Turning Point 23
The heart in the jar was still beating.
Kaelen watched it pulse—slow, deliberate, like a drummer keeping time for a funeral march—and felt the weight of every bad decision he’d ever made settle into his bones. The glass container sat on a steel tray beside the corpse, connected to nothing, sustained by nothing he could see. It just beat. On and on. The vault’s idea of a joke, probably.
“That’s not possible,” Lyra whispered from behind him. Her voice had lost its usual musical lilt, flattened by the sterile air. “He’s dead. Look at him. He’s *dead*.”
“The heart isn’t,” Rook said. The big man stood near the door, arms crossed, his scarred face unreadable. He’d been quiet since the labyrinth.
Kaelen stepped closer to the body. The man on the table wore a vault attendant’s uniform—crisp gray, brass buttons, a name tag that read *J. HALE*. His face was slack, eyes half-open, skin the color of old parchment. A thin line ran across his throat, precise as a scalpel cut. Whoever had done this knew exactly where to slice.
But the heart in the jar kept time like a metronome.
“This is a message,” Kaelen said. His voice came out rougher than he intended. “The vault is showing us what happens to people who work here.”
“Or what happens to people who fail,” Sable said. She stood at the far wall, running her fingers over a row of empty hooks. Each hook had a small brass plaque beneath it. *W. ORTIZ. M. CHEN. R. VASQUEZ.* The plaques were polished. The hooks were bare. “These are the attendants who used to work this floor. Someone took them down.”
“Took them down or *took* them down?” Lyra asked.
No one answered.
Kaelen forced himself to look away from the heart. He’d seen worse. He’d *done* worse. But there was something about the way it pulsed—steady, patient, almost expectant—that made his stomach turn. The vault wasn’t just showing them a corpse. It was showing them a clock.
“We need to keep moving,” he said. “The core is close. I can feel it.”
“You can *feel* it?” Lyra raised an eyebrow. “Since when do you feel anything but the bottom of a whiskey glass?”
“Since we got here.” He didn’t elaborate. The truth was simpler and stranger: the deeper they descended into the Vault of Final Odds, the more the air itself seemed to hum. Not a sound, exactly. More like a pressure behind his teeth, a static charge in his palms. The Prime Die was down here. He could taste it, copper and ozone, like a storm about to break.
The door at the far end of the room slid open without a sound.
Beyond it, the corridor stretched into darkness. The walls were lined with the same gray stone as the rest of the vault, but here the surface was covered in writing—scratched, carved, burned into the rock. Kaelen stepped closer and read the nearest line.
*THE HOUSE ALWAYS WINS.*
Below it, in smaller letters: *BUT THE HOUSE CAN BE BRIBED.*
Below that: *I TRIED. IT TOOK MY LEFT HAND.*
“Charming,” Lyra said, peering over his shoulder. “Is this the part where we’re supposed to turn back?”
“There’s no turning back,” Rook said. “The door behind us is gone.”
Kaelen glanced over his shoulder. Rook was right. The room they’d just left had vanished, replaced by a solid wall of stone. No seam, no handle, no hint that a door had ever existed there. The vault had swallowed its own entrance.
“It does that,” Sable said. She’d moved to the corridor’s edge, her fingers tracing the carved letters. “Every floor. It lets us in, then closes the door behind us. Like a stomach.”
“Great metaphor,” Lyra muttered.
They walked.
The corridor twisted and turned, branching at irregular intervals. Kaelen tried to keep track of the turns—left, right, left, left, right—but after the fifth junction, the pattern dissolved. The walls were covered in more writing now, denser than before. Names. Dates. Numbers. Some of them were familiar.
*K. VOSS — ROLL 17 — FAILED.*
His own name, carved in block letters, deep enough to catch his thumbnail.
“Kaelen,” Sable said quietly. She was standing at a section of wall a few paces ahead, her face pale. “You need to see this.”
He walked over. The carving was newer than the others—the edges still sharp, the stone dust fresh. It read:
*MIRA HALE — ROLL 1 — ERASED.*
The heart in the jar. The name tag. *J. HALE.*
“Hale,” Kaelen said. The word tasted like ash. “Her name was Mira Hale.”
“Was?” Lyra’s voice was careful. “You said she was erased. That’s not the same as dead.”
