Fractured Truths
The Weight of Absence
Diane drifted.
She wasn't falling. She wasn't rising.
She simply… was.
The Abyss had no ground, no sky, no walls to define its boundaries. It was a realm of whispers and shifting voids, where time itself forgot to exist. Every step she took sent ripples through the formless dark, yet left no trace behind.
How long have I been here?
It was impossible to tell.
Her bond with Nisse—gone. The tether she had forged to Gar—severed.
The silence pressed in, suffocating.
She exhaled, trying to steady herself. Don't panic. Don't let it win.
But something in the void laughed.
---
Echoes of Another Life
A shape flickered in the distance, barely visible against the shifting black.
Diane narrowed her eyes, forcing her will outward. "Who's there?"
The shape didn't answer. It revealed.
A vision—no, a memory—unfolded before her.
She saw herself, but not as she was.
This Diane—this other her—stood chained in celestial light, her body wrapped in glowing runes that pulsed with divine punishment.
And before her stood three figures, their forms obscured by the sheer weight of their presence.
"Diane Peters," one of them intoned, their voice vibrating through the fabric of the memory. "For your crime, the sentence is eternal exile."
Diane's stomach clenched. Crime?
The vision shifted. The scene blurred.
And then she saw them.
Tom. Stacy. Mike.
Gone.
No trace. No legacy. No proof they had ever existed.
Because of her.
"No," she whispered, shaking her head. "This isn't real. It's just another lie."
But the Abyss didn't lie.
It simply showed.
---
The Roulette of Fate
The scene changed again, snapping into another reality, another path she had never walked.
Tom stood in a battlefield of stars, his eyes alight with golden fire. In his hands, he held something impossible—a roulette wheel that spun without end, each turn shifting the world around him.
With a flick of his fingers, luck itself obeyed him.
Enemies stumbled, blades shattered before they could strike him, entire outcomes rewrote themselves in his favor.
Diane could only watch, frozen in place.
Her son. Her Tom.
But this wasn't the boy she had raised.
This was a version of him she had erased.
Gone. Because of me.
The Abyss coiled around her, the weight of the revelation pressing into her bones.
Had she truly done this? Had she unmade them all?
No. No, this is just another illusion.
But doubt had already taken root.
---
The Abyss Demands Payment
The visions collapsed, leaving her alone once more.
No celestial chains. No golden roulette.
Just darkness.
But she wasn't alone.
A figure loomed in the void, its shape unreadable yet undeniably present.
"You see it now, don't you?" the voice was neither gentle nor cruel. It was simply… there.
Diane swallowed hard. "It's not real."
"And yet, you feel the weight of it."
She clenched her fists. "Why show me this?"
The presence circled her, unseen but felt.
"Because truth is a debt that must always be paid. You have been running from yours."
She grit her teeth. "I didn't erase them."
"Didn't you?"
Silence.
The void stretched, waiting for her answer.
And Diane found herself unable to give one.
Because for the first time…
She wasn't sure.
---
The Bargain
The darkness shifted.
A new presence emerged—not a voice, but a force, ancient and undeniable.
"The past does not forget. But perhaps… it can be rewritten."
Diane stiffened. "What are you saying?"
A shimmering thread appeared before her, pulsing with an ethereal glow.
"A path exists, Diane Peters. A way to find what was lost. But it is not without cost."
She stared at the thread.
A choice.
A bargain.
She could reach forward, take hold of it, and follow the path the Abyss offered.
Or she could turn away and reject whatever truths it held.
Her fingers hovered over the thread.
And then—
She hesitated.
Because something deep inside her whispered:
Are you sure you want to know?
---