Chapter 4: Chapter 4: This Is Me

After several days of travel through the rolling countryside on foot, sleeping beneath the stars and learning temporal theory by firelight, they crest a hill overlooking the township of Valtersbrook. The morning air carries the scent of pine and mineral dust, while below them spreads a scene of industrious activity. A large cave mouth yawns in the hillside opposite the town, bustling with workers who move in steady streams like ants coming in and out of their mound. Minecarts rattle along wooden tracks, their loads glinting with magical crystals that pulse with inner light. The rhythmic sound of pickaxes echoes across the valley, punctuated by shouted instructions and the creak of pulleys.

She recognises the multi-coloured crystals. They’re the larger, full versions of the small shards that are used in emergency lighting systems in street lanterns back in Hafen. She’s heard that the bigger ones were used for war applications and the industry. The magic in them is volatile and dangerous and can be harnessed for a variety of applications.

Ananke adjusts her robe. The Humming Man stands beside her, his constant melody barely audible above the mining sounds, but she feels it in her bones. She has grown accustomed to the sensation. At first she thought she would get annoyed by his constant buzzing, like a busy bee by her ear. But it’s oddly comforting, actually.

Then she sees it down below, the reason they’re here.

There’s a ripple in the air, subtle and strange, like heat shimmer but cooler, more purposeful. It wavers around the mining operation, connecting the workers and their tools and the crystals they extract in patterns she cannot quite grasp.

“What is… that?” she asks, squinting at the distortion.

“Oh?” he starts, sounding pleased. “You can see something already?” asks her master. She nods. The Humming Man follows her gaze and nods with satisfaction. “You're coming into the age of your magical awakening quite quickly, Apprentice. It looks like I found you at just the right time,” he says, with a hint of a joke in his words, but also curious seriousness. His gloved hand points out into the gulch below them. “What you're seeing is a partial piece of a thread of time. As you gain experience, they will become more clear and distinct for you. But for now, tell me what you perceive.”

Ananke nods and then focuses intently, her eyes straining as she studies the mine from their clifftop vantage point. The ripples seem to centre around the workers, but something is wrong with her perception. The people appear blurry and indistinct, as if she's looking at them through water. She blinks hard and rubs her face. “Something's wrong with my eyes. The workers look… fuzzy.”

“There's nothing wrong with your vision.” Her master's voice carries that familiar note of instruction. “Time threads are like strings that tie people, places, and objects together, hence their name. They are complicated visual representations on a fundamental layer of existence, showing the connections between all things. Right now, they’re muddy for you, ‘fuzzy’, as you said. But you’ll see them clearly soon enough. Everywhere. Always.” His tone grows unexpectedly sombre. “Forever… Enjoy being young and free, Apprentice. By the time you reach my age, you'll be far more constrained by them.”

She doesn't understand his sudden melancholy, watching as he suddenly shifts back to his usual playful demeanour, moving down the hillside with that characteristic dancing gait.

Wait.

She studies him, watching.

He’s moving between the threads that she can only just now see the first hints of, she realises. That’s why he moves like that and walks like that. He’s not just playful. He’s avoiding things, some of which she can’t see entirely yet.

He’s ducking and pulling himself between invisible tripwires that she’s just bashing directly through.

“Wait, what was I supposed to see exactly?” she calls after him, confused about the lesson's purpose. She hurries to follow as he makes his way toward the mine. “What am I supposed to learn today?”

Suddenly, her feet find uneven ground. The loose scree and unfamiliar terrain prove treacherous for someone raised on city cobblestones. A rock shifts under her weight, and Ananke lets out a startled yelp as she tumbles down the incline. Her purple robe tangles around her legs as she rolls, finally coming to an abrupt stop when she crashes into someone at the bottom of the slope.

They both go down in a tangle of limbs and scattered mining equipment.

Ananke lies there dazed, her head spinning as she stares up at the sky. Pain radiates through her shoulder where she struck the ground, and dust fills her mouth.

