Gale is besides me when I wake up, if not in the flesh. I can sense him there even over the awful scents of the infirmary. Someone has moved candles in there perhaps to comfort me. Cinnamon. The smell of betrayal. Pine. The smell of betrayal. Lavender. Betrayal. Blood. Betrayal.

My blood. His blood. Betrayal in the highest degree.

I can feel all of his stolen soul pressing against mine, coursing with loud, violent noise: Live.

He is not the first sacrifice on the altar of this body. I open six wings and find that they're not mine anymore, and when the others enter, to see me again, and realize I've awoken, Avery comes with a dulled blade. It glows yellow. One full seraph. One familiar magical signature. And the others?

Everyone is a vine, twisting back into the fabric of time.I can see all their old stories lurking, waiting, for the end of it all. I see the blade I've been bearing for what it truly is, and I imagine it no longer severing flesh but freeing them all of the curse of thousands of years spend in service to an idol. I want to chop away the beam that runs from their eyes to my body. And yet.

And yet.

"Look at me in the eye, Avery." says the Auspicia. She turns her head to look at the last eleven-odd disciples. She recognizes all of them from some life or another, seeing as things have always gone on like this, indefinitely. I draw the knife closer to me, through the air, and catch it. "Kneel."

Avery gets down on her paws. "Heilin."
"I'm giving this to you because you don't want to be a goddess, and I always will, down in the recesses of my heart." The Auspicia says. "I have betrayed everyone in this room by keeping this so long. It was my hubris that burned this world, and it is a mistake I will never allow to happen again."
"What does that mean?"

"There's still a third option." I say, Gale lurking behind me in the shadow of the sterile light. "I'm not going to let myself burn out, lifetime after lifetime, drowning in my own despair. Dreamland deserves a competent leader. It deserves you."

All the ghosts in the room stand around me. All the ghosts in all of the living bodies of everyone in the room tense up, and we begin a new story, cross between places into the prologue of everything that will come after.

"I don't understand..."

She does.

I take the blade and run it down my leg, leaving a long, golden gash. I press the blade against it letting it suck in the energy, and the world begins to fall from me. My eyes roll up towards my skull, and I lift from myself for the second time. This time, it is incredibly painful, and yet, with tears streaking my face, I'm sure I'm out of the loop.

"Rena!" cries Avery, from a distance, glowing as I flick the knife her way with my paw just before it turns to stone.

My face tilts upwards into a smile. "See? You get it."

My shadow bears me up, and finally, finally, I can see everything. All my memories are clear and racing like fish at the forefront of my mind, reunited. I am surrounded by multitudes, and these hills roll on forever, forming valleys, mountains, deep seas, forests, deserts, all of them carved by undulations of the earth. I can sense the world breathe, and when it does, I exhale with it, finally feeling myself returned to it, and for a second, glimpsing every sparing mortal life and filling despairing bodies with hope.

As I breathe life back into plague-ridden bones, performing my last miracle, I sense their families, their histories, where they like to sit on long mornings, the smell that reminds them most of the ones they love. So this is what it would have felt like to live, I think, perusing moment after moment captured in still frame.

No.

I lived wonderfully so many times over. All the smells blur into something soft and wonderful, and a smile returns to me. Natrina, irate with me though she is, brings me across a divide. "You're not even sure she'll take it, are you?"

"Nat, when have my plans ever not turned out well in the end?" I ask, feeling myself becoming light. Our conversation continues without sound, bright in the void. "Everything will be okay now."

Natrina lifts me up into an even greater brightness, and in the end, I see them all for moments, feeling golden connection between all of my ghosts wind the empty seraph energy into something that resembles a form and a soul.

For every mistake, this is how I know I've done enough.