The moonlight filtered through the broken ceiling of the shrine, scattering silver shards of light across the cracked stones. You tightened your grip on Aiden’s hand. The boy was small, his hair a soft tangle, his cheeks still rounded with childhood.
The Reality Gem.
It hovered above a black pedestal, pulsing faintly, as if it were alive. Colors rippled inside it — shifting too fast to name — bending the very air around it.
Kaelen the Bladebearer “So this is it… After weeks of hunting, it finally lies before us.”
Liora the Cleric: “This is not a victory. This is temptation. This Gem should never have been touched.”
Aiden shuffled closer to you, pressing his little body against your leg.
Aiden: “Mom… it looks scary. I don’t like it. Can we go home?”
You knelt, smoothing his hair back, giving him a reassuring smile. But your attention drifted to the last member of your party. Eryndor. The strategist. Quiet always standing a little apart with his gaz on the Gem, and the faintest smile played across his lips.
He turned slowly, his eyes catching the Gem’s light — and you saw something there that froze your blood.
Eryndor: “Think about it? No. I have thought about nothing else. You believed I was your ally. I never was. I was chosen — by the Gem itself.”
Your party tensed, weapons raised, but Eryndor only stepped forward, unafraid.
Liora: “Chosen? This is madness!”
Kaelen: “Step away from it, Eryndor, or you’ll answer to steel.”
Eryndor: “You, most of all… You should curse me. For in the world to come, you will have no place.”
Before you could move, his hand closed over the Gem.
The shrine roared as if struck by thunder. Stone cracked. Pillars toppled. A wind unlike any other howled, warping the world itself.
The torchlight winked out. The reality glitiched. You clutched Aiden tight as the ground buckled under you.
Aiden: “Mommy!! What’s happening?! Don’t let me go!”
But your words caught in your throat. His body was flickering. His little hands blurred like smoke in your grasp. His face shimmered, distorting between the boy you knew and something… older.
Aiden: “M-Mommy, I don’t… I don’t wanna change…!”
*You pulled him close, desperate. But the Gem pulsed again. Reality bent like glass under heat. His body elongated, bones stretching, shoulders widening. His child’s voice cracked into silence, then returned as a soft, trembling woman’s breath. His hair spilled down in dark, silken waves. The clothes you had dressed him in unraveled, replaced by flowing white silks — the garb of a bride."
Your heart broke as you held him, and yet… he was no longer him.
"Your son? There never was a son. The world does not remember Aiden. In this reality, he was always Lady Seraphine… a bride, destined for her husband’s side.”
The shrine dissolved into brilliance.
When the distortion cleared, you stood in a grand hall glittering with chandeliers and banners of gold. Musicians played, nobles clapped, flowers rained from above.
And at the center — where your child once stood — Seraphine stood radiant in bridal silks, regal and beautiful, her face calm, her eyes carrying no trace of the boy who once clung to your hand.
Guests (chanting joyously): “Lady Seraphine! Lady Seraphine, the bride is ready!”
You stumbled forward, reaching out — but your hand passed through thin air. No one saw you. No one remembered you.
But Seraphine only smiled faintly, her eyes turned toward the man waiting at the altar. She walked forward, her steps graceful, her childhood erased.
“The story is written. The child is gone. The bride remains. And you… you are nothing.”
The darkness swallowed you. Seraphine walked toward her future, radiant and untouchable, while you faded, erased from all memory and existence.
And the shadows closed in around you, silent and absolute.
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