The universe breathed once more.
For a brief moment, everything was silent.
Not the empty silence of nothingness, but the silence that comes before a melody.
Darkness stretched endlessly, soft and dense, and in the middle of it, Astrid watched.
Once again, she had accomplished the impossible: creating the Third Existence.
The first had been devoured by the original gods.
The second had been rebuilt by Elisa, only to collapse by Astrid's own hand.
And now, in this third attempt, fate rested in her hands.
Astrid could not stop thinking.
The exhaustion in her eyes was not physical; it was the weariness of someone who had witnessed every possible ending and found none of them fair.
Her reflection, scattered across the floating fragments of the void, revealed something caught between guilt and determination.
"This time it has to work..." she whispered. "I won't let everyone's story end in ruin. This time, I'll create a better world."
Her words vanished into the darkness.
No echo answered her.
Only the cold sensation of newly born time.
Around her, the new reality began assembling itself:
galaxies slowly taking shape, stars beginning to shine, planets forming alongside them.
Everything seemed the same...
and yet so different.
Because this time she knew what she was doing.
Or at least, she wanted to believe she did.
Astrid closed her eyes.
She remembered the faces of the past: Elisa reaching out a hand before fading away; Lyra and Zefaniel, shadows that almost seemed alive, tirelessly watching her still; the worlds she had destroyed, the ones she had tried to save.
All of them blended into a single image:
an endless spiral of mistakes and redemption.
"How do you change a story that keeps repeating forever?" she murmured, her voice breaking.
Elisa had tried to fix it, and everything ended even worse.
Astrid herself had reset the world, yet she still had no idea what needed to change.
She could erase.
She could create.
But she didn't know how to write a happy ending.
For what felt like an eternity, Astrid wandered through her thoughts.
She walked upon the newly created void, watching the threads of fate intertwine like strands of light.
Each thread represented a decision, a possible outcome, a new tragedy waiting to bloom.
"If I repeat the same things..." she thought, "then the result will be the same."
There has to be something that started it all.
Something I can stop.
And then she understood.
The root of all suffering, the spark that ignited the fire consuming the multiverse, had been a simple and inevitable moment:
the instant Elisa obtained her artifact.
That black hat, harmless at first glance, had been the key to chaos.
Elisa had never asked for that power.
She only accepted it because fate placed it before her.
Everything began there:
creation, destruction, tears, faith, lost worlds.
Astrid raised her gaze toward the newborn heavens.
The stars watched her as though awaiting her decision.
The void remained silent, attentive.
"Then..." she whispered, her voice carrying the weight of an oath, "this time, I won't let her find it."
Her hands rose.
The flow of creation surrounded her like a golden aurora.
The lines of fate began to rewrite themselves, and the point where Elisa was meant to find the hat was erased, undone, torn from history itself.
For the first time in countless ages,
the cycle changed.
Astrid slowly lowered her arms.
The new world continued taking shape—bright, innocent, breathing life for the very first time.
And at its center, a young girl—without memories of her past, without an imposed destiny—was meant to live a simple, human, peaceful life.
Astrid watched her from across the void.
Her expression softened.
"Elisa..." she said with both tenderness and sorrow.
"This time, I'll free you from that burden you never wanted.
I'll take away the destiny that condemned both of us.
I swear I'll give you a good life...
even if I have to rewrite it a thousand times."
The void answered with a flash of light.
And so, at the dawn of the Third Existence,
the first story of the new world was born.
The skies of Aetheris had no sunrises.
The light was always the same: an eternal aurora cast by its three moons.
From the temples of knowledge, where sages studied the stars, to the white streets of the lower districts, the world moved with the precision of a clock.
It was a planet governed by the Council of Harmony, where knowledge was both law and boundary.
Anything could be learned...
up to a certain point.
Beyond that point began the forbidden.
And it was at that very boundary that Elisa was born.
From an early age, questions followed her like a constant echo.
While other children memorized formulas and rules, she wondered why those rules existed.
Who had decided them?
Her mind was quick, almost brilliant, but also restless.
Her teachers often said she possessed "too much fire" for someone so young.
"Curiosity without control leads to chaos," they repeated over and over.
"But how is the harmony of plants supposed to bloom without first being nourished by the chaos of the storm?" she would answer to herself.
It was a discussion they had more than once.
As the years passed, Elisa grew into a beautiful and eccentric young woman.
Her blonde hair reflected the energy of Aetheris; her eyes were always moving, searching for something others could not see.
She loved ancient laboratories, forgotten books, and rusted mechanisms that everyone else considered useless.
Where others saw limits, she saw doors.
But her way of thinking began to make people uncomfortable.
Aetheris was a world where balance was sacred.
And Elisa was imbalance made flesh.
Citizens watched her cautiously.
The elders spoke of her in hushed voices.
Instructors began rejecting her theses with stern expressions.
Even her parents, who genuinely loved her, started to fear her.
Not because she was malicious.
But because she seemed destined to break something that should never be broken.
At home, silence became routine.
Her mother barely spoke to her.
Her father, a renowned scientist, constantly told her to follow the formulas that already existed.
But Elisa wanted to create her own formulas.
There was something inside her that demanded more—a hunger that ordinary knowledge could never satisfy.
The only person on the entire planet who always stood by her side was Isabella.
Isabella was her complete opposite.
Calm, kind, with a voice that seemed made to soften difficult days.
