My Exodus.

Autumna’s face was one of disgust, but not aimed at anyone in the room. It was a memory, a flash of something unbearable, and her eyes had stopped seeing the world in front of her. She was looking through us, as though we were shadows cast across something far worse.

I stayed frozen, heart hammering in my chest, the words she had spoken still clanging in my mind. I wasn’t sent to another world. I was sent into the future. Everyone I know is dead.

The weight of it pressed down on me, heavy enough to crush my chest. Everything I had believed, every hope, every tie I had held onto—it was all a lie. Or perhaps it was real, just… misplaced in time. I wondered if the world itself had been waiting for me to be born at the wrong moment, to play the wrong role.

It was like acting. I had been handed a script I didn’t understand, pushed onto a stage I hadn’t chosen. My lines were given to me, my reactions expected, my part rehearsed without me knowing it. And yet, in the middle of this cruel theater, I was forced to improvise, forced to survive, forced to… decide.

I swallowed hard, jaw aching. I thought of every face I had loved, every moment I had held sacred. All gone. Dead. Buried in some future I had never walked into, a reality that had no room for me. And yet…

I glanced to my left. On the ground was a firearm, Cassian’s gun. Cold steel, simple, effective. My heartbeat stuttered, then found rhythm again.

I looked back at Autumna. Her golden eye caught mine, unblinking, aware. The flowers were trembling on her skin like a living pulse of menace. She was the storm. And I… I was about to step into it.

My hand moved. Slow. Deliberate.

I kneeled.

My fingers curled tighter around the gun as I rose. My knees felt like glass, but I forced them to straighten. The room felt too large and too small at once, all of us trapped inside some stage set carved out of metal and blood.

Autumna’s gaze flicked toward me. Her golden eye glinted, no longer lost in the maze of her own thoughts. The flowers at her skin stilled, like a theater crowd falling silent. She thought she knew what I’d do next.

I drew in a shaky breath. “You want to know something, Autumna?”

My voice cracked, but I didn’t stop. “This whole time… I’ve been waiting for someone to tell me my lines. To tell me where to stand, what to say, what my role was supposed to be.”

I took a step toward her. My shoes slipped in the blood, but I caught myself, pulling my shoulders back. “You’ve been talking about pain, about power. But all you ever wanted was an audience. Someone to witness you. Someone to make you real.”

My heartbeat thudded in my ears. My throat burned. “I was like that once. I kept thinking this was someone else’s story. That I was just the unlucky guy who got thrown into the wrong act. That one day someone would explain it, and I’d go home.”

I swallowed. My mouth tasted like rust. “But you want the truth now?” My voice sharpened, louder, echoing off the walls. “Too late. The story’s already printed. Blood and all.”

I clutched my chest—part of the scene. Except it kind of hurt.

“You didn’t want me, you don’t love me.”

I whispered, louder than a shout. “You wanted a version of me that bled neatly.”

The lines I had left.

I didn’t remember them.

But I’ll make them myself.

And this time, for the first time, I wasn’t acting.

“They built me to be a prop.

I’ll die as the director.”

And in that moment, comprehension dawned in her eyes—silent, inescapable, like ice creeping through her veins.

Her hand shot out, desperate, but too late.

The gun rose in my hands. I closed my eyes.