Grey Fate 1

I stopped, frowning, as a new thought came to me. Almost tentatively, I again followed the distant itch back to my physical body and activated Realmheart. While there was no physical manifestation of the godrune activating on my toddler body, aether and mana swam into my vision.

A fiery claw squeezed my heart, which began to beat rapidly.

Among the familiar colors that I expected to see, something else lit up under the influence of Realmheart.

‘What is that?’ Sylvie asked, sharing in my vision through our mental connection.

There was a nimbus of golden light radiating from the house. Thin golden threads seemed to connect the demolished house, me, my parents, and places that weren’t places, but rather times, both forward into the future and back into the past.

Fate, I thought breathlessly. This has to be Fate.

The gears of my mind spun as I tried to determine what had changed, what catalyst had allowed me to suddenly see this manifestation. Was it Realmheart, or Sylvie’s awakening in conjunction with my own, or some more subtle insight I’d gained that expanded on the properties of my abilities?

Curious, I released Realmheart. Again, the visible mana particles vanished instantly, while the aether lingered and faded more slowly. The golden threads remained longer—so long in fact that I began to think it may not be related to Realmheart at all—before the threads finally began to dim and go out, leaving ghostly little afterimages in my eyes. Eventually, even the afterimages melted away.

‘If this is Fate, then perhaps you can see it now because it has decided you can?’ Sylvie asked haltingly.

You think that Fate might be…conscious? Aware?

Sylvie blinked, nonplussed. ‘I hadn’t really meant it that way, but…it’s possible, isn’t it? Aether has a kind of consciousness, after all. Would Fate not also, if it is an aspect of aether? So far, it seems as if the lesson you’ve learned about your life—your ‘fate’—is that you already lived through the best case scenario. After all, you said yourself that every time you’ve changed something, it has resulted in a worse series of events.’