Chapter 41: The Route of Fate

It took a minute, but I managed to calm Trish down. I explained my first meeting with Titania, along with the cloak I was currently wearing. Honesty was the key to every relationship, after all.

Though I did keep the Fey Core a secret. That thing was still my trump card, and until I was certain my villainesses and I were strong enough, it would stay that way.

"Okay... I think I understand."

Trish said, settling beside me on the chair, the other one having broken during her earlier panic.

"Now that everything’s settled, would you still like to take the test of courage?"

Zephra asked, regaining her earlier confidence. She rubbed her fingers together with an obvious gesture for cash. As Titania’s former student, it made sense she’d recovered from the queen’s appearance so quickly.

Though greed definitely ran deep in her for an elf...

I wondered if I could hire her.

But the trial came first. Better to take what I needed before accidentally offending her by assuming she could be bought.

"Yeah, and I’ll take the route of fate."

"Route of fate, got it."

She began weaving the spell immediately, adding modifications as she went. The test of courage had three possible routes, determined by the person taking it.

Love.

Hope.

And Fate.

Lucius and Celeste had originally locked onto Love, but after a few plot twists and chosen-one complications, they’d been split up. Lucius had ended up on Fate, while Celeste remained on Love. Both completed their respective trials and earned great power.

Especially Lucius with Fate.

Normally, the ability was weak. But with Lucius’s unique circumstances, it became everything. For me, it would be the same: a power perfectly suited to my situation, though useless to most others.

Trish was coming with me, so she’d receive the ’useless skill’ as well. But as long as she stayed by my side, it would be just as useful to her.

Zephra’s hands moved in complex patterns, threads of pale gold mana weaving between her fingers as she chanted under her breath. The air in the tent grew heavy, charged with something that made the hair on my arms stand up.

"Alright."

She said at last, letting her hands fall. Then she cleared her throat to deliver the speech she had likely practiced a thousand times with theatrical precision.

"You’ll be tested separately, but you’ll walk the same path. The route of fate is unforgiving. It won’t care about your titles or your coin. It will show you what matters, and if you flinch, you fail. Understood?"

I nodded, and Trish did the same, her earlier panic replaced by steady resolve. Whatever she’d just felt witnessing with Titania, she was still choosing to trust me through this.

"Step forward, both of you."

We did, and the world tilted.

✧ ✦ ✧

The tent was gone. Redfall Shore was gone. Even the sounds of the carnival, the laughter, the vendors, the distant calliope music, had vanished.

We stood in a gray expanse, featureless and infinite, the only color coming from a single thread of gold stretching forward into the distance. It pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat.

"Is this... the route of fate?"

Trish asked, her voice echoing strangely in the empty space.

"Looks like it."

The thread led us forward, and we followed. There was no sense of time here, no markers to judge distance. Just the gray and the gold and the sound of our footsteps on ground that felt like water.

Then the images started.

At first, they were faint, flashes at the edge of my vision, shapes that vanished whenever I turned to look. Trish’s hand found my arm, her grip tight, tense with concern and protectiveness.

"Reyn, I think I see—"

"I know. Me too."

The images sharpened. A burning estate, House Fillaunete’s sigil crumbling to ash. Trish standing alone in the ruins, her violet eyes empty. The same scene I’d read in the novel, the one I’d already changed.

But the images didn’t stop there.

Anna in a white dress, blood on her hands, smiling that same serene smile. And Lucius, standing with a sword in the middle of it all, watching with a terrified and reluctant expression.

Was this what fate looked like? The original timeline? The story as it should have been?

"Don’t look away."

I said, not sure if I was talking to Trish or myself.

The gold thread pulsed faster.

Then the images shifted. Trish in a maid’s uniform, standing at my bedside, holding a portrait. Anna walking beside me through the academy halls. The two of them laughing together over tea.

The new timeline. The one I was building.

"W-what is all of this?"

Trish’s voice was barely a whisper.

"I think it’s showing us possibilities."

The thread pulsed again, and the images stopped entirely. Ahead, the gray expanse opened into something else. A door, plain and unadorned, with no handle. Just a smooth surface of dark wood, waiting.

"The final door."

I said, mostly to myself.

Zephra’s test of courage always ended at a door. According to the novel, what waited on the other side depended on the route and the choices made walking it. For Fate, it was supposed to show the strongest impossible version of yourself.

And you had to either fight it, convince it, or come to terms with it.

It sounded impossible, but this was a test, not an execution.

The mirrored version would have the same abilities as the test-taker. The only difference would be experience. The strongest version of myself and Trish, drawn from an impossible future where we’d never faltered, never failed, never hesitated.

We only had one chance at this.

"Prepare your magic. We’re about to fight."

Trish’s mana flared beside me, dark and ready.

"I’ll protect you with my life."

"And I’ll protect you with my own."

She blushed at that, a faint pink dusting her cheeks even in the middle of a trial.

"Reyn..."

"Focus."

I said, but I was smiling.