She had met Elisa during their first years of study and, despite everything surrounding her, never walked away.
She was the only one who didn't look at Elisa with fear or caution.
Whenever Elisa overflowed with ideas, Isabella simply laughed and listened.
"You know," Elisa said one afternoon as they walked through the suspended gardens, "I've always believed the universe has no end."
"Does that scare you or excite you?" Isabella asked.
"Both. But if it has no end, then... it has no limits either, right? Unlike our world."
Isabella smiled, as though afraid of the answer.
"Some things need limits."
"A thousand years ago there were limits that are normal today, and a thousand years from now the limits we have now may be normal too. So how do we know these are really our limits?"
Elisa replied with a stubborn grin.
It was a typical exchange between them:
the calm of one restraining the storm of the other.
But even that friendship would begin to change.
One day, they decided to leave the city and explore the wandering forests of the north.
They were ancient lands where the air itself seemed to speak and the trees sang along with it.
Elisa adored those places.
People said that, just like knowledge, trees grew stronger as they continued growing.
The two separated for a while because Isabella wanted to rest after hours of exploration.
As Elisa continued walking, something caught her attention.
Lying on the ground, tangled among roots,
was a black hat.
It looked ordinary.
Yet it radiated a strange aura.
Elisa crouched and picked it up almost instinctively.
The material felt soft and cold, like fabric woven from lunar minerals.
The moment she placed it on her head, a surge ran through her body.
Her breathing quickened.
Her vision trembled.
For an instant,
the entire world seemed to fall silent.
The sky tightened.
And an imperceptible sound—almost a voice—brushed against her mind.
"You... remember."
Elisa blinked.
She felt her mind expanding, her heart racing, her soul vibrating with an unfamiliar energy.
It wasn't fear.
It was something deeper.
The sensation of finding something she had always been searching for.
The hat began emitting a violet aura, and Elisa's eyes turned black, as though reflecting the void itself.
When Isabella finally caught up to her and saw her, she instinctively stepped back.
The aura surrounding Elisa was dense, almost made of shadows.
"Elisa... what's wrong? Are you okay?"
"Huh?"
Hearing Isabella's voice, Elisa felt herself snap out of a trance.
"Yeah, I'm fine. Actually, I feel amazing. This hat... I don't know what it is, but I think it's special."
"No... it's strange. It gives me a bad feeling. Just look at how it makes you look. We should report it."
That word—
report it.
It struck Elisa like a blow.
"Report it? Isabella, this could be the key to everything!"
"The key to what?" Isabella asked anxiously.
"To what nobody wants to see. To the limits the universe hides."
Elisa's voice sounded different now.
Stronger.
Almost exhilarated.
Isabella felt fear.
And before she could respond, a patrol guard who had overheard them approached.
He demanded they hand over the object.
Elisa resisted, desperately clinging to the hat and insisting it belonged to her.
But it was useless.
It was torn from her hands and confiscated.
The hat was taken to the Council's vault.
And Elisa, though not punished,
was marked.
From that day onward, everything changed.
The eyes of others weighed heavily upon her.
If people had once looked at her with confusion, now they looked at her with rejection.
Teachers avoided her.
Students whispered as she passed.
Even Isabella began visiting less often.
Elisa pretended it didn't matter.
She kept walking.
Kept working.
Kept writing.
But inside, something was breaking apart, drop by drop.
Misunderstanding became loneliness.
Loneliness became pride.
And pride...
became anger.
Night after night, she sat at her desk surrounded by papers, muttering to herself.
"Why are they afraid of me?"
"Why does nobody understand me?"
"Why is seeking more considered a sin?"
Her hands trembled as she wrote.
Her eyes filled with tears.
And slowly, an idea began to grow.
If the world wouldn't accept her,
then she would make it accept her.
If everyone feared knowledge because of its potential, then she would simply show them how wonderful that potential could be.
She would show them her perspective.
She would show them that what lay beyond was not danger, but a doorway.
And then no one would be able to oppose her.
One afternoon, Isabella visited Elisa's secret laboratory, where she conducted all her experiments.
Only Isabella knew its location.
The room was crowded with blueprints, artifacts, and unfinished machinery.
Elisa didn't even look up.
She kept writing frantically.
"Elisa... what is all this? How long has it been since you've slept?" Isabella asked.
"Time is relative. Besides, I've already built a small machine that helps keep me awake. That way I can dedicate more time to my discoveries."
"What discoveries?"
"The world itself."
Elisa's voice was calm, but her eyes were empty.
"I'm going to create something that will show everyone the bubble they're living in. Then they'll see everything that exists beyond it.
And then they'll understand me."
Isabella looked at her with growing concern.
"Elisa... this doesn't look good."
"No."
Elisa smiled with unsettling calm.
"But very soon, it'll look much better."
From the void,
Astrid watched.
Her heart tightened painfully.
She had wanted to give Elisa peace.
A normal life.
A story without suffering.
But even without the hat,
Elisa's fire had awakened all the same.
The cycle was repeating itself.
Not because of fate.
But because of nature.
Elisa didn't need the artifact.
She herself was the spark.
Astrid clenched her fists helplessly.
"No... not again..." she whispered with a trembling voice.
"Please... not again..."
But the stars, indifferent as ever, remained silent.
And in the newborn world,
the first echo of the cycle rang out once more.