“Are you alright?” a concerned voice asks, belonging to someone she doesn’t know.

She jolts upright, focusing on the worker she had collided with at the drop of the hill. He's a young man about her age, with a bandana tied around his forehead to keep sweat and medium-length muddy blonde hair out of his eyes. His face is kind, worried, and genuinely concerned for her welfare despite having fallen just as hard as she had.

As her vision clears, Ananke stares at him more intently.

Something in her gut clenches with inexplicable unease. The air around him feels wrong, charged with a darkness she can't name. When she looks past his kind features to the space surrounding him, she sees it. The threads she had glimpsed from above everywhere here are different for him.

The blurriness around him specifically is dark and it looks burnt.

The temporal connections around him are unlike anything she can see when she glances at the other workers nearby. Their threads are clear and normal, but his are twisted and obscured. It’s like there’s just… ink all around him.

“I'm alright. I'm really sorry!” she says quickly, accepting his offered hand. “I slipped down the hill.” She looks back up the incline where the Humming Man stands casually beside the exact rock that had given way under her foot.

Her eyes narrow in suspicion. Her master offers a playful shrug from his distant position, shifting his eyes to the little rock by his feet that she is suddenly very suspicious of.

“Are you okay?” she asks the worker, who nods with a bright smile.

“Yes, but I need to get back to work,” he replies cheerfully.

She realises she's still gripping his hand and quickly pulls her fingers free. “Sorry!” Heat rises in her cheeks. He laughs good-naturedly, waving off her embarrassment. She hurries to help him gather the scattered tools and crystal samples. “Thank you, uh…“

“Mirin,” he supplies, loading his arms with equipment.

“Ananke,” she responds.

He nods politely. “It's nice to meet you, Ananke. Even like this.”

She rubs the back of her head sheepishly. “Next time, I'll try to be less weird.” The words slip out before she can stop them, but Mirin laughs as if she's made a clever joke. She watches him walk toward the nearby depot, his load balanced expertly despite the earlier collision.

The Humming Man materialises beside her with his characteristic silent approach. She shoots him a cold look. “Really? You tripped me?” she asks, not sure if she believes it.

“Oh, no, no,” he replies with mock innocence. “The rock tripped you.”

“You put the rock there!” she glares at him, surprised at his actions. He’s never done something mean before.

“Yes. Yes, I did.” His eager admission hangs in the air, and she waits for an explanation or apology that never comes. Instead, he grasps her shoulders and turns her to face Mirin's retreating figure.

“What is it?” she asks, referring to the black aura she can barely perceive surrounding the young man.

“Today's lesson,” her master replies simply, his humming resuming as they watch the good-natured worker disappear into the mine's depths. “Just like our good cargoman from days back, your task is to try and save him,” her master says.

Ananke looks back up at him and then toward the mine entrance where Mirin has vanished into the depths. The rhythmic sound of pickaxes continues to echo from within the cave, punctuated by the occasional shout or rattle of equipment. A lunch bell rings across the mining site, its bronze tone cutting through the mountain air. Other miners begin emerging from the tunnel one after another, their faces streaked with dust and sweat, tools slung over shoulders as they head toward a large wooden building on the surface where meals are served.

“From what?” she asks curiously, her eyes still fixed on the mine entrance. It all seems fine to her. It’s just a mine.

“Everything,” her master replies with distinct simplicity.

Before she can ask what he means, she feels his gloved hands cover her ears, pressing firmly against the sides of her head to protect them. The world becomes muffled, distant, as if she's been plunged underwater. She wants to ask him what he’s doing now.

But then the mine explodes.

The world rattles around her, a deafening blast that she feels more than hears, the vibration hollowing out her core despite her master's protection. An explosion of bright, prismatic light washes out of the dark mine entrance like a rainbow made of fire. Shafts scattered across the surface spew rays of magical energy from within, as if the mountain itself has become a prism. The massive magical explosion fills the air with crackling energy that makes her teeth ache and her retinas burn as she instinctively shields them with her arms. The miners outside panic, running in all directions as the blast shakes the dining building. The massive bronze lunch bell swings wildly in the shock waves, its deep tone resounding back and forth in chaotic rhythm, before breaking off and flying through the ravine.

