I struggle to believe it, though.Not when I saw the ruins Interitus is fated to make.The burden I was meant to carry.It was always her.I was the good one.
The good half?
I was so certain of it.
It doesn’t matter anymore.
This ends tonight.
I suppose I needed someone to know that I didn’t start out bad.
It was what happened next that ruined me.
In all the celestial years I’ve lived, I never expected judgement day to look like this.I am laid down, my wings spread beneath me so long that they’re going numb.
This is the field I took so many innocent lives in.The field where everything changed.
It’s all so ironic.
I think the fates have forsaken me.Where did I go wrong?I roll over and stand, staring at a garden of ruin.
I brush dust from my wings and shuck them away.Memories of Interitus and me standing before the Mirror of Fate flood my mind.
So many eons ago.
I laugh.I can’t help it.It bubbles up and spills over until I’m pulling at my hair and smashing my fists against the desiccated earth.
I laugh and howl and roar.
THIS.
This is the fucking garden of ruin?It is not Interitus standing in it, but me.Was it showing me another fate?Were they both mine and never hers?
Gods.
She’s a speck at first.A bug in the sky growing bigger and bigger until her feet land on the scorched earth and now it is both of us.
We walk towards each other the same way we did in the mirror and I’m laughing again.It’s all coming true.All of it.
Fate strikes again.
In place of the old field and playground, it’s now a ruined garden.It’s desolate; even the air is icy.Not with cold, but the frigid wrongness of what happened here.The light is muted and flat.The plants grow, wilted and dying, as if in honour of Gellara.
In the distance, there’s even a derelict castle the town once called its crown.As she nears, the clouds spill their stars and it hails.Fate is complete.
“You still don’t believe, do you, Sister?”I say.
“In fate?”she asks.
I nod.
“Not even slightly.”
“And yet, this is exactly what I saw in the Mirror of Fate when you stood in front of it.”
She frowns.“What do you mean?What vision is it you speak of?”
It’s my turn to furrow my brow.“The one of you in a garden of ruin.It’s what I saw when you stood in front of the mirror.”
