Nora staggered—or perhaps all four versions of her moved at once.
The battlefield surged beneath her feet, layered over the sterile hospital room, the padded chair of 1957, and the jagged caves of a future she barely understood. These places were no longer separate. They folded into one another, stitched together by luminous threads that pulsed with her breath.
The Unmakers recoiled in psychic recognition. This was no single fracture. This was a lattice.
The warrior Nora lifted the sword. Threads of light unfurled with the motion, bending around smoke, steel, and shadow. Each strike landed with impossible precision, guided by Solas’ steady presence echoing in her mind.
The coma-bound Nora reached inward, anchoring herself to the rhythmic hum of the Solace machine. Each pulse reinforced the Weave, stabilizing the fracture, tethering consciousness to breath, life to intent. The machine’s beat became a metronome for reality itself.
In 1957, the child Nora trembled against leather straps and cold restraint. Fear surged—but it did not collapse her. It sharpened her.
I exist.
I will not be erased.
That defiance surged up the threads, feeding the lattice, giving it coherence.
And in the caves and half-remembered villages of the future, the dementia-fractured Nora moved by instinct alone. She hid when logic failed. She fled when memory fractured. She survived through pattern and reflex, choices older than language. Those choices flowed through the threads, anticipating danger before it formed, guiding the sword before the Unmakers could strike.
The four selves converged.
The Unmakers halted mid-lunge, their shadows twisting under the strain. Threads wrapped their forms, redirecting hunger inward, collapsing momentum into hesitation.
“Yes,” Solas’ voice resonated through every layer of her being. “Feel it. The fracture is not weakness. It is capacity.”
Time compressed. Space bent. Fear, memory, pain, and instinct aligned into a single, focused presence.
One Unmaker shrieked as the lattice tightened, folding its form into itself. Another fell as the sword pulsed in perfect rhythm with the Solace machine, with the child’s defiance, with the future-self’s instinctive evasion.
Nora understood then: the battlefield, the hospital, the padded chair, the caves—these were not separate lives. They were all threads of the same existence, converging through her.
The Unmakers withdrew, shadows flickering, uncertain.
For the first time, Nora felt control. Not dominance. Not safety. But agency.
The sword blazed. The threads hummed.
And across every reality, a single truth held fast:
I am all of me.
And I will not be undone.