“It’s worse.” He ran his fingers over the carved letters. The stone was cold, but the grooves felt warm, like the vault had just finished writing them. “Erased means she never existed. No records. No memories. No one who knew her can remember her face, her voice, her name. She’s a hole in the world where a person used to be.”
“But you remember her,” Sable said.
“I’m the one who rolled the die that erased her.” He pulled his hand back. “I’m the only one who gets to carry that.”
The corridor opened into a circular chamber. The walls here were covered in mirrors—dozens of them, arranged in a ring, each one reflecting a different version of the room. Kaelen saw himself in the nearest glass, but the reflection was wrong. His face was younger, his eyes clearer, his jaw unshaven. He wore a different coat, a different life.
“Mirror maze,” Lyra said. “Great. I hate mirror mazes.”
“These aren’t ordinary mirrors,” Rook said. He was standing before one, his massive frame blocking most of the glass. “Look.”
Kaelen moved to stand beside him. The mirror showed Rook—but not the Rook who stood next to him. This Rook was whole. His face was unmarked, his hands steady, his eyes bright. He wore a soldier’s uniform, clean and pressed, with medals pinned to his chest.
“That’s who I was,” Rook said quietly. “Before the Roll took it all.”
“It’s showing us our pasts,” Sable said. She was at another mirror, her reflection a younger woman in a healer’s robe, holding a child’s hand. The child was laughing. Sable’s eyes were wet. “Our best versions. The lives we could have kept.”
“Or the lives we lost,” Lyra said. She was at a third mirror, her reflection a woman on a stage, bathed in golden light, a crowd on its feet. She was singing. The sound was so beautiful it made Kaelen’s chest ache.
“Don’t look,” he said. “It’s a trap. The vault wants us to dwell on what we’ve lost.”
“Too late,” Lyra said. “I’m already dwelling.”
Kaelen turned away from the mirrors, scanning the chamber for an exit. There was none. The walls were seamless, the mirrors unbroken. The only way forward was through the glass.
“We have to walk into them,” he said. “Each of us picks a mirror. We go through, and we find the others on the other side.”
“What if we don’t find each other?” Sable asked.
“Then we find the core and regroup there.” He pulled a coin from his pocket—a battered silver piece, worn smooth by years of handling. “I’ll mark the way. If you see this symbol, follow it.”
He scratched a small die shape into the coin’s face with his thumbnail, then pressed it into Sable’s palm.
“Keep it,” he said. “If we get separated, it’ll help you find me.”
“How?” she asked.
“Because I’m going to be the loudest thing in this vault.” He forced a grin. “Trust me.”
Sable didn’t smile back. She pocketed the coin and turned to her mirror. The glass rippled as she touched it, then swallowed her whole.
Lyra went next, her reflection singing a note that hung in the air long after she vanished. Rook followed without a word, his whole self stepping into the glass like a man walking into a firing squad.
Kaelen was alone.
He stood before his own mirror. The reflection showed him younger, cleaner, standing in a room he didn’t recognize. There was a woman beside him—dark hair, sharp eyes, a smile that didn’t quite reach her face. Mira. She was holding a die.
“You shouldn’t have come,” the reflection said. But it wasn’t his voice. It was hers.
Kaelen’s blood went cold.
“Mira,” he said. “You’re not real. You’re a projection. The vault is using your face.”
“The vault is using my *memory*,” the reflection said. “But I’m still here, Kaelen. I’m still in the walls. I’m still in the rolls. I’m still in you.”
“You’re dead.”
“I’m erased. There’s a difference.” The reflection stepped closer, pressing its palm against the glass. On the other side, Kaelen felt a faint warmth, like a hand resting on his chest. “You rolled a one, Kaelen. You rolled a one and you erased me. But you didn’t do it because you wanted to. You did it because the Roll told you to.”
“The Roll doesn’t tell anyone to do anything,” he said. “It just adjudicates. It just decides.”
“It decides what it’s programmed to decide.” The reflection’s smile widened. “And I programmed it. I built the vault. I built the rules. I built the lie.”
“You built the Roll?”
“I built the *vault*. The Roll was already there—a system, a structure, a cage. I just made it visible. I made it playable.” She laughed, and the sound was hollow, like a bell struck underwater. “I thought I could fix it. I thought I could expose the corruption from the inside. But the Roll doesn’t want to be exposed. It wants to be obeyed.”
“Then why did you let me erase you?”
