The silence came alongside the darkness once again.
First, the voices went out.
Then the colors.
Then, the very remnants of existence itself.
And when the last fragment of the multiverse collapsed in a sigh of light,
only Astrid remained, suspended in the absolute void.
There were no stars again.
Or echoes.
Only a dead and still space, her and another failed attempt.
Astrid lowered her gaze, with a weariness so deep that it seemed to drag her down even in a place where there was no ground.
"Again…" she murmured, almost without air.
Another story that ended the same way.
Another universe destroyed.
Another broken Elisa….
And once again, Astrid couldn't save her.
The embrace she had given her in her final seconds still weighed on her chest. Elisa's tears, her desperate question, the trembling in her hands…
Everything was still there, more alive than ever, even though nothing else was.
Astrid couldn't stop herself from shedding tears that glowed.
For an impossible amount of time to measure —seconds or centuries, it was all the same in that void— Astrid did nothing but complain and cry.
She cursed with a scream that echoed throughout all of nothingness, unable to stop saying why things couldn't stop going wrong, what it was that she was failing at, why the entire multiverse had to be an endless tragedy.
But there was only silence, as if Astrid truly expected an answer from that immense silence. Her tears eventually stopped, and she tried to calm herself.
She tried to think again.
Of every attempt.
Of every variation.
Of every route she had created in the hope of correcting the story.
She had already tried everything.
Not giving her the hat.
The consequences changed, but not the ending.
Creating a society that would accept her.
The only thing that changed was the way Elisa broke.
Giving her the brooch instead of the hat.
It transformed her ambition into a voracious compassion that ended up devouring everything.
Changing worlds.
Changing the point of origin.
Changing the course of her life.
Nothing worked.
Nothing.
Astrid closed her eyes and clenched her fists in helplessness.
It's not the object.
It's not the world.
It's not the context…
it's Elisa.
That thought pierced her with a pain as cold as it was lucid. She tried to deny it, but it was impossible to ignore.
Elisa was the constant.
The wound that always bled in every existence.
The point of fracture that no variation managed to heal.
And accepting that was unbearable.
Because Astrid had seen versions of Elisa that were kind, brilliant, happy, broken, furious, lost…
she had seen every form Elisa could take.
But in all of them, the story ended the same way.
A tragic ending.
An inevitable destruction.
A void like this one.
Astrid clenched her fists again.
"It can't be… that everything is doomed to repeat itself," she whispered. "There can't be a single route where she lives in peace."
But the three previous routes seemed to scream exactly that.
Then she thought of another solution. One last one.
If Elisa was the root of the problem…
then perhaps
the root needed to be free of the burden.
The mistake may have been giving the power to her.
The hat always sought Elisa —because Elisa, somehow, always resonated with nonexistence.
The brooch always accepted her —because she always carried that inner wound that sought a purpose.
But then…
What if the hat found another resonance?
What if the weight of that power —of that burden, of that destiny—
fell upon someone different?
And there, in the middle of the void, a name emerged with clarity.
Isabella.
Astrid slowly opened her eyes.
Isabella had been:
a balance
a gentle strength
an emotional pillar
a moral compass
the only constant heart in every attempt
A person who had never broken because of ambition, anger, or emptiness.
A person who had always loved Elisa unconditionally.
A person who, even when afraid, chose to remain by her side.
If anyone could withstand the weight of the hat…
if anyone could wear that crown without it destroying her…
It was her.
It was Isabella.
Astrid took a deep breath.
"Then that's what I'll do," she said, with a mixture of pain and resolve.
"This time, Elisa will not carry the hat.
This time, she will live…
free.
Without burdens.
Without imposed destinies.
Without a power that consumes her.
This time, the hat will belong to Isabella."
The void around her began to vibrate, as if existence itself were responding to her decision.
"And I swear…" Astrid whispered as she raised her hand to restart the story, "that I will do the impossible to finally give her a life that does not end in tears."
The universe lit up again.
A spark.
Then another.
Thousands.
"Please let it work this time," she said in a worried yet hopeful voice before restarting everything once again.
The next route began.
Aetheris had always been a world of strict laws and disciplined minds.
Its people respected balance, tradition, and the idea that knowledge should only grow within safe limits.
To Elisa, that was a cage.
Her curiosity was too alive, too vast to fit within the mental walls of her civilization.
Since she was little, she had questioned what no one questioned, sought what no one dared to seek, and dreamed of what no one allowed themselves to imagine.
That was why she was marginalized.
That was why her teachers looked at her with suspicion.
That was why her classmates kept their distance from her distrustfully.
But she was never completely alone.
She always had Isabella.
Unlike other worlds, here Isabella was not merely a friend or a source of support; she was a kind of inverted reflection.
Inside her, she harbored a latent curiosity, a discreet longing for something greater than everyday life, just like Elisa… but she hid it beneath an impeccable mask.
Because Isabella belonged to a prestigious family.
Her surname carried weight.
Her mother was a leader on her planet.
Her father was a political advisor.
Isabella had to be perfect.
And she was… or at least she appeared to be.
In public, she was polite, cautious, intelligent, discreet.
She never raised her voice.
She never stood out.
