Calla's P.O.V.
At first, nothing changed.
The world didn't explode. The Engine didn't collapse in on itself or rewrite the stars. No grand lights in the sky. No instant revelations.
Just… silence.
And then breath.
My breath.
It came shaky at first, ragged in the stillness, as if I'd forgotten how lungs worked in a body not caught between futures.
The chamber around me had dimmed. The Engine no longer spun—it *hovered,* suspended in stillness like a thought held mid-sentence. Its iris remained open, but no longer stared through me. It pulsed gently, like a heart finally syncing with its own rhythm.
It was quiet.
And it was *waiting.*
I stepped back from the dais, unsure what I'd done—what the Engine had actually *taken* from me, or given back. My hands trembled, fingertips dusted with faint white ash from the fragmented iris device. I could still feel echoes of the other Callas in my mind—ghosts of what I could've been. But they weren't fighting anymore. They were *watching.*
Witnesses to the version that chose not to erase them.
---
Outside, the air felt heavier than usual, like it had thickened with memory.
Ash met me first.
His eyes flicked across my face, searching. "What did you do?"
"I didn't rewrite anything," I said.
He frowned. "Then… why do I remember *both*?"
"Both?"
He nodded slowly. "The fractures. The moments we lost. The things the Engine took. I remember the version where my sister never came home. I also remember when she did. Both are *real.*"
My breath hitched.
"Jason said the same," he added. "So did Lila. She remembers the hospital. The crash. And also... the day she turned twelve twice."
The Engine hadn't chosen a timeline.
It had *kept them all.*
---
Mom was next.
She didn't speak. Just pulled me into a hug so tight, I thought it might crush the air right back out of my lungs.
"I saw him," she whispered into my hair.
I stiffened.
"In the kitchen. For a second. Like I blinked and he was there. And then... gone."
She pulled away. "But I remember what he said. He said you'd make the better choice."
My chest tightened.
"Do you think I did?" I asked.
She looked at me like I was still five years old, knee-deep in stormwater, eyes fixed on the sky.
"I think," she said slowly, "you stopped a machine from becoming a god. That seems pretty good for a Thursday."
---
The next few days were strange.
Not bad.
Just... layered.
People began remembering things they never lived. A woman at the store spoke fluent French, though she'd never learned it. A man who'd been blind since birth swore he saw colors in his dreams. Entire journals filled themselves in overnight with stories their owners had only imagined.
The town didn't collapse. It didn't riot or fall into paranoia.
It adapted.
Because somewhere deep down, everyone *knew* something had changed. That they were living not in a fixed line—but a branching one. And instead of rejecting that, they leaned into it.
People began to share their echoes.
Alternate birthdays. Memories of different pets. Letters that shouldn't exist. Losses that never happened—and some that always had.
It was messy.
But it was real.
---
Ash, Lila, Jason and I met by the lake again, two weeks after the sanctum closed.
Lila had changed the most. Her eyes no longer carried that shattered-glass quality, like she was trying to hold on to too many selves. She felt... centered.
"I dreamed of Rowen," she said, staring out over the still water. "She was walking. Just walking. For the first time."
"Was she smiling?" Jason asked.
Lila nodded.
"I think she finally let go."
Ash turned to me. "And you? What happens next, Calla?"
