. The conduit.”

And just like that, the magic listened.

It didn’t agree.

It didn’t understand.

But it listened.

And it moved.

The world folded inward. It didn’t collapse, it c onverged as if realms were bending toward a common point, but the shimmer grew blinding.

My breath caught as magic exploded around me, and colors that had never existed bled into the sky.

The ground fractured around me, but not with destruction. Instead, it fractured like a puzzle, pulling apart and reassembling simultaneously.

I was lifted with willpower, resilience, magic, beautiful memories, and uncertain futures.

And I felt it.

All of it.

Celeste’s joy, her childhood hands wrapped around mine, along with her laughter.

Keegan’s grounding presence standing before me, the way he said little but meant everything. His steady faith in me is always there.

Gideon’s pain was haunting echoes of someone who had once believed in good, who had twisted it into fear and cruelty.

The Academy’s heartbeat and its long, lonely vigil with its hunger for connection and its purposeful mission.

The mission statement…

I pulled them all in, not like trophies, but like truth that would make me stronger.

Because they were all pieces of myself that I refused to leave behind.

The ache twisted through me as the shimmer broke open above me and poured into me, while magic slammed through my veins.

My mark, the butterfly, flared bright against my hip, then split into mirrored wings, glowing with ancient sigils I had never seen before but knew by instinct.

And the shimmer spoke.

Not in words.

But in knowing.

You are not the chosen.

You are the choosing.

I screamed in fury and awe as I pushed fear aside and the weight of four futures wrapped around my shoulders and dug into my bones.

The calling path bent, not forward, not backward, but it twisted outward in a spiral.

And at the center stood me.

Pillar.

Bridge.

Anchor.

For the first time in the shimmer’s ancient history, someone said no to the design as the realms cracked open along the edge of the vision.

I could see glimpses of another version of an Academy nestled in a mountain, a different Celeste standing tall as a warrior, a Keegan with darkness in his eyes instead of light.

Timelines blurred as magic chose chaos, but I was still standing.

I had not fractured.

I had become.

The shimmer collapsed back into itself like a star imploding and then flared wide open in a ring of light.

I stumbled forward.

And the vision, the path, opened before me anew with no longer one choice, but rather a convergence and a tether not to one truth, but to many.

I had made the impossible possible.

And as I stepped forward, reverent silence followed.

The path pulled back slowly, like a curtain being drawn after the final act.

It was as if magic was trying to understand what just happened as much as I was with each step.

The ground beneath me was solid again, though it still hummed faintly, as if it remembered the magic that had passed through me and wasn’t quite ready to let go.

Light filtered in as the scent of lavender drifted on the wind.

And then—I was out.

I stepped through the last veil and felt it slide across my skin like silk. The world beyond the path opened slowly, with the Academy just ahead.

Still standing.

Still twinkling with the magic that had awakened.

Keegan stood at the edge of the Ward, eyes locked on mine, frozen mid-step as though he wasn’t sure I was real. The expression on his face was a mix of wonder, disbelief, and relief.

I opened my mouth to speak, but then I stopped.

Because behind him, just beyond the stone path that led toward the Academy’s entrance, a shadow unfurled. Not large, not loud—but sharp. Deliberate.

And in the middle of it, a figure stepped free.

Not from the Academy.

Not from the path.

From somewhere else.

Their eyes locked with mine.

And they smiled.

Not kindly.

Like they had been waiting.

And now something had begun.