Chapter 55 - The Choice No Child Should MakeEthan stared at his father.
"You're asking me to destroy a world?"
Daniel shook his head.
"I'm asking you to save one."
"That's the same thing!"
The words echoed through the chamber.
Mira stood beside Ethan, her face pale.
Rowan placed a hand on his sword.
Elara examined the hourglasses with growing dread.
Daniel explained that the fracture had created two unstable realities.
Ethan's modern world.
And Asterwyn.
Both depended on the same source of temporal energy.
The Heart of the First Hour could sustain one world permanently.
But not both.
"If we don't choose," Daniel said, "the fracture will consume everything."
Ethan looked at the hourglass containing his home.
He saw his mother standing beside the kitchen window.
Then he looked at Asterwyn.
He saw the villagers who had welcomed him.
The soldiers who had protected him.
The children who believed he was their king.
"I can't choose."
Daniel knelt beside him.
"I know."
"Then find another way."
"I've spent years trying."
Ethan looked at the many hourglasses.
A thought occurred to him.
"What if the machine is wrong?"
Daniel frowned.
"The calculations are exact."
"But every calculation is based on what already happened, right?"
"Yes."
"Then maybe we need to do something that hasn't happened before."
Daniel studied his son.
Ethan continued.
"Every version of me tried to save the kingdom. Every version made the same choice. Maybe that's why the cycle keeps repeating."
Elara looked up.
"He's right."
Rowan frowned.
"What do you mean?"
"The resets were designed to restore a previous timeline. The machine keeps repeating the same solutions."
Mira smiled faintly.
"Then we need a new one."
A slow clap came from the doorway.
Malachar entered.
His broken crown glowed beneath the chamber lights.
"At last," he said. "The child understands."
Daniel stepped in front of Ethan.
"Stay back."
Malachar ignored him.
He approached the hourglasses.
"You keep telling him that one world must die."
He raised his hand.
A thirteenth hourglass appeared.
Inside it was something impossible.
Two worlds side by side.
Both alive.
Both stable.
Ethan stared.
"What's that?"
May you like
Malachar smiled.
"The future your father refuses to show you."
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