*Day 78 - The Countdown*
Ora woke up forgetting her own name.
It came back after a moment—Ora, Ashkore, corruption-bearer, world-breaker—but that moment of blankness told her everything. The corruption was winning. Not fighting anymore, just winning.
"How long?" she asked the empty room, though she knew Pyrrhus was listening through their bond.
*Three days. Maybe four. The corruption is accelerating.*
The corruption had peaked—ten degrees below normal, permanent winter that would never thaw.
She stood, and her body responded slowly, like it was remembering how to be a body. Her touch turned the mirror's surface to ice—her body now ran ten degrees below normal, cold enough that water froze at her touch. The permanent taste of ash had thickened to bitter charcoal, coating every word she spoke. Her vision was almost completely monochrome now; even blood looked black to her corrupted sight.
In the frozen mirror—one of the few intact ones left in the ruins of Ironhold—she saw what she was becoming.
Her skin was translucent now, veins of black corruption visible beneath like rivers of night. Her hair had gone completely white, except for the tips which seemed to absorb light. Her eyes were the worst—silver irises floating in pools of living void.
"I look like death," she said.
*You look like transformation,* Pyrrhus corrected. *Death is just one interpretation.*
A knock at the door. Gentle. Vash'nil never knocked loudly—he existed too simultaneously for dramatic entrances.
"Come in."
The broken dragon entered in all his impossible glory. Three heads, each tracking different timestreams. Wings that were solid and gas at once. Scales that remembered being skin.
"It's time," he said simply.
"For?"
"The gathering. Everyone wants to say goodbye. Or hello. Or both."
"I don't want a funeral while I'm still alive."
"It's not a funeral. It's a choosing. Everyone who's been touched by your corruption, by your choices, by your existence—they're gathering to choose what you meant to them."
Ora laughed, and reality flinched at the sound. "That's the most pretentious thing I've ever heard."
"It's also necessary. When you transform, we need to know what we're losing. Or gaining. Or both."
"Always both."
"Always both."
---
**The Gathering**
They met in what had been the throne room of Ironhold, now transformed into something else. Not rebuilt—reimagined. The walls existed in multiple states, solid stone and empty air and possibility all at once. The throne had been replaced by a circle, no hierarchy, just connection.
Everyone was there.
The dragons, all eighteen free ones, their massive forms somehow fitting in a space that shouldn't hold them. The Forsaken, hundreds of them, each broken in their unique way. The former Distillers who'd chosen new forms. The humans who'd survived. The elves who'd adapted. Even beings Ora didn't recognize—new things born from the chaos of choice.
"This is ridiculous," Ora said, but her voice carried fondness.
"This is necessary," Aetherios replied. The ancient dragon looked older, worn by the weight of recent choices. "You changed everything. We need to acknowledge that before you change again."
"I didn't change everything. I just—"
"You gave us choice," the Collector interrupted. The former Distiller had become more human in the weeks since the Memory Revolution, though still imperfect in telling ways. "That's everything."
They began without ceremony. Each being who wanted to speak did. Not eulogies—Ora wasn't dead yet—but acknowledgments. Recognitions. Choices about what she had meant, did mean, would mean.
Kaelen spoke first, his truth-curse making every word honest: "You terrify me. You've always terrified me. But you also showed me that terror can be a form of respect. I choose to remember you as someone who made fear productive."
Marcus: "You saved my family by destroying my world. I hated you for that. I choose to forgive you. Not forget—forgive."
S'pun-duh: "Your corruption fed my fungi. My fungi fed on corruption. We created something that shouldn't exist but does. I choose to remember you as impossible fertilizer."
Nethys: "You broke me when you corrupted my death-essence. Then you freed me from perfection's prison. I choose to remember you as necessary catastrophe."
One by one, they spoke. Dragons admitting guilt and gratitude. Forsaken acknowledging kinship in brokenness. Former Distillers exploring what her choice had taught them about choice.
Malakor's testimony was multiple, each aspect speaking separately:
The human: "You showed me that being weapon doesn't mean lacking choice."
The dragon: "You proved that corruption and creation aren't opposites."
The weapon: "You taught me that breaking can be building."
All aspects together: "We choose to remember you as the mother of monsters who chose to be more."
Pyrrhus didn't speak aloud. Through their bond, he shared memory—every moment since their binding, the rage and acceptance, the corruption and flame mixing into something unprecedented. No words. Just experience.
Finally, Vash'nil. The broken dragon moved to the center of the circle, his impossible form rippling with temporal paradox.
"I see your endings," he said, all three heads speaking in harmony. "All of them. Every choice you could make, every transformation possible. Do you want to know?"