Then, abruptly, the world falls silent.

Her head throbs, and her ears ring with phantom sounds as her master uncovers them. Smoke rises from the mine entrance, and the familiar, acrid smell of a burnt world fills the air. She sees flashes of the war before her eyes, quickly shaking the ghosts away.

The familiar snap of fingers echoes across the valley. Time reverts, the explosion undoing itself in reverse. Light flows backward into the mine, the building stops shaking, and the bell settles into stillness. All of the miners walk backward into their previous positions, the lunch bell unrings itself, and the world resets to the moment before catastrophe.

They return back to five minutes ago.

“As before, the lesson is yours to learn. I am only a silent, active observer,” he explains, wiggling his fingers with theatrical flair. “Tell me whatever ideas you have, and I'll make them happen for you.”

Ananke touches her shoulder where she struck the ground during her fall, the pain still fresh in her memory. “Can I make you fall down the hill? That really hurt.”

“I am truly very sorry about that, Apprentice,” he replies, sounding sincere about that, actually. “But whether you believe me or not, this was meant to happen. I did not sabotage you.”

“You could at least ask if I'm okay,” she notes, offended, unable to keep the hurt from her voice.

“You are, though,” he replies matter-of-factly. “I know that you are.”

He tilts his head, studying her, as if not understanding.

She rolls her eyes, looking back toward the mine. “…It's not about that,” she mutters, trying to push down her frustration and focus on the task at hand. Maybe he doesn't understand. She supposes that living the way he does has a way of getting to your head at some point.

Ananke doesn’t bother the worker this time and just watches what happens without her interference.

The lunch bell rings again, and she sees Mirin emerging from the mine as he had before, his arms full of crystal samples and mining tools. His kind face is flushed from exertion, and he seems to be heading toward the dining hall with the other workers.

But something will pull him back, some obligation or forgotten task that will send him into the mine just as the magical explosion tears through the tunnels.

Each time, she holds her ears closed by herself.

image [https://i.imgur.com/pUoDcs0.png]

Ananke tries everything she can think of.

She calls out to Mirin from the hilltop, waving her arms and shouting warnings about mine instability. He looks up, confused, shades his eyes against the sun, and waves back politely before continuing on his way. The explosion follows minutes later.

She races down the hill to intercept him physically, grabbing his arm and insisting the mine is dangerous. He smiles kindly but firmly removes her grip, assuming she's some unhinged stranger. “I appreciate your concern, miss, but I have work to finish.” He pushes past her gently but decisively. The mine explodes with him inside.

She tries warning the foreman instead, a grizzled man with silver whiskers who listens to her with growing irritation. “Girl, we've been mining these crystals for years. I don't need some outsider telling me about safety.” He dismisses her with a wave, and she watches helplessly as Mirin enters the tunnel on schedule.

She attempts calling him up the hill, shouting that someone wants to see him. This time, wild goblins of all things emerge from the underbrush, drawn by her voice. It’s almost comical, if not for the horror of it. They swarm Mirin before he can reach her, their crude spears finding his chest. She screams as they turn their yellow eyes toward her next.

Her master snaps his fingers.

Each failure ends like that, with the snap of her master's fingers, time rewinding, and the world resetting to that moment when Mirin emerges from the mine with his load of crystals.

But she learns something crucial through repetition. The only method that gets Mirin to truly engage with her, to see her as more than a random distraction, is when she genuinely crashes into him. Maybe because their encountering one another this way feels more ‘natural’, she isn’t sure. The seemingly awkward accident creates a connection, a moment of shared humanity that cuts through his focus on work and duty. Without that authentic collision, he treats her as a part of his day rather than just background noise.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

It gets her closer.

