CHAPTER 51: The Fifty-First Fracture

I don’t remember falling.

One moment I was kneeling beneath their statue, Saaya’s warmth beside me, her hand still in mine—and the next…

Silence.

Not the stillness of ash-filled streets or dead winds. This was deeper. Thicker. A black void folding in on itself, with no edges. No escape. My thoughts echoed, but they weren’t mine anymore.

Then—

A flash.

I’m back in my lab. But I’m sixteen again. Younger. Still in school. My glyph schematics light up the screen, the scalar matrices perfectly aligned.

The door swings open. My mother pokes her head in.

“Sukara? It’s late. Come eat.”

I pause. My fingers hover over the interface. I turn. I speak.

“Just a minute—this breakthrough is close.”

She smiles.

“Don’t forget we love you.”

The door closes.

I don’t follow.

I never go.

The next morning, they’re gone.

Statues.

I scream. The world shatters.

Flash.

I wake up earlier this time. I run home. The sky is already burning, a red horizon rising too fast.

“Mom! Dad!”

They turn. Confused. Alive.

I grab them both, yelling. Begging them to run.

“We have to leave! Now! It’s coming!”

But they hesitate. I drag them down the stairs, out into the street.

The light in the sky folds in half.

And they turn to stone in my arms.

I scream again. The sound fractures the timeline like glass.

Again.

A new path.

I skip school. I never leave home.

I stay with them all day.

I hold their hands. I tell them stories. I make them laugh. I build a glyph barrier over the house, amplifying the scalar fields.

I think I’ve done it. I think I’ve won.

Then night falls.

The power fails.

I turn, and they’re stone again. Smiling.

Always smiling.

I collapse.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Every timeline a different failure. Every path a dead end. Sometimes the gods come early. Sometimes the ground opens up beneath me. Sometimes I blink and they’re gone before I speak.

I scream until my throat bleeds. I claw at the air. I try to rewrite the laws of the universe.

But it always ends the same.

Alone.

Kneeling before them.

Useless.

I can’t remember how many times I’ve broken anymore.

A thousand?

A million?

Maybe more.

I stop trying. I just sit there. Lost in one loop that doesn’t even try to pretend anymore. A twisted mockery of my home, of them. The sun never rises. The sky is only red. Time doesn’t pass here. It just grinds.

And then—

Her voice.

“Sukara.”

It pierces the dark like a dagger.

I look up.

Saaya.

She’s glowing. Faint violet. Like a beacon in all this decay.

“You’re not alone,” she says.

“I don’t care,” I whisper. “They’re gone. No matter what I do, I lose them.”

She kneels beside me.

“I know. I saw it. I felt all of it.”

My throat trembles. “Then you know I failed.”

“You didn’t fail,” she says, eyes wet. “You were never given a chance. This isn’t your guilt. It’s a curse.”

Her hand touches my cheek. “Sukara, this isn’t real. It’s a lock. A cage made from your grief. But I’m here now. And I’m not leaving.”

I shake my head. “You don’t understand. I’ve seen them die a thousand ways. I can’t take it anymore. I—I don’t even remember who I was before this pain.”

“You’re Sukara,” she says. “You’re the one who made me believe in something again. You’re the one who stood by me when I was cast out. You’re the one I…” Her voice falters. “You matter to me.”

I look at her. My eyes blur. “I can’t escape this.”

“You don’t have to,” she says softly. “Let me in.”

She leans forward and presses her forehead against mine.

And then she kisses me.

Not out of pity. Not out of desperation.

But real. Honest. Warm.

The world trembles.

The ground beneath us fractures—not with decay, but with light.

A violet glyph spreads from where we sit, shattering the illusion.

The sky cracks.

The loops begin to burn away.

I gasp. My lungs fill like I’m breathing for the first time in years.

She pulls back just enough to look at me.

“I’m here,” she whispers. “Come back with me.”

And I nod.

Not because I’m strong.

But because she is.

And because, for the first time in what felt like an eternity…

…I believe I’m not lost.

—a pressure thicker than anything I’d felt before settled over the square.

The shadows deepened. The air lost all temperature.

And there she was.

Oizys.

She hovered just above the fractured plaza, draped in void. Her form shimmered between a thousand versions of grief—human, smoke, shadow, starlight, corpse. Her face was veiled in strands of night, and where her eyes should’ve been were empty rifts of sadness itself.

She stared straight at me.

But it wasn’t hate I saw.

It was recognition.

Saaya moved to step beside me, her jaw tight, her glyph pulsing faintly at first—then dying entirely.

She stopped in confusion. “What…?”

I caught her hand gently.

“You can’t use your magic here,” I said. “Earth’s still locked down by Neurova’s fields. It’s a hard science grid. Designed to block divine interference and suppress all anomalous magic.”

“But—” she tried to summon her Reverse Glyph again. Nothing came. Not even a flicker.

“You’re not divine,” I whispered. “And you’re not science either. You don’t fit either law.”

Her expression twisted with helpless frustration. “Then let me fight with you. Somehow.”

I smiled faintly. “You already did.”

She blinked.

“If you hadn’t kissed me… I wouldn’t have made it back. I’d still be stuck in her hell.”

Her mouth opened, then closed again, eyes softening. She nodded.