"No," Ora said immediately. Then: "Yes." Then: "Both."
"Both it is." His heads separated their speech:
First head: "In one ending, you become the void. Corruption consumes everything, leaving nothing but hunger."
Second head: "In another, you become the bridge. Neither life nor death, but the space between, where all transformation happens."
Third head: "In a third, you become memory. Dissolved into the network, existing in everyone who remembers you."
All heads: "In all endings, you choose. That's what matters."
"That's not helpful."
"It's not supposed to be. It's true."
---
**The Last Dance**
That night, they held something that wasn't quite a wake, wasn't quite a celebration. The Forsaken called it the Last Dance—a tradition from their underground years, when someone was about to transform beyond recognition.
Music played, but it was wrong music. Instruments that didn't exist playing notes that shouldn't harmonize but did. The memory network pulsed with shared experiences of joy and loss mixing into something unnameable.
Ora danced with ghosts.
First, Lyra. Not really her—a construct of memory and imagination—but real enough. They danced the crystal court dance of their childhood, steps remembered by feet that had forgotten everything else.
"I'm sorry," Ora whispered to the ghost.
"For what?" Lyra's voice was exactly as remembered, which meant it was probably wrong.
"For becoming what you would have hated."
"I would have hated the necessity. Not you." The ghost smiled with a face made of other people's memories of smiles. "You did what I couldn't—survived when survival meant becoming monster."
"That's not noble."
"No. But it's honest."
The ghost dissolved, replaced by another—her mother, constructed from fragments of memory traded and shared and stolen.
"My daughter," the construct said, voice borrowed from a hundred other mothers.
"I don't remember you," Ora admitted. "The corruption took those memories first."
"Then I'll remember you." The mother-ghost pulled her close. "I choose to remember you as the daughter who did what was necessary, not what was right."
More ghosts. Her father. Teachers. Friends. All constructed from the memory network, all choosing their final words to her.
Then, unexpected, a ghost that wasn't a ghost.
"Hello, sister."
Ora spun. There, impossible but actual, stood Lyra. Not memory. Not construct. Actually Lyra.
"You're dead."
"Yes. But death's negotiable now. You made it negotiable." Lyra's form was translucent, existing in the space between life and void. "I've been watching. From wherever dead things watch from."
"I destroyed everything you loved."
"You preserved everything I loved. Just differently." Lyra reached out, and her ghostly hand passed through Ora's corrupted flesh. "The harmony I dreamed of was always impossible. Your chaos at least is honest."
"I'm dying."
"You're transforming. There's a difference."
"Is there?"
Lyra smiled—the real smile, not constructed from memory. "I'm dead and still talking to you. You tell me."
She faded, but not gone. Somewhere, in the space between states, she continued. Waiting.
---
**The Final Choice**
Day 80. The corruption had spread to everything except a small core of consciousness that was still Ora. She could feel herself dissolving, becoming nothing and everything simultaneously.
Her companions gathered around her bed—if you could call it a bed. More like a nexus where reality had agreed to be temporarily solid.
"Any last words?" Kaelen asked, his voice carefully neutral.
"Last words are for people who are ending. I'm just... changing states."
"That's a last word."
"Then I take it back."
But she knew she had to choose. Vash'nil had shown her the possibilities, but the choice was hers.
Become void—let the corruption consume everything, see what hunger became when it ate itself.
Become bridge—exist between states forever, neither living nor dead, a permanent paradox.
Become memory—dissolve into the network, exist in fragments in everyone who remembered her.
Or...
"There's a fourth option," she said suddenly.
Everyone leaned in.
"I could choose not to choose."
"That's still a choice," Vash'nil pointed out.
"No. I mean actively not choose. Exist in all states simultaneously. Be void and bridge and memory and none of them." She struggled to sit up, corruption making her body more suggestion than solid. "You taught me that," she said to the broken dragon. "You exist in multiple states. Why can't I?"
"Because that level of paradox would break you completely."
"I'm already broken completely."
"It would break you beyond broken. Into something that shouldn't exist."
"Everything that exists shouldn't exist. We proved that."
Silence. Then Pyrrhus, through their bond: *That's insane even by our standards.*
*That's why it might work.*
"If you do that," the Collector said slowly, "you wouldn't be Ora anymore. You wouldn't be anything that could be named."
"Good. Names are limitations."
"You wouldn't be able to communicate. Or act. Or choose anymore."
"But I would be. That's what matters."
They debated through the night, but Ora had already decided. Or decided not to decide. Or both.
---
**The Transformation**
Day 81. Dawn, though dawn was negotiable.