Ananke’s not sure how many times she deliberately throws herself down that hill. It must be a hundred attempts at least, as she stubbornly goes after every last angle she can think of. Each time, she crashes into the miner at the base of the slope, and each time she tries different approaches to delay him. She claims to be lost, asks for directions, pretends to recognise him from somewhere, and even attempts to engage him in conversation about his personal life.

Nothing works. He's always polite, always helpful, but always returns to his duties in time to die.

Until one attempt, when he asks his usual question, “Are you hurt?” and she decides to say yes, remembering her last lesson.

Sometimes, you ask for help.

Ananke draws on every skill she learnt during years of begging on the streets. She makes her eyes wide and glassy with unshed tears, lets her lower lip tremble, and puts genuine pain into her voice. “Yes. My leg, it really hurts a lot,” she says, her tone breaking with perfectly calculated vulnerability. “Please. Is there a healer? Can you carry me?” she asks.

A part of her hopes the slowly familiarising sad-eyes-and-hurt-leg trick won’t be the solution to her lessons twice. Surely, it can’t be that easy, can it?

Mirin looks troubled, glancing toward the mine entrance where his duties wait. She can see the internal struggle on his honest face, the pressure to complete his work warring against his natural compassion. Her expression of helpless need breaks through his reservations as she bends her lip, letting it shake a little as she fakes trying to stand on the supposedly bad leg.

“Of course,” he says finally. “Sister Gradelin is probably just getting lunch ready for everyone now.” He moves to help her, then pauses with consideration. “Pardon me,” he says politely before just scooping her up in his arms.

Ananke's eyes widen in genuine surprise. She hadn't expected him to be this strong. He lifts her as if she weighs nothing, his arms steady and sure beneath her. The easy strength in his frame suggests he might have made a good adventurer after all, if circumstances had been different.

“Thank you,” she says, shooting a supremely smug look over his shoulder toward her master, who stands on the hill with his arms clasped behind his back, watching with interest.

She showed him.

Mirin carries her toward the mess hall just as the lunch bell begins to ring. She feels a surge of triumph. He won’t get to the mine before the blast. They're going to make it. She's solved the puzzle and found the key to saving him. The mine entrance grows distant behind them with each step.

Trained down to the second now, she closes her eyes.

Then the world explodes.

The blast wave hits them like a giant's fist. Mirin stumbles, his strong legs fighting to keep them upright as people fall everywhere around them. The world flashes brilliant white, magical energy crackling through the air with the scent of ozone and burnt crystal.

Ananke waits for the explosion to end, certain she's won the challenge.

“Are you okay?” she asks as the initial shockwave passes, feeling slightly embarrassed by her deception but safe beneath Mirin's protective form. He had instinctively shielded her with his body when the blast hit. “Mirin?”

Dust settles around them. Voices rise from all directions as other miners try to understand what happened. But Mirin doesn't respond to her questions. She feels his weight settling more heavily on top of her, becoming oppressive rather than protective.

“Mirin?” she asks again, pushing against his shoulders to lift him off of her. “Hey!” she argues.

Blood splashes down around her.

She looks up and screams. His head is gone, severed cleanly by a piece of crystalline shrapnel that had spun through the air like a blade. Where his kind face should be, there's only ragged tissue and exposed bone.

The snap of fingers cuts through her horror.

Ananke finds herself on the hill again, on all fours, vomiting violently. Her body shakes as she retches, her mind unable to separate the memory from the current run of physical reality.

“Did you know that was going to happen?!” she screams at her master between waves of nausea. “What is wrong with you?!”

“I'm really very sorry,” he replies with what sounds like genuine regret as he holds out a cloth to her. “But you are going to see far worse than that in this life if you intend to stay with me. It is better I harden you now than later, when I’ll need you to be ready, Ananke.”

