There was no void, no grand revelation, just a clear sequence of memory arranged like notes laid out on a table.
Lee saw his past lives not as tragedies or victories but as structural decisions, each one adding another layer of complexity he had mistaken for strength.
Lisa appeared among them, not as a dream or reward, but as a constant point he had tried to reach by building more and more unstable scaffolding around himself.
The Life spark pulsed.
Not dramatically, not heroically, simply reacting to the collapse of his Dantian the way it was meant to react to preserve continuity.
The five sparks surged.
For once, he did not try to force them apart.
Fire stopped resisting water because resistance no longer had a purpose, wind ceased scattering earth because nothing needed to be scattered, space stopped being a weapon and became a frame, and life and death stopped pretending they were opposites and recognized themselves as parts of a single process.