“Because I needed you to find this place.” The reflection pressed harder against the glass. “I needed you to see the truth. The Roll is rigged, Kaelen. It’s been rigged since the founding of Vantage. The dice don’t decide anything—they just display the outcome the founders already chose. Every roll is a script. Every player is an actor. And the Prime Die is the only die that rolls true.”
“Then why do you want me to steal it?”
“Because I don’t want you to steal it.” The reflection’s eyes glinted. “I want you to *break* it.”
The mirror shattered.
Kaelen stumbled forward as the glass exploded into a thousand glittering shards. He landed on his hands and knees on a floor of polished obsidian, the shards scattering around him like fallen stars. The chamber he’d entered was vast—a cathedral of black stone, lit by a single beam of light from above. And in the center of that light, on a pedestal of white marble, sat a die.
It was the Prime Die.
It was larger than any die he’d ever seen—the size of a fist, carved from a material that seemed to shift between ivory and bone. Its faces were not marked with pips but with symbols: a sun, a moon, a star, a flame, a wave, a void. It sat on the pedestal, perfectly still, and yet Kaelen could feel it *breathing*. Not with lungs, but with probability. Every possible outcome, every potential future, every branch of every choice—all of it hummed in the air around the die, a symphony of chance.
“You found it,” a voice said.
Kaelen turned. Mira stood at the edge of the light, her arms crossed, her expression unreadable. She looked exactly as he remembered her—dark hair, sharp eyes, the faint scar on her left cheek from a childhood accident she’d never explained.
“You’re not real,” he said.
“I’m as real as you need me to be.” She walked toward him, her footsteps silent on the obsidian. “I’m the echo she left behind. The last recording of her mind, preserved in the vault’s architecture. I’ve been waiting for you for a long time, Kaelen.”
“How long?”
“Long enough to watch you fall apart.” She stopped a few feet away, studying him with an expression that was almost fond. “You look terrible.”
“I’ve had a bad decade.”
“I know.” She reached out and touched his cheek. Her fingers were cold, but the touch was familiar. “I’m sorry I left you alone. I’m sorry I made you carry the weight of what I did.”
“You didn’t make me do anything. I rolled the die.”
“You rolled the die I handed you.” She smiled, and it was the same smile he’d seen in the mirror—the one that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I rigged that roll, Kaelen. I made sure you’d roll a one. I made sure you’d erase me. It was the only way to get you here.”
“You *chose* to be erased?”
“I chose to hide.” She stepped back, gesturing at the Prime Die. “The Roll is a lie, Kaelen. It’s been a lie since the founders built Vantage. They created the system to control the city, to keep the population docile, to make sure no one ever rose above their station. Every roll is predetermined. Every outcome is scripted. The only die that rolls true is the Prime Die—and that’s why they hid it here, in a vault that rewrites its own rules, guarded by a maze of memories and lies.”
“And you built the vault.”
“I built the vault to hide the die from them. I built it to keep it safe until someone came who could use it.” She looked at him, and her eyes were wet. “I built it for you, Kaelen. I built it so you could find it and break the Roll forever.”
“Break it?” He stared at the die. “How do you break a die?”
“You roll it.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small, ordinary die—white, with black pips. “But you don’t roll it like a player. You roll it like a cheat. You roll it outside the system. You roll a null.”
“A null?”
“A result that doesn’t exist. A number that isn’t on the die.” She held out the white die. “It’s the only way to break the Roll’s hold on Vantage. But it will cost you everything.”
“What does it cost?”
“Your identity.” Her voice was soft. “You’ll stop being a player. You’ll stop being a dice-mage. You’ll become a normal man, with no luck, no probability, no power. The Roll will never touch you again—but it will never *help* you again, either.”
Kaelen looked at the die in her hand. Then he looked at the Prime Die on its pedestal. Then he looked at Mira—at the echo of the woman he’d erased, the partner he’d failed, the friend he’d lost.
“I came here to steal the Prime Die,” he said. “I came here to restore you. I came here to fix what I broke.”
“I know.” She smiled. “But you can’t fix me, Kaelen. I’m gone. I chose to be gone. The only thing you can fix is the world I left behind.”
He took the die from her hand. It was warm, heavier than it looked.
“What happens to you?” he asked.
“I stay here,” she said. “I fade. I was never meant to last this long.” She reached out and touched his face one last time. “But I’ll be at peace, Kaelen. I’ll be at peace knowing you did the right thing.”
He closed his fist around the die.