Ananke retches again, holding there for a moment more, before finally getting up to her feet. “Is this some kind of test?” she demands, spitting bile and wiping her mouth with the back of the handkerchief. Her eyes are wet. “You're trying to see how far you can push me before I give up and go back, right?”

He lifts his hands to his chest in surrender. “Oh, I already know you won't do that,” he replies with surprising certainty, his gaze distant as if seeing something she cannot. “There's not one, not a single thread around you where I can see that happening.” His tone carries what might be pride. “…Remarkable,” he mutters, sounding genuinely impressed as his eyes scan what she assumes are the threads connected to her that he can see.

“Damn right,” she replies, forcing herself back to a straight posture, even on her unsteady legs.

“I know you wish to keep trying. But I will interrupt you now and ask. Have you figured out your lesson yet?” he asks. “About what you're seeing?”

Ananke stands there, looking down at Mirin who is just exiting the mine again, as he does at the start of every loop. She exhales slowly, trying to clear her head. Her fists shake with rage, but she forces herself to focus, but she controls herself.

Her eyes look down at the ravine.

Everyone and everything has threads connecting them. She can't see them clearly yet, but she knows they're there. She can glimpse hints and fragments of the vast web of causality.

But Mirin is different.

His threads aren't just dim or hard to see. Rather, they're blackened, withered, and dead. All of them. Every connection that ties him to anything else has frayed down to its last sliver.

“He doesn't have anything left,” she says quietly. “His threads are just… gone.”

Her master nods solemnly. “That is correct. You’ve figured it out, Apprentice. Young Mirin's time has come to an end,” he says, walking to stand next to her. “He is what we call 'severed',” explains her master. She doesn’t need him to say more. She’s gotten it now all by herself. “There is not one single potential future left in this world where he survives past this moment,” explains the Humming Man nonetheless. “It doesn't matter what you do or what you try. There's nothing anyone, mortal or divine, can do to save him.”

She stares quietly, not liking that at all.

The thought of someone dying who doesn’t need to, someone dying before their time… It’s too close to her heart. She doesn’t want it. She wants to stop it. She has the power to, doesn’t she? If not her, then her master does.

They can stop this.

“What if we go back further?” she asks desperately, turning to look at her master. “A week, a month? We'll stop him from ever coming here,” she offers, getting excited as she steps toward him.

“What if we go back a year?” her master responds dryly in counter to her sudden enthusiasm. He looks down at her. “We could go back twenty years and prevent his father's death so that young Mirin never has to work the mines to support his family.”

“Well, why don't we?!” she asks as her frustration boils over.

If anyone could go back and even just try to save her family, she would never forgive them if they didn’t do absolutely everything in their power to make it happen. Even if it wouldn’t be possible, she’d never forgive them if they didn’t try every last thing in the world.

Mirin deserves the same thing.

Her master studies her carefully, then takes a step closer toward her to meet her challenge. But when he speaks, his voice is low but clear in contrast to the physical standoff they’re in with one another. “…Because it is natural to die,” he replies quietly, very simply, in a consoling tone that makes it clear he’s trying to get her to understand without igniting the already smouldering fuse within her. “We just cannot stand in the way of that for everyone, always, forever, Ananke.”

Ananke slowly shakes her head. “Again. I want to try again.”

The Humming Man stares at her and then tilts his head at a list. “Apprentice, you don't even know him.”

That’s wrong, though. She knows him.

“His name is Mirin. He's just past twenty years old. His little sister is waiting at home for him to return safely. His mother is ill and depends on his income for treatment. Her illness is what drove their farther away.” The words pour out of her, all the details she's gathered through countless conversations across a hundred loops with the young worker. “He never wanted to mine. He dreamed of becoming a soldier, but the risk was too great when his family needed him. He was born here in Valtersbrook. Sister Gradelin, the mine priestess, has a soft spot for him and they’re courting. He's kind to everyone and well-liked by every person I've spoken to here.” Details pour out of her. She points an accusing finger at her master. “I've met him a hundred times. Don't tell me I don't know him,” she argues.