Ora stood in the center of the circle they'd prepared—not a ritual circle, those required order. This was a chaos circle, drawn in contradictions and impossibilities.
Everyone was there. Dragons, humans, Forsaken, former Distillers, new beings without names. All watching. All choosing to witness.
"Any final final words?" Marcus asked.
"Yes. No. Both. Neither." Ora smiled, and her smile existed in multiple dimensions. "Thank you. Fuck you. I love you. I hate you. All true. All lies. All necessary."
She closed her eyes—all of them, even ones she didn't know she had.
The corruption surged, ready to consume the last of her.
She let it.
But also didn't.
She became void—empty, hungry, nothing.
She became bridge—between, neither, connection.
She became memory—dissolved, distributed, everywhere.
She became none of these.
She became all of these.
She became.
The paradox hit reality like a sledgehammer made of impossibility. Where Ora had stood, something existed. Not Ora. Not not-Ora. Something that was presence and absence, corruption and purity, choice and fate.
It had no form—it had all forms.
It made no sound—it was sound itself.
It didn't move—it was movement.
"What is that?" someone whispered.
"That's what choosing not to choose looks like," Vash'nil said, his broken perception allowing him to see what others couldn't. "She's become paradox itself."
"Is she... happy?"
The thing that had been Ora rippled. Not communication, but something like it. A feeling that bypassed thought and went straight to knowing.
She was. She wasn't. She was both. She was neither.
She was free.
---
**The New Era**
In the days that followed, the world adapted to having a living paradox in its midst. The thing that had been Ora didn't act, exactly, but its presence changed things.
Where it passed—or didn't pass, or both—reality became more flexible. People found they could choose impossible things. A farmer could plant seeds yesterday and harvest tomorrow. A warrior could be brave and cowardly simultaneously. A dragon could be guilty and innocent of the same crime.
The corruption didn't spread anymore—but it didn't retreat either. It existed, like everything else, as choice rather than fate.
The Tree of Corruption grew stronger, its branches reaching into realities that hadn't been invented yet. Sometimes, if you looked at the right angle, you could see Ora in its patterns—not her form, but her choice, crystallized and eternal.
The former Distillers who remained became philosophers of paradox, studying how to exist in multiple states without losing coherence. Some succeeded. Some failed. Both outcomes were considered valid.
The dragons learned to sing new songs—not harmonies of destruction or creation, but songs that existed between, that made and unmade simultaneously.
The Forsaken founded the Church of Wrong, where being broken was holy, where failure was prayer, where impossibility was scripture.
And in the space between all things, something that had been Ora whispered without words, spoke without sound, existed without being:
*Choose everything.Choose nothing.Choose choice itself.Or don't.All paths lead to becoming.All becoming leads to choice.The circle never ends.The circle never begins.The circle is.*
---
**Epilogue: The Garden of Possibility**
One year later—or yesterday, or never—they built a monument. Not to Ora, but to choice itself.
It wasn't a statue or building. It was a garden where things grew that couldn't exist. Trees with roots in the sky. Flowers that bloomed backward through time. Grass that was sometimes fire, sometimes ice, sometimes memory.
At its center grew a new tree—not the Tree of Corruption, but its child. A tree that grew from the paradox Ora had become. Its fruit were questions. Its leaves were answers. Its bark was the space between.
People came to make impossible choices. To be multiple things. To exist in contradiction.
A child who was also an old woman sat beneath its branches, playing with toys that were memories of futures that might never be.
"Is she still there?" the child-woman asked Vash'nil, who visited daily to document paradoxes.
"She's everywhere and nowhere," he replied, his three heads seeing all times at once. "She's in every choice to be impossible. Every decision to be both. Every moment when someone chooses not to choose."
"That's sad."
"That's beautiful."
"Both?"
"Always both."
The child-woman smiled with ancient innocence. "Then I choose to remember her as the girl who broke the world to save it. Who saved the world by breaking it. Who did both by doing neither."
"That's impossible."
"Yes. Isn't it wonderful?"
Above them, the tree grew impossible fruit. Each one contained a choice that hadn't been made yet. Or had been made forever. Or both.
In the distance, the world continued. Different than before. Not better or worse—just more possible. More impossible. More.
And in the space between heartbeats, between thoughts, between being and not being, something smiled without a mouth, laughed without sound, existed without existence.
Ora had become what she'd always been meant to become:
The possibility of possibility itself.
The choice to choose choice.
The end that was beginning.
The beginning that never ended.
The story that continued by concluding.
The conclusion that was just another story.
Forever.
Never.
Both.
Neither.
Always.