Nora stumbled through shadows that were not shadows, corridors that were not corridors, caves that seemed endless. She was older here—older, lost, confused. Her mind betrayed her; memories slipped like water through her fingers.
The AI patrols thundered past in mechanized precision, their machine bodies cold, flawless, relentless. She ducked behind rocks, her pulse hammering, fear gnawing at her chest. In the predawn of war, there was no one to trust. Villages offered only silence. She ran into caves and forests, every step echoing with uncertainty, each corner threatening oblivion.
Then—threads appeared. Faint, luminous, pulsing under her fingers. She froze. Not here…
In a flash, she was in Australia 2018, the Solace machine humming beside her, the hospital room twisting into a battlefield. Monitors beeped in rhythm with sword strikes she could no longer see but felt in her chest.
“Nora… focus,” Solas’ voice rang inside her skull. “The fracture spans realities. Hold them all together.”
Her pulse hammered. She felt the tether to the 1957 psychiatric facility—the straps, the padded chair, the looming specter of a lobotomy. The child within her screamed silently: “I am here. Do not forget me.”
And then, cosmic light. The battlefield. The Unmakers. The threads. The sword, thrumming with Solas’ guidance. She could sense their hunger, their awareness of the multiple fractures, their fury at her defiance.
Her future self—the dementia-riddled Nora—stumbled, caught in another memory, half-lost in a village that had no place on any map. The AI’s red eyes glinted in her confusion, but suddenly, through the threads, she felt the pulse of the other Noras: the warrior, the patient, the child. They reached for her, through space, through mind, through time.
She touched a luminous thread, and the world shifted again. The caves faded, replaced by the sterile hospital room, the sword blazing faintly in her grip. The Unmakers’ shrieks layered over the beeping monitors, over the distant orders of nurses in 1957. She shivered but held the threads.
“Do not fear the fractures. They are all you. Do not let them consume the lost parts—they will guide you if you listen.” Solas whispered.
The dementia-afflicted Nora cried out in confusion, and Nora’s awareness splintered further. Yet through the fracture, she felt it: a fragile harmony. All four selves, trembling, struggling, uncertain… reaching toward one another.
The Unmakers surged. Shadows licked the edges of reality. But for the first time, the threads hummed in response to her full consciousness. Every fear, every lost memory, every moment of confusion was now part of her weapon, woven into a lattice of awareness that spanned decades and worlds.
Nora inhaled sharply, gripping the sword across all realities. She was not just one self. She was all of them.
And for the first time, the Unmakers hesitated.