The crack throbbed like a raw wound. Elisa watched warily as the hat reacted, vibrating on her head as if trying to warn her of something beyond words. And then, like a vision or a memory that wasn't hers, Elisa's mind was invaded by images. Echoes of another life.
Astrid's life.
The world's name was Velhara, a dimension whose physics flowed like music: gravity followed rhythms, time was measured in melodic cycles, and space bent to the beat of collective emotions. It was a beautiful but unstable universe, built on fragile harmony, where every thought could influence matter and destiny.
Astrid was born under a shower of blue light, in the heart of the cathedral-city of Caelum, Velhara's vibrant capital. Its people were wise, but proud. Able to shape space with equations of will, and walk among stars with the sheer force of collective thought. Astrid was a child prodigy, a composer of formulas and an architect of impossible geometries. She dreamed of creating structures that could sustain entire worlds.
But Velhara held a secret.
It was a draft.
A failed prototype of the universe, the first universe created of the second existence, which, like any first attempt...could have flaws. A pilot dimension of the multiverse, designed with forces that not even the Guardians fully understood. Velhara's internal structure had irreparable errors. Chaotic variables accumulated over the centuries, and the bonds that held reality together began to unravel.
It all began with small slips: days that repeated themselves, people who vanished mid-conversation, memories that no one could confirm ever existed.
Then came the collapses.
Entire areas of the planet began to disappear, replaced by inert voids. The sky split in silence. The seas froze into liquid fire. The music of the world lost its key.
Scholars and elders tried to contain the entropy. Some prayed. Others refused. But all failed. Anomalies began to turn into calamities, appearing and leaving nothing but destruction and emptiness in their wake. The luckiest planets were merely emptied, becoming deserted wastelands, but the less fortunate... were absorbed along with half the galaxy.
One tragic day, a rift appeared on Velhara, beginning to consume and disintegrate everything.
Everyone was swallowed by that opening, and Astrid tried to reach her sister, the only one not yet absorbed. However, their hands barely touched before Astrid lost sight of her in the darkness of that fissure.
"SISTER!!!" she screamed with immense helplessness.
At 19, Astrid witnessed her world, her town, her mother, and her little sister being swallowed by a rift that appeared in the middle of the city and completely absorbed it.
Her planet, and even the entire universe, was utterly destroyed and deserted. Nothing remained. No screams. No shadows. Nothing. Only Astrid, the remnants of cities, and a desolate landscape that ravaged the entire planet.
The eternal silence of the universe was broken only by Astrid's inconsolable cries and wails, as she could see nothing but the ruins of what had once been her home.
How did she survive?
No one knows. Not even she. A dimensional rift, connecting to an existence far more corrupt than her own, appeared and dropped her into another universe: a corner of the void between dimensions. A place without time. Without a body. An abstract cell where the ruins of worlds that no longer existed floated. There, in that graveyard of possibilities, Astrid found the brooch.
It wasn't hidden.
It simply was.
A shifting metal object, embedded with a constantly rotating crystal core, displaying scenes of infinite overlapping realities. Upon touching it, Astrid felt the universe bleed from within, witnessed the creation of everything, including the object she now possessed. And understood what she had to do.
The brooch had a purpose.
Not to seal.
To unite.
With it, she learned to travel between dimensions, leaping through the remnants of the multiverse like a ghostly nomad. She infiltrated timelines, gathered forbidden knowledge, saw worlds as wrecked as her own, and understood that the multiverse was not stable. It was a lie held together by fragile scraps and weak seams. Her world was just one of hundreds that were eventually doomed.
And so she decided to create something new.
A single universe. A solid, indivisible one, where the mistakes of Velhara could not be repeated.
She knew it would be cruel.
That would shatter entire realities.
But she also knew the alternative was eternal collapse.
She didn't consider herself a savior.
Or a villain.
She was, simply, the only one left.
And that thought compelled her to act.
The vision dissolved, and Elisa fell to the ground, gasping. The hat had remained still, as if it too had been frozen in shock.
The crack was still there, vibrating with the same strange pulse. It was no longer just an opening. It was a threshold. A whisper from failed existence.
"Did you see it?" Astrid said, appearing beside her without warning.
Elisa nodded, still on her knees.
"I saw... everything."
"Then you can't hate me anymore."
"No..." Elisa murmured, "but I can't let you continue either."
Astrid lowered her gaze. The brooch on her chest rotated slowly.
"I can't stop either."
And they both knew it.
It had begun.
The true journey of these two travelers wasn't just between two opposing forces.
It was between two survivors.
Two women dragged along by choices they never wanted to make.
Two symbols of a cosmic paradox.
Close.
Unite.
Save.
Destroy.
The rift trembled.
And from within, something stirred.
Something that shouldn't have awakened.
But it had.
And the multiverse... was listening.