She never showed too much.
But when she was with Elisa…
She was another person.
The two of them would sneak through underground tunnels, walk among the forbidden ruins of the planet, climb abandoned cliffs to see the constellations from a completely different perspective.
Elisa talked nonstop.
"Can you imagine what's beyond? Can you imagine worlds where the laws of physics don't work? Or civilizations that could be far more advanced than ours? There has to be something more, I'm sure of it!"
She spoke with enormous excitement and hope. When she was with Isabella, she could dream without limits.
And Isabella listened to her.
She never had as many theories.
She never had the right words to keep up with her.
But even so, she smiled, amazed.
Because Elisa radiated something she had always wished she could have:
drive.
Determination.
That inner flame that kept moving forward even when everything was against her.
Elisa was a break from Isabella's life, and a relief that helped her.
Isabella never said it, but sometimes, when she watched Elisa lose herself in her ideas, she felt a slight knot in her chest.
A silent sensation.
A thought she never put into words:
I wish I were like her.
But one day, something changed.
It was early in the afternoon, and Isabella was in the forest waiting for Elisa, since they had agreed to go for a walk in the forest, but Elisa had said she would stay at the academy a little longer before going.
Isabella waited until she saw Elisa in the distance escaping from some academy guards. The reason she had stayed behind was to dismantle an artifact from the academy of the planet "to see how it worked." However, she ended up damaging it, and some guards patrolling the halls discovered her and were going to detain her and report her to the academy.
Elisa had already been detained and punished by the academy quite a few times, and she didn't want to receive another scolding from either her teachers or her parents, so she simply decided to leave the classroom through the window, taking advantage of the fact that she was on the first floor, to escape the guards and start running.
"YOU'RE NOT CATCHING ME AGAIN, DAMN IT!!!! I'M SICK OF THE PEPPER SPRAY!!!!" Elisa shouted as the guards chased her.
Isabella could only sigh, knowing she would be walking alone that day.
She followed a path that they usually walked together.
She passed among twisted roots, bioluminescent flowers, and trees that breathed as if they had souls.
And there, in a clearing they had never visited before, she saw it.
A black hat.
Alone.
Perfect.
Emitting a faint purple aura.
As if it had been waiting for her.
Isabella stopped, paralyzed.
Her heart raced without knowing why.
"What… is this?"
She slowly approached.
The object emanated a strange energy, cold at first… yet attractive at the same time.
As if it were a secret kept since the very beginning of creation itself.
Without thinking too much —in an impulse unusual even for her— she took it.
The material was soft, almost silky.
It seemed to be made of solid shadow.
Her breathing trembled.
And before she could analyze it any further…
she put it on.
The impact was immediate.
Her vision expanded in a single heartbeat.
First, she saw the forest from above.
Then the entire planet.
Then the solar system.
Then hundreds of systems.
Entire galaxies.
Elisa had always dreamed of this.
Elisa had always talked about this.
But Isabella…
Isabella felt it.
A million possibilities exploded in her mind.
Cosmic structures fell into order.
Unknown constellations formed patterns that only she could understand.
Her heart raced.
And for the first time in her life, she felt something she had always longed for:
"Determination"
A power, a drive, a creative spark.
Something she had always wished to have…
something she never believed was possible.
But alongside that emotion came another…
A faint discomfort.
Like an inner whisper:
"This isn't completely yours."
She didn't know how to interpret it.
She didn't want to interpret it.
She took off the hat, trembling, and held it with both hands.
"I have to show it to Elisa," she said, breathing heavily. "She'll know what this is. She… she always has an answer for everything."
And she ran back through the forest.
She found her in the old laboratory where they always hid. Although Elisa had eventually been caught by the guards, she escaped upon arriving, making her parents believe she was still being detained at the academy and making the academy believe her parents had come for her.
Elisa raised her head, surprised to notice her friend.
"Isabella? What's wrong? Why are you here?"
Isabella was about to speak to her when she noticed that her eyes were red and teary and her nose was runny.
"They sprayed you again, didn't they?" Isabella said worriedly, although she was already somewhat accustomed to seeing Elisa like this.
"Yeah, honestly, at this point I think they do it for fun. This time I didn't resist when they caught me… well, at least not enough to get sprayed, but whatever. What's going on?"
Isabella didn't answer.
She simply held out the hat.
Elisa's eyes widened enormously.
"What…? Where did you get that?"
"I found it in the forest," Isabella replied, still out of breath. "And… when I put it on… Elisa… I can see things. I can understand things I couldn't before. I feel like… like I finally have what I've always been missing, and I want you to help me."
Elisa took the hat delicately.
She was clenching her jaw.
She said nothing for several seconds.
"This doesn't seem like an ordinary object," she murmured.
Isabella swallowed.
"I know. That's why I came to you. To analyze it. To find out what it is. But…" She looked at the hat and then at Elisa. "…there's something strange about it. Something that tells me that… it isn't completely mine."
Elisa stared at her.
And for a moment, just one,
something dark
and unknown
passed through both of their eyes.
It wasn't evil.
It wasn't fear.
It was the exact sensation where envy is born.
A fragile balance was beginning to break.
And neither of them understood it yet.