Behind him, the vault began to rumble.
Kaelen watched it pulse—slow, deliberate, like a drummer keeping time for a funeral march—and felt the weight of every bad decision he’d ever made settle into his bones. The glass container sat on a steel tray beside the corpse, connected to nothing, sustained by nothing he could see. It just beat. On and on. The vault’s idea of a joke, probably.
“That’s not possible,” Lyra whispered from behind him. Her voice had lost its usual musical lilt, flattened by the sterile air. “He’s dead. Look at him. He’s *dead*.”
“The heart isn’t,” Rook said. The big man stood near the door, arms crossed, his scarred face unreadable. He’d been quiet since the labyrinth.
Kaelen stepped closer to the body. The man on the table wore a vault attendant’s uniform—crisp gray, brass buttons, a name tag that read *J. HALE*. His face was slack, eyes half-open, skin the color of old parchment. A thin line ran across his throat, precise as a scalpel cut. Whoever had done this knew exactly where to slice.
But the heart in the jar kept time like a metronome.
“This is a message,” Kaelen said. His voice came out rougher than he intended. “The vault is showing us what happens to people who work here.”
“Or what happens to people who fail,” Sable said. She stood at the far wall, running her fingers over a row of empty hooks. Each hook had a small brass plaque beneath it. *W. ORTIZ. M. CHEN. R. VASQUEZ.* The plaques were polished. The hooks were bare. “These are the attendants who used to work this floor. Someone took them down.”
“Took them down or *took* them down?” Lyra asked.
No one answered.
Kaelen forced himself to look away from the heart. He’d seen worse. He’d *done* worse. But there was something about the way it pulsed—steady, patient, almost expectant—that made his stomach turn. The vault wasn’t just showing them a corpse. It was showing them a clock.
“We need to keep moving,” he said. “The core is close. I can feel it.”
“You can *feel* it?” Lyra raised an eyebrow. “Since when do you feel anything but the bottom of a whiskey glass?”
“Since we got here.” He didn’t elaborate. The truth was simpler and stranger: the deeper they descended into the Vault of Final Odds, the more the air itself seemed to hum. Not a sound, exactly. More like a pressure behind his teeth, a static charge in his palms. The Prime Die was down here. He could taste it, copper and ozone, like a storm about to break.
The door at the far end of the room slid open without a sound.
Beyond it, the corridor stretched into darkness. The walls were lined with the same gray stone as the rest of the vault, but here the surface was covered in writing—scratched, carved, burned into the rock. Kaelen stepped closer and read the nearest line.
*THE HOUSE ALWAYS WINS.*
Below it, in smaller letters: *BUT THE HOUSE CAN BE BRIBED.*
Below that: *I TRIED. IT TOOK MY LEFT HAND.*
“Charming,” Lyra said, peering over his shoulder. “Is this the part where we’re supposed to turn back?”
“There’s no turning back,” Rook said. “The door behind us is gone.”
Kaelen glanced over his shoulder. Rook was right. The room they’d just left had vanished, replaced by a solid wall of stone. No seam, no handle, no hint that a door had ever existed there. The vault had swallowed its own entrance.
“It does that,” Sable said. She’d moved to the corridor’s edge, her fingers tracing the carved letters. “Every floor. It lets us in, then closes the door behind us. Like a stomach.”
“Great metaphor,” Lyra muttered.
They walked.
The corridor twisted and turned, branching at irregular intervals. Kaelen tried to keep track of the turns—left, right, left, left, right—but after the fifth junction, the pattern dissolved. The walls were covered in more writing now, denser than before. Names. Dates. Numbers. Some of them were familiar.
*K. VOSS — ROLL 17 — FAILED.*
His own name, carved in block letters, deep enough to catch his thumbnail.
“Kaelen,” Sable said quietly. She was standing at a section of wall a few paces ahead, her face pale. “You need to see this.”
He walked over. The carving was newer than the others—the edges still sharp, the stone dust fresh. It read:
*MIRA HALE — ROLL 1 — ERASED.*
The heart in the jar. The name tag. *J. HALE.*
“Hale,” Kaelen said. The word tasted like ash. “Her name was Mira Hale.”
“Was?” Lyra’s voice was careful. “You said she was erased. That’s not the same as dead.”
“It’s worse.” He ran his fingers over the carved letters. The stone was cold, but the grooves felt warm, like the vault had just finished writing them. “Erased means she never existed. No records. No memories. No one who knew her can remember her face, her voice, her name. She’s a hole in the world where a person used to be.”
