He squeezed.

The illusion of Lyra gagged, her hands clawing at his wrist. It felt sickeningly real. The cartilage shifting under his thumb. The panic in her eyes. The heat of her skin turning clammy.

"Xavier, stop!" Eamon shouted from the doorway, running toward them. "What are you doing?!"

"Please," Lyra choked out, tears spilling down her cheeks. "I'm real. I'm here. Don't hurt me."

Xavier didn't let go. He stared into her eyes, watching the light fade. His expression was stone.

"If you were real," Xavier said, his voice void of any tremble, "you wouldn't ask me to stop. You would hand me the knife."

He tightened his grip with a wet crunch.

The body went limp in his grasp.

The moment she died, the sky fractured.

The perfect city shattered like glass dropped on concrete. The terrace dissolved into black smoke. Viola, Requiem, and the palace were torn apart by a sudden, violent wind.

The warm body of Lyra disintegrated into gray ash, coating Xavier's hand in dust.

He stood alone in the darkness again, the ash slipping through his fingers.

"THE THIRD QUERY IS ANSWERED," the voice boomed, but this time it sounded different. Less authoritative and wary.

The darkness receded, revealing the stone ridge of the transition zone. They were back at the beginning, but the path forward was now open. A massive gate of twisted black metal stood ajar, leading out of the trial grounds.

Aurethiel stood by his side, looking at him with wide, terrified eyes. She looked at the ash on his hand.

"You killed her," she whispered. "You didn't hesitate."

"She wasn't her," Xavier said, wiping the ash onto his pants. "Let's go."

He walked toward the gate. The trials were done. He wasn't a statue or a servant. He was exactly what he had claimed to be.

A disaster waiting to happen.

The gate of twisted iron groaned open, revealing a shoreline of crushed diamond dust. Beyond it flowed a river of liquid gold—thick, luminous, and silent. It didn't ripple like water; it moved with the heavy, sluggish consistency of molten metal.

A single wooden skiff sat moored to a black post, bobbing slightly in the current.

Xavier stepped onto the boat. It held his weight without dipping. He turned and offered a hand to Aurethiel. She hesitated, looking back at the dark amphitheater where the illusion of Lyra had burned to ash, then took his hand.

Her grip was cold.

He sat at the stern, taking the single oar. He pushed off. The boat cut through the gold, leaving a wake that glowed with an internal heat.

For a long time, the only sound was the splash of the oar and of the current. The landscape around them shifted from rocky cliffs to a void of shifting nebulas, as if they were sailing through the arteries of a dying star.

"What happens now?" Xavier asked, his eyes scanning the horizon.

Aurethiel sat at the bow, hugging her knees. She didn't look at him. "I don't know."

Xavier kept paddling. "You've been here a long time. You must have seen others pass."

"I see them come," she whispered. "I never see where they go."

The surface of the river began to break. Shapes moved beneath the gold—massive, serpentine shadows that coiled and uncoiled in the deep. A creature with wings made of translucent crystal breached the surface, scattering droplets of light before diving back down.

Something small splashed near the boat. A fish, its scales shimmering with iridescent patterns that hurt the eyes, leaped from the river and landed with a wet thud in Xavier's lap.

It thrashed, gasping, its gills flapping uselessly in the air.

Xavier stopped paddling. He looked down at the creature. After the violence of the last hour, the fragility of the thing was jarring. He reached down, his hands surprisingly gentle, and scooped it up. It felt warm, vibrating with life.

He leaned over the gunwale and lowered it back into the river. It darted away instantly, a streak of blue light vanishing into the gold. 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

Xavier watched it go, wiping the slime from his hands. He stood up to adjust his grip on the oar.

"You are different," Aurethiel said.

Xavier turned to look at her. "What?"

She was standing now. The fear was gone from her face, replaced by a hollow, ancient sadness.

"The others... they didn't put it back," she said.

She lunged.

It wasn't an attack. It was a desperate, forceful shove. Xavier, balanced on the shifting deck, tipped backward. He hit the surface of the river hard.

The gold swallowed him. It filled his mouth.

He kicked, surfacing immediately, gasping for air. He grabbed the edge of the boat, hair plastered to his face.

"What the hell are you doing?" Xavier shouted, gripping the wood.

Aurethiel stood over him. Tears streamed down her face, but they weren't clear. They were thick, golden drops that fell heavy onto the deck.

"I enjoyed this," she choked out, her voice cracking. "Walking with you. Seeing the tests. It was... nice. To not be alone."

"Then pull me up," Xavier demanded, reaching for her hand. "Come with me."

She shook her head, stepping back out of his reach.

"I can't," she sobbed. "I've tried. A thousand times, I've tried. I step off the boat, and I wake up back at the ridge. I am the guide, Xavier. I am the fixture. I stay."

"You're a… prisoner?" Xavier said, his grip on the boat tightening.

"I am the penance," she corrected. She wiped the gold from her cheeks. "Go. The date has been rewritten. The destiny is reset. Your body has returned to the weave."

"Aurethiel—"

"Go!" she screamed.

The river roared. A whirlpool opened directly beneath Xavier, a vortex of spinning gold that generated enough force to crack bone.

It ripped his hands from the boat.

Xavier fell back into the churn. He saw Aurethiel one last time, a small, lonely figure standing in the boat, watching him sink. Then the gold closed over his head.

The sensation of falling vanished.

The taste of the river was replaced by the stinging shock of tepid water hitting his face.

Xavier gasped, inhaling sharply, his lungs expanding with a violence that made his chest scream. He flailed, his hand striking smooth, wet ceramic.

He shut the water off abruptly.

The silence that followed pressed against his ears.

He stood there for a few seconds longer, water dripping from his hair and shoulders, trying to grasp what had just brushed against his mind.

He stepped out of the shower and wrapped a towel around his waist. He walked to the bed and sat down, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, staring at the floor.

"What was that…?" he muttered under his breath.

He closed his eyes and forced himself to recall the exact moment before he turned the water off.

"Who… was that… little girl…? I have been seeing her ever since I stepped onto Jupiter…"