The Last Choice

The chamber was too quiet, the air thick with the weight of time. The candles burned low, their flames swaying like uncertain ghosts. The walls, covered in her own name, pressed in around her. Each inscription was a reminder of what she had been, what she had erased, what she was supposed to remember.

Jessica’s breath came slow and shallow. She had spent years building herself from nothing, shaping an identity that she could call her own. Not Vanguard’s. Not anyone else’s. Now this. This damned room. This damned choice.

She turned to the keeper, her voice low, raw. “Why?”

The man in the cassock studied her. Not with condescension. Not with arrogance. But with the quiet patience of someone who had seen this before. Who had seen her before.

“You already know the answer.”

Jessica’s jaw clenched. “Say it anyway.”

The keeper exhaled, stepping closer. The candlelight flickered across his face, carving deep lines of age and understanding.

“You were not meant to be a person,” he said. “You were meant to be a vessel.”

Jessica’s chest tightened as he gestured to the walls, to the names, to the cycle repeating itself over and over again.

“Every time the world nears revelation, you awaken. And every time, you choose.”

Jessica swallowed. “To reveal the memory…”

The keeper nodded. “Or to erase it. To erase yourself.”

A bitter laugh escaped her lips before she could stop it. “And I’ve erased myself every time, haven’t I?”

The keeper didn’t answer.

He didn’t need to.

The proof was all around her. Jessica Sanchez. 1992. Isabelle Cormier. 1992. Marie Elhart. 1992. Elena Vasquez. 1992.

The same year. The same erasure. Her own hand had buried the truth again and again. Her fingers curled into a fist.

Leanna’s voice broke through the silence. “Jess…”

Jessica turned, finding her standing near the edge of the room, her posture tense, eyes sharp. “If you’ve erased yourself before… then why are you waking up now?”

Jessica’s pulse skipped. She turned to the keeper.

His gaze darkened. “Because something has changed.”

Jessica exhaled, shaking her head. “That’s not an answer.”

“No,” the keeper said softly. “It is not.”

She stepped forward. “Then tell me.”

The keeper met her eyes. And then he spoke the words that shattered everything.

“The cycle has been broken. You are the last. There will be no vessel after you.”

Jessica froze. Something inside her went still. No next vessel. No next cycle. This was it. Her breath felt thin. Her entire life, she had been chasing the truth, uncovering secrets, pulling threads until the whole fabric unraveled. But she had always assumed that she had time. That she could choose again. That the game would reset.

But now? Now, the past ended with her. Her vision blurred for half a second, her fingers flexing, muscles tightening. No next Jessica. No next erasure. Only her.

Jessica inhaled, her voice barely above a whisper. “If I choose to erase it…”

The keeper’s expression was unreadable. “Then it is lost forever.”

The words settled deep inside her. Not just for her. For everything. For whoever had come before. For whoever had trusted this knowledge to survive.

Jessica felt the weight of it settling against her ribs. All those lifetimes. All those names. All the people who had carried this before her, only to decide, again and again, that the world wasn’t ready. Or that she wasn’t.

Jessica exhaled. Then she turned to meet Leanna’s and Olivia’s gaze. She understood that she wasn’t alone this time. She wasn’t running this time. She wasn’t the same person she had been, over and over again.

Jessica set her jaw. Bit her lip. For the first time, she made a new choice.

“I want to remember.”