Lissa screamed, but not in pain.
Elian would have understood pain. It would have meant Lissa was still alive, that her body had not given up. But the scream from the garden was the scream of someone watching the world create her replacement.
Nim Arg stood before Savern and Vestra wearing Elian's face. Too smooth. Too clean. The face bore no scar from ten years ago. None of the weariness of deaths that remained in the memory even when the body returned at dawn. None of the habit of looking first for Lissa, then for the door.
That was precisely what made it so frightening.
It showed what Elian might have become if he had ever preferred a flawless outcome to the people who would pay for it.
Beyond the wall, grey light flooded the garden.
The grey light did not come from fire. Ash was rising from the earth, as though an ancient blaze had kindled again beneath the stone slabs. The slabs cracked, the grass blackened without smoke, and the roses crumbled into dry dust before they could touch the paths.
Elian ran into the garden.
Lissa stood by the old apple tree. In another Draft, an apple falling from it had taken years of life. Now the fruit did not fall. The apples hung from the branches like black spheres, like closed eyes. Shani trembled beside her, clutching her mistress's sleeve in both hands, while Miran shielded them from an unseen blow.
Lissa's body flickered.
One Lissa clung to the trunk. Another already lay among the roots with ash on her lips. A third stood before Elian, her face white, looking at him not as a brother but as a murderer.
The system responded curtly, without mercy:
"Stability below threshold. The Draft of Ash has been opened."
Elian took a step, and the garden vanished.
He found himself in the corridor behind the throne room. Lissa lay by the door they had failed to hide her behind in time. He rushed towards her, but the door slammed shut, and words appeared across its panels: heir not recognised.
Death.
He was standing in the garden again.
He pulled Lissa towards the servants' gate. This time Shani managed to open the lock. They ran out into the kitchen courtyard, where the air still smelled of wet ash and sour dough. Lissa almost smiled when she recognised the place from their childhood.
Then Nim stepped out of the air wearing Elian's face and placed two fingers against her forehead.
Death.
Elian awoke in the same garden, already on his knees. His mouth tasted of ash.
The third time, Miran led Lissa away through the armoury. The fourth, Tavel hid her in the archive between empty shelves. The fifth, Vestra opened a secret passage for which she would once have demanded recognition of her power. The sixth, Savern himself stood in front of Lissa: he had finally understood that the Empty Throne could no longer distinguish order from hunger.
Every attempt ended the same way.
Lissa herself did not die every time. Sometimes something worse happened.
In one future Lissa survived but forgot her own name and followed Nim, mistaking him for her elder brother. In another she remembered Elian and begged him to kill her: while she continued to breathe, Shani, Miran and half the palace servants vanished one after another. In a third she became queen of an empty hall. Everyone called her saved, but nobody dared look her in the eye.
Death no longer offered a new beginning. It merely showed Elian one more future that proved worse than the last.
He came to on his knees before the apple tree and, for the first time, did not rise at once. Shani wept in silence. Miran was still holding her sword, but no longer expected victory. Lissa no longer asked him to save her at any cost.
"Do not pay with me," she said.
She had said those words before, in another hall. Then he had listened to his sister, surrendered ten years of his life and preserved her name.
The system waited.
A single sentence appeared before Elian's eyes, as though burnt into the air:
"To preserve the life of Lissa Vern, her name must be surrendered."
He whispered:
"No."
The ash rose higher. Shani's arm turned transparent to the elbow, as though the world were erasing her from someone else's memory. Miran swore and slashed her sword through empty air. The blade passed straight through Nim. He stood on the other side of the garden, and Elian's face upon him remained flawless.
"A flawless world does not ask permission," Nim said. "It merely counts how many people must be surrendered."
Lissa stepped towards Elian.
"I do not want to be the reason they die."
"And I do not want to save you again as though you cannot decide for yourself."
She smiled wearily.
"Then stop looking for a flawless answer."
Elian raised his head.
"What am I supposed to do?"
"Decide neither as an heir nor as that system of yours. Decide as a brother. You can hate yourself afterwards, but for now choose the people who are still alive."
Lissa was right: there was no flawless answer.
Elian took Lissa's hand. Her fingers were already passing through his palm.
"Lissa Vern," he said, loud enough for Shani, Miran, Vestra, Savern, Tavel and even Orm in the sealed Draft of Truth to hear. "You are neither payment nor a key. You are my sister. And I hate what I am forced to do now."
The system responded:
"The name of Lissa Vern has been spent."
There was no explosion. The garden seemed to exhale.
Ash settled over the ground like snow. The black apples opened into white flowers. Lissa's body became solid and warm.
She survived.
The red thread of the blood oath vanished from her throat. The oath had been bound to Lissa's name and disappeared with it. Savern could no longer hold her by the law of blood, but Lissa herself no longer remembered who had tried to free her.
She looked at Elian as though he were a stranger.
She remembered another home, another fire and a family that had never existed in this world. Elian Vern stood amid the flames, a sword in his hand and a murderer's face.
Lissa recoiled from him.
"Stay away."
Elian stopped.
The system delivered its final line:
"The world cannot be completely cleansed. The final Draft will be overlaid on all those before it."
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