“But you remember her,” Sable said.
“I’m the one who rolled the die that erased her.” He pulled his hand back. “I’m the only one who gets to carry that.”
The corridor opened into a circular chamber. The walls here were covered in mirrors—dozens of them, arranged in a ring, each one reflecting a different version of the room. Kaelen saw himself in the nearest glass, but the reflection was wrong. His face was younger, his eyes clearer, his jaw unshaven. He wore a different coat, a different life.
“Mirror maze,” Lyra said. “Great. I hate mirror mazes.”
“These aren’t ordinary mirrors,” Rook said. He was standing before one, his massive frame blocking most of the glass. “Look.”
Kaelen moved to stand beside him. The mirror showed Rook—but not the Rook who stood next to him. This Rook was whole. His face was unmarked, his hands steady, his eyes bright. He wore a soldier’s uniform, clean and pressed, with medals pinned to his chest.
“That’s who I was,” Rook said quietly. “Before the Roll took it all.”
“It’s showing us our pasts,” Sable said. She was at another mirror, her reflection a younger woman in a healer’s robe, holding a child’s hand. The child was laughing. Sable’s eyes were wet. “Our best versions. The lives we could have kept.”
“Or the lives we lost,” Lyra said. She was at a third mirror, her reflection a woman on a stage, bathed in golden light, a crowd on its feet. She was singing. The sound was so beautiful it made Kaelen’s chest ache.
“Don’t look,” he said. “It’s a trap. The vault wants us to dwell on what we’ve lost.”
“Too late,” Lyra said. “I’m already dwelling.”
Kaelen turned away from the mirrors, scanning the chamber for an exit. There was none. The walls were seamless, the mirrors unbroken. The only way forward was through the glass.
“We have to walk into them,” he said. “Each of us picks a mirror. We go through, and we find the others on the other side.”
“What if we don’t find each other?” Sable asked.
“Then we find the core and regroup there.” He pulled a coin from his pocket—a battered silver piece, worn smooth by years of handling. “I’ll mark the way. If you see this symbol, follow it.”
He scratched a small die shape into the coin’s face with his thumbnail, then pressed it into Sable’s palm.
“Keep it,” he said. “If we get separated, it’ll help you find me.”
“How?” she asked.
“Because I’m going to be the loudest thing in this vault.” He forced a grin. “Trust me.”
Sable didn’t smile back. She pocketed the coin and turned to her mirror. The glass rippled as she touched it, then swallowed her whole.
Lyra went next, her reflection singing a note that hung in the air long after she vanished. Rook followed without a word, his whole self stepping into the glass like a man walking into a firing squad.
Kaelen was alone.
He stood before his own mirror. The reflection showed him younger, cleaner, standing in a room he didn’t recognize. There was a woman beside him—dark hair, sharp eyes, a smile that didn’t quite reach her face. Mira. She was holding a die.
“You shouldn’t have come,” the reflection said. But it wasn’t his voice. It was hers.
Kaelen’s blood went cold.
“Mira,” he said. “You’re not real. You’re a projection. The vault is using your face.”
“The vault is using my *memory*,” the reflection said. “But I’m still here, Kaelen. I’m still in the walls. I’m still in the rolls. I’m still in you.”
“You’re dead.”
“I’m erased. There’s a difference.” The reflection stepped closer, pressing its palm against the glass. On the other side, Kaelen felt a faint warmth, like a hand resting on his chest. “You rolled a one, Kaelen. You rolled a one and you erased me. But you didn’t do it because you wanted to. You did it because the Roll told you to.”
“The Roll doesn’t tell anyone to do anything,” he said. “It just adjudicates. It just decides.”
“It decides what it’s programmed to decide.” The reflection’s smile widened. “And I programmed it. I built the vault. I built the rules. I built the lie.”
“You built the Roll?”
“I built the *vault*. The Roll was already there—a system, a structure, a cage. I just made it visible. I made it playable.” She laughed, and the sound was hollow, like a bell struck underwater. “I thought I could fix it. I thought I could expose the corruption from the inside. But the Roll doesn’t want to be exposed. It wants to be obeyed.”
“Then why did you let me erase you?”
