Nora felt it before she saw it: the pull. The Unmakers were no longer at the edges—they knew. They sensed the fractures between realities, the bleeding threads of her consciousness, and they surged toward her with renewed hunger.
The hospital walls of Australia 2018 shimmered and stretched. Tubes and monitors twisted into serpentine shadows, following the edges of the battlefield that overlaid them. The sword in her hand pulsed in tandem with the Solace machine.
“They feel it,” Solas’ voice whispered, close and insistent. “You are no longer a single thread, Nora. You span more than the Weave, and it draws attention. Focus, or all will unravel.”
She reached out, letting the threads flow through her, bending the battlefield around her, diverting the Unmakers’ strikes, even as hospital alarms shrieked in distorted harmony with their assaults.
Then—a new shimmer appeared, subtle at first, at the edge of her mind. A flicker of memory she did not recognize: a sterile, gray room, a padded chair, straps across small wrists. A cold, institutional voice, instructions clipped and sharp: “Prepare the patient for the procedure.”
Nora blinked—was this a memory? Another fragment? A new reality breaking through?
The threads pulsed violently, connecting the visions. The Unmakers hissed in psychic recognition, drawn not just to her cosmic self, but to the other selves she carried across time.
Her chest tightened. Fear and determination intertwined. She realized then that survival would require more than strength—it would require integration. She had to hold all these selves together: the warrior, the patient, the trapped child across decades.
“Do not resist the threads,” Solas whispered. “Do not fear them. They are all you, and through you, all the Weave exists. Bend the realities, Nora. Or they will bend you.”
The Unmakers lunged, but Nora’s awareness split and expanded, catching glimpses of Australia 2018 and the shadow of 1957. The sword flared, threads arcing to connect each consciousness, creating a fragile lattice of being.
Somewhere in the darkness, the voice from 1957 whispered, almost inaudible:
“I am here. I am still me. Don’t let them take me.”
Nora inhaled sharply, feeling the pulse of all three worlds converge. The battlefield, the hospital, and the psychiatric facility shimmered into one unstable mosaic.
And in the heart of it, the Unmakers paused. They knew: this was no longer merely a fracture to consume. This was a nexus of realities, alive, and aware.
Nora gritted her teeth. She had become something they could not entirely grasp. And she would not falter.