Silence stretches between them as their eyes just hold like that for a while. Hers are angry and troubled, but his are just the same as always. They’re just quiet.

The echo of her loudness carries to her ears again.

They stare at each other for a moment before Ananke slowly lowers her finger and her head. “I'm… sorry,” she says quietly, rubbing her arm, realising that she's losing control of herself for some reason. She’s taking this very personally, but how couldn’t she? He’s made her make this personal. “I keep getting frustrated. don’t mean to. I’m just…“ She looks up again. “- Please. I want to try again,” she asks him quietly, not finishing the prior thought.

The Humming Man regards her with something that might be compassion. Behind them, a white light begins to crest from the mine entrance, the prelude to another explosion.

“I understand, Ananke,” he replies, raising his hand as she realises he’s said her actual name for the first time since his initial offer to her. “As many times as you wish. However…“

She shakes her head, her gesture telling him not to finish that sentence.

So he just nods once and snaps his fingers, just as the world erupts in light once more.

image [https://i.imgur.com/pUoDcs0.png]

Ananke floats there for a moment, suspended in the bright, white light that flashes over her between the resets in time. The explosion's afterimage burns behind her eyelids, but her mind races beyond the immediate horror, cataloguing every possibility she hasn't tried yet. There must be something. There has to be some angle, some approach, some tiny detail she's overlooked.

Her heart rages in her chest as she thinks with desperate intensity about saving this person. She's not even sure why she's so invested in Mirin. People die every day, don't they? Her master is right about that.

Death is natural, inevitable, and part of the great pattern that governs all existence.

But maybe it's because this is the first time she's encountered something truly impossible. Back in Hafen, she could save everyone from that bomb. With the merchant on the road, she could redirect him from the bandits. The thought of not being able to save someone now, someone she's come to know, breaks something fundamental inside her. It’d be like if she chose to let her family die that day.

Everything goes white as she fails to save Mirin again. Her master resets time with that familiar snap of fingers.

An image of her mother flashes past her mind's eye as she opens her eyes in determined rage, her fists clenching until her knuckles turn white. Death is so cruel, so final, so utterly without mercy. Maybe it’s childish, but she hates it with every fibre of her being.

But there's nothing she can do.

She's tried everything her limited imagination can conceive, but she's just too powerless by herself.

Over the many months since that terrible day, she's replayed the scenario in her mind thousands of times, thinking of every possible angle she could have taken to save them during the blasts. But in all the scenarios, in all the tortured memories, she herself was just never enough.

Everything goes white as she fails to save Mirin again. Her master resets time.

Her heart beats in her chest like a ticking clock, her hair whipping wildly in the magical maelstrom that precedes each reset as time reflows around them. The repeating hammering sound of the eruption in the mine triggers visceral memories of the explosions that took her family. The echoing boom repeats in her mind over and over, each repetition driving the knife of loss deeper into her soul. It cuts somewhere just a little deeper each time she feels it, always pushing in just a tiny, little bit more.

Just one of her was never enough.

Between the falling bombs, the collapsing buildings, and the spreading fires of war, just one of her was never sufficient to save the people she loved most.

Everything goes white as she fails to save Mirin again. Her master resets time. She spits his gore out of her mouth that had been blasted into her face. That one was really bad.

And the bad feeling cuts deeper until it reaches a thread somewhere inside of her.

Something severs inside Ananke, like the sound of a snapping wire echoing through her very essence. Time distorts all around her with wild, cascading magic that she can feel but doesn't understand.

If only she were more. If only she were better. If only she were somebody who had real power, then she could do something about this tragedy, about any tragedy. If only she wasn't just one person against the vast, uncaring universe. But even if the Humming Man seems to think there’s something special about her, her reality has proven the opposite. She’s nothing. She’s hopeless all by herself.

Suddenly, Ananke hears a voice.

It's her own voice, speaking from somewhere all around her, all at once.

“Then I'll help you,” it says, as if having heard her thoughts.