Oizys drifted down slowly, her voice echoing not in sound—but directly in my mind. It cracked like thunder across my skull.

“You returned. After all that pain. Why?”

I stepped forward. The gravity beneath my feet responded like a heartbeat—dense, pulsing. I felt it coil up my legs like armor.

“Because I had something to come back to.”

She sneered.

“You think love makes you strong? It’s weakness. It’s the bait that breaks you.”

I didn’t answer. I raised my hand instead. My violet glyph burned hot on my skin.

And then she moved.

Her attack wasn’t a weapon. It was despair made tangible. Images rushed toward me—my parents dying, Saaya crumbling to ash, Earth consumed in flame. Endless loops of loss.

I clenched my fists.

“NO.”

I bent gravity around me like a stormfront—warping her illusions, ripping them apart with every step forward. I twisted her pain into pressure. I turned her sorrow into weight.

She attacked again. But I was already moving.

I struck her. Not as a divine, not as a god.

As me.

As the boy who lost everything, and still stood.

She stumbled. For the first time—she stumbled.

“You’re not like them,” I said between strikes. “The other gods. They destroy because they truly fear my potential. . Are you really that fearful of me that you have to kill me? Or is it something else?.”

She screamed, her body splitting apart into a tidal wave of black void. I held my ground. Let gravity crush the chaos. Let every ounce of heartbreak I carried collapse it back down.

“I know what you’re doing,” I said. “You wanted me to feel what you felt.”

Oizys faltered mid-air. Her form flickered.

“You wanted someone to understand you.”

Her eyes—those two rifts of sorrow—widened.

“You’re not a monster,” I whispered. “You’re just lost.”

Saaya stepped beside me. Powerless. But she didn’t need power to matter.

“She’s listening,” she whispered.

I lowered my hand. No glyph. No attack.

Just a hand. Extended.

“I won’t forgive what you did. At least not now. But you don’t have to keep being this. You don’t have to be alone. Maybe I’m wrong but I truly think you’re different from the others.”

Oizys didn’t speak. But her body slowed. Became still.

And then—

For the first time—

She chose to let go.

She collapsed to the ground. Her turquoise hair laid on the ground. That rock in her chest hidden from view. She asked me a question while laying on the ground.

“I still don’t get it. Why didn’t you kill me? I tortured you through endless timelines. I turned your parents to statutes. I destroyed your world. Why! Why can you say what you said and help me?”

I turn to her looking down on her

“Because I could feel your loneliness. You’re not like see who wanted to kill me. Okay well he did kill me but you’re not like him. I don’t know about the other gods, but you I can just feel that your different. I mean we are talking to each other now arnt we? I might not be able to fully help you with your internal struggles. But I can help guide down a path towards a future where you’re accepted. Where people will want to be around you. I mean you might not believe this but you’re beautiful. I love your hair and the gem in your chest is divine. So please don’t give up. I have a good feeling about you Oizys.” I said calmly talking from my heart

Oizys laid there confused by what I said. She couldn’t process what I said. She couldn’t understand how I could be so forgiving.

I look up towards the sky.

“You gods pull me away from my home, world. You changed my life, put me through hell, banished me, tried to erase me and even sent an assassin to kill me. But after all that I’m grateful in a weird way. I met so many good friends, Yuuka, Karna, Alric, Avalon, Lyra and of course I met Saaya.”

I turned to look at her. She looked back at me smiling

“I was alone in this world. But i found someone who stuck by me through everything and even I know I…”

Saaya looked at me.

“You what? What were you going to say.” Saaya said pressing up closer and closer to me

“Nothing.” I said laughing scratching my head and turning away

Oizys laid on the ground looking at us

“Maybe it’s because I became a god that I was lonely. I never chose to be a god. I was just born a god. Maybe what I truly wanted was someone to understand me, so I wouldn’t feel alone.”

I bent down on both knees

“Oizys, I’ll make you a deal” I said calmly

She looks at me, “what do you want mortal?”

“If you’re able to reverse everything here, the dead bodies, the buildings, the world, how about we become friends? I’ll be your understander and I’ll be by your side so you’re not alone anymore?” Smiling at her

Saaya smiles in the background

“You’re making me jealous.” She said

“Hehehehhe.”

“You would really do that for me? Don’t you want revenge on all the gods?” She asked

“I will get revenge on the gods. You can bet your ass that. But, I will only seek revenge on the gods that cause harm to my friends and family. I will kill anyone who tries to take them from me.” I said in a dark voice

Oizys rolls so her back is on the ground and she faces the sky.

“I can’t bring anyone and everything back with my power. My power was cut in half when I descended from the 10th fractal. Your earth is a bridge to the divine realm. This universe is the anchor that binds the two. But I can transfer my power to your girlfriend so she can revive everyone.”

I turn to her

“WHAT??” I said

“Yeah, with my divine magic coursing through her she can reverse the cause of the multiverse being destroyed.” Oizys said

Saaya walks over

“Would you really help us?” She said

Oizys looks at her in the eyes

“Yes I would.” She turns to me “I’ve found someone who can understand me, guide me even a god and teach me things I never thought possible to escape eternal solitude. Come here girl.”

Oizys put her hand on Saayas hand and a huge turquoise light filled the areas