“Because I needed you to find this place.” The reflection pressed harder against the glass. “I needed you to see the truth. The Roll is rigged, Kaelen. It’s been rigged since the founding of Vantage. The dice don’t decide anything—they just display the outcome the founders already chose. Every roll is a script. Every player is an actor. And the Prime Die is the only die that rolls true.”
“Then why do you want me to steal it?”
“Because I don’t want you to steal it.” The reflection’s eyes glinted. “I want you to *break* it.”
The mirror shattered.
Kaelen stumbled forward as the glass exploded into a thousand glittering shards. He landed on his hands and knees on a floor of polished obsidian, the shards scattering around him like fallen stars. The chamber he’d entered was vast—a cathedral of black stone, lit by a single beam of light from above. And in the center of that light, on a pedestal of white marble, sat a die.
It was the Prime Die.
It was larger than any die he’d ever seen—the size of a fist, carved from a material that seemed to shift between ivory and bone. Its faces were not marked with pips but with symbols: a sun, a moon, a star, a flame, a wave, a void. It sat on the pedestal, perfectly still, and yet Kaelen could feel it *breathing*. Not with lungs, but with probability. Every possible outcome, every potential future, every branch of every choice—all of it hummed in the air around the die, a symphony of chance.
“You found it,” a voice said.
Kaelen turned. Mira stood at the edge of the light, her arms crossed, her expression unreadable. She looked exactly as he remembered her—dark hair, sharp eyes, the faint scar on her left cheek from a childhood accident she’d never explained.
“You’re not real,” he said.
“I’m as real as you need me to be.” She walked toward him, her footsteps silent on the obsidian. “I’m the echo she left behind. The last recording of her mind, preserved in the vault’s architecture. I’ve been waiting for you for a long time, Kaelen.”
“How long?”
“Long enough to watch you fall apart.” She stopped a few feet away, studying him with an expression that was almost fond. “You look terrible.”
“I’ve had a bad decade.”
“I know.” She reached out and touched his cheek. Her fingers were cold, but the touch was familiar. “I’m sorry I left you alone. I’m sorry I made you carry the weight of what I did.”
“You didn’t make me do anything. I rolled the die.”
“You rolled the die I handed you.” She smiled, and it was the same smile he’d seen in the mirror—the one that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I rigged that roll, Kaelen. I made sure you’d roll a one. I made sure you’d erase me. It was the only way to get you here.”
“You *chose* to be erased?”
“I chose to hide.” She stepped back, gesturing at the Prime Die. “The Roll is a lie, Kaelen. It’s been a lie since the founders built Vantage. They created the system to control the city, to keep the population docile, to make sure no one ever rose above their station. Every roll is predetermined. Every outcome is scripted. The only die that rolls true is the Prime Die—and that’s why they hid it here, in a vault that rewrites its own rules, guarded by a maze of memories and lies.”
“And you built the vault.”
“I built the vault to hide the die from them. I built it to keep it safe until someone came who could use it.” She looked at him, and her eyes were wet. “I built it for you, Kaelen. I built it so you could find it and break the Roll forever.”
“Break it?” He stared at the die. “How do you break a die?”
“You roll it.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small, ordinary die—white, with black pips. “But you don’t roll it like a player. You roll it like a cheat. You roll it outside the system. You roll a null.”
“A null?”
“A result that doesn’t exist. A number that isn’t on the die.” She held out the white die. “It’s the only way to break the Roll’s hold on Vantage. But it will cost you everything.”
“What does it cost?”
“Your identity.” Her voice was soft. “You’ll stop being a player. You’ll stop being a dice-mage. You’ll become a normal man, with no luck, no probability, no power. The Roll will never touch you again—but it will never *help* you again, either.”
Kaelen looked at the die in her hand. Then he looked at the Prime Die on its pedestal. Then he looked at Mira—at the echo of the woman he’d erased, the partner he’d failed, the friend he’d lost.
“I came here to steal the Prime Die,” he said. “I came here to restore you. I came here to fix what I broke.”
“I know.” She smiled. “But you can’t fix me, Kaelen. I’m gone. I chose to be gone. The only thing you can fix is the world I left behind.”
He took the die from her hand. It was warm, heavier than it looked.
“What happens to you?” he asked.
“I stay here,” she said. “I fade. I was never meant to last this long.” She reached out and touched his face one last time. “But I’ll be at peace, Kaelen. I’ll be at peace knowing you did the right thing.”
He closed his fist around the die.
Behind him, the vault began to rumble.