The Unmakers shrieked in unison, their shadows splintering across all realities. They were no longer mere threats at the edges—they had learned her pattern, sensed the lattice of consciousness she wielded, and struck everywhere at once.
The cosmic battlefield shuddered. Steel clashed with shadow, sparks and threads coiling around both. The sword in Nora’s hand flared, but for every strike she delivered, the Unmakers twisted and multiplied, filling gaps she hadn’t anticipated.
Australia 2018.
The hospital room blurred violently. Monitors shrieked alarms as the Solace machine pulsed erratically, struggling to sustain the threads. Coma-Nora gritted her teeth, digging deep, anchoring the fracture, each pulse a lifeline to her cosmic self.
1957.
The child-Nora struggled against straps, against hands that would erase her identity, but her fear became resistance. Every heartbeat, every mental shout, projected through the threads, reinforcing the lattice, keeping the Unmakers from collapsing that reality entirely.
And 50 years hence.
Dementia-Nora staggered through cave tunnels, AI patrols closing in. Confusion, panic, and fragmented memories threatened to overwhelm her, but instinct took over. She improvised—hiding, ducking, luring threats into natural traps. Each motion, each decision, reverberated across the threads, subtly shifting the battlefield, turning chaos into advantage.
The threads pulsed violently as Nora felt the assault in every corner of her consciousness. The Unmakers were testing her, probing for fractures. Every fear, every lapse in focus, would be exploited.
“You are the fracture—and the thread!”
Solas’ voice rang, sharp and commanding. “Do not let them see weakness. Bend, do not break. Integrate all of you.”
Nora inhaled, the sword glowing with synchronized pulses across realities. The cosmic-Nora struck, sending a wave of light through the battlefield. Shadows shattered, unraveling like smoke. The hospital alarms synced with the strikes, stabilizing the Solace pulse. The child-Nora screamed, and her defiance wove protective barriers. Dementia-Nora’s improvisation created openings for counterattacks that neither cosmic nor child-Nora could have predicted.
The Unmakers recoiled. Shadows twisted and hissed, uncertain now, frustrated by the multi-layered defense. Yet their psychic assault intensified, testing the lattice further. Threads stretched taut across time and space, threatening to snap.
Nora felt every fracture, every bleed of consciousness, and focused. “We are all one. We are all me. And we will not fall.”
The sword pulsed brighter. The threads surged. And the first coordinated counterstrike hit the Unmakers with a force they could not comprehend, a psychic, physical, and existential blow across four realities at once.
The battlefield shivered. The hospital blinked. The padded chair quivered. The caves echoed with the collapse of their AI pursuers.
For a heartbeat, the Unmakers paused.
And in that pause, Nora understood: she had become a living nexus of the Weave, a being capable of bending realities not by brute force, but by synchronizing every fractured self into one coherent, unstoppable will.