"Now," the Guardian rumbled, "choose."
I felt Kyrion stir restlessly at my shoulder, his skepticism tangible. He inched closer, voice a tight whisper. "Draven, we don't know what's down there. If it was sealed, it was sealed for a reason."
I acknowledged his point with the barest flick of my eyes, but I couldn't let it sway me. My mind was already dissecting the implications. The first path: re-sealing the leyline. The second: breaking it fully, unleashing whatever we had glimpsed in those illusions. The third: rewriting it—something no mage or council had tried. Perhaps because it was madness. Or perhaps because no one had the nerve.
In that crystalline moment, I felt the weight of everything pressing on me: the illusions we'd seen, the idea of a repeated cycle, the entire world poised on a razor's edge. Was I truly the one meant to make this decision? The Outlier, the anomaly, forced to carve fate from chaos?
