The cavern shook in steady pulses, as if the mountain itself had a heartbeat. From far above came the muffled thunder of battle—stone rupturing, air screaming, the world threatening to cave in. The altar at the center of the chamber glowed in concentric rings, each band of light etched with a different Art.
White stood within those rings, a blade of cracked steel resting point-down beside him. Blood had dried along his jaw in a thin, rusted line. He did not wipe it away. He watched the three women who had shaped his life more than fate ever had.
"Alice," he said softly.
The first stepped forward—tall, serene, a staff in hand that hummed with a subtle resonance. The Art braided around her was old and careful, tempered by a scholar's mind and a mother's patience. She had taught White to read the flow of mana the way a musician reads silence.
"Fiona," he said.
The swordswoman nodded once, hands resting on the pommel of a greatsword taller than most men. Her aura flared, then narrowed to a perfect edge, the Art of stillness in motion—the paradox of a strike that stopped time in the instant before killing. She had taught White to stand when even legends fell.
Finally—"Seila."
Seila's white hair caught the altar light and turned it silver. She wore no weapon. She never needed one. Her Art was authority—of word, of presence, of the law that binds the world to what it must be. Where Alice reasoned and Fiona risked, Seila decided. Dignity was not a mask she wore; it was the atmosphere around her.
She met White's gaze. "This is final."
"Everything was final the moment Dark descended," White answered. "This is simply the only end that buys a beginning."
Above, another impact boomed. Dust rained from the ceiling. The circle brightened, runes lifting into the air, rotating like a small constellation. The three masters stepped to the edges of the altar, each facing one of the cardinal points.
Alice raised her staff. "Anchor." Lines of light stitched themselves across the stone, knitting space to time, time to memory.
Fiona lowered her sword to touch the floor. "Sever." Energy peeled apart like silk, splitting what is from what may be.
Seila extended her hand. Nothing shone from her fingers, yet the cavern obeyed. "Decree." The world agreed to what she spoke.
White exhaled. "If this works—"
"It will work," Seila said, not unkindly.
He smiled at the certainty in her voice. "—then someone will inherit my potential. Not my choices. Those are mine, and I already spent them poorly."
"You spent them trying to save us," Alice said. There was sadness in it, but no softness that would weaken the moment.
"Try again," Fiona murmured. "Just… through someone else."
"Two hundred years before will be enough distance," Alice concluded. "Far from Dark's sightline. Far from this failure."
The magic rose. The circle became a column, and the column became a river. Power braided from three Arts into one impossible weave—past and future braided to a single point: White.
Unspoken, each master made a wish. But none of them confessed it. Had they done so, they would have had to admit what love looks like when it cannot protect: it becomes prayer.
The cavern roared. Through the river of power, White looked up as if he could see through rock and sky to the other side of time. He thought, absurdly, of the first day each of them had corrected him—the miscast Art, the foolish challenge, the insubordination punished not by anger, but by expectations. A life pressed into an instant.
"Thank you," he said.
The circle consumed him. Light folded inward, quiet as a closing book.
The mountain stilled. Somewhere, a future loosened. Somewhere else, a past tightened its grip around a cry in a noble's house, where a newborn drew breath for the first time.
The boy did not know this place. He did not remember death. He was simply born here—mind older than his years, soul shaped by an accident of reincarnation—and into him, the river emptied a seed. Not a memory. Not a destiny.
Potential.
The kind that waits.