Ananke looks up in shock, seeing her own mirror image standing across from her in the space between moments. The doppelganger wears the same purple apprentice robe and has the same determined expression but carries herself with a confidence that Ananke doesn't recognise. Behind her is another. And behind her is another. All of them are her, but from different times and places. All of them are stuck here in this same mess that she refuses to wade out of by just leaving Mirin to die.

What’s happening?

This other version of herself raises a finger to her lips, gesturing for silence, and winks with conspiratorial mischief.

Time resets once more, but this time Ananke is ready. She knows what to do. She falls to her feet and immediately barrels down the hill, no longer fighting against her clumsiness but embracing it as part of the plan that fills her mind.

It’s her own plan, after all. She just made it some other time, long after this.

As she tumbles, she catches glimpses at the edges of her vision of other versions of herself materialising throughout the mining operation. With flashes of distorted light, they appear in quick bursts.

A second Ananke intercepts a mineworker carrying volatile crystal compounds into the tunnel, engaging him in urgent conversation about imaginary dangers. A third runs into the mess hall to distract Sister Gradelin with questions about healing, preventing the priestess from ringing the lunch bell on schedule. A fourth positions herself near the mine entrance, while a fifth redirects foot traffic away from the most dangerous zones.

All around the mining site, copies of herself from different timelines converge on this single moment. A dozen Anankes, twenty, thirty, each one working a different angle, manipulating different variables, creating a web of intervention that no single person could manage alone.

The mine explodes right on schedule.

But this time, everything is different. Multiple versions of herself tackle Mirin from different directions, their combined force throwing him well clear of the blast radius as they bury him beneath a mound of purple robes like royal guards diving onto a king after arrows have been released his way. Other copies shield workers with their own bodies, redirect falling debris, and push up barriers to block shrapnel.

The white light fades.

The explosion dies down to crackling echoes. The real Ananke lifts her head from where she's sprawled on the ground, her ears ringing but her heart soaring.

Mirin lies beneath one of her other selves, coughing from dust but very much alive. His kind eyes are wide with confusion, but they're open and aware and breathing.

A smile cracks across her lips, then erupts into delighted laughter. She did it.

She did it!

Ananke beams with fierce joy, jumping to her feet and practically dancing as she stares up toward her master. All the other versions of herself have vanished like morning mist, leaving only her to bask in the triumph.

The Humming Man stands frozen on the hillside, his usual composure completely shattered.

“That’s not… That's impossible,” he mutters to himself, his eyes wide with something that might be awe or terror. He stares at the still-living Mirin for a long moment, then looks at Ananke with a curiously frightened expression she's never seen on his face before. “This can’t have happened. How did you -?”

Ananke bounds up the hill toward him, still giddy with success and the feeling of new power awakening in her core. Her first real chronomantic ability has manifested in spectacular fashion.

“And?” she asks proudly, practically glowing with accomplishment.

She turns her head, seeing somebody else there, watching them. Ananke blinks in confusion, looking at the out-of-place, bright silhouette of some dark-elven woman in extensive makeup and costume. Who’s that?

Instead of the praise she expects, her master grabs her wrist with urgent force while looking at the strange woman. “We need to go,” he says sharply, pulling off his wide-brimmed hat. His eyes scan the area, paranoid, as if looking for some horrible danger.

“Huh?!” she asks, confused. “Come on, at least give me a second to -”

“We must consult the Twelve. Immediately!” His voice carries an urgency she's never heard before, tinged with something that might actually be fear. Before she can protest further, he throws his hat down over her head.

The world disappears into impossible darkness as the hat swallows her entirely.

A second later, her master vanishes into the same space, and then the sensation of the hat pulling itself inside out around them as they both disappear from the mining site, leaving behind only the echoes of an impossible miracle and one very confused but very much alive young miner.

And for a generation to come, the workers of that Valtersbrook will swear to anyone that will listen that an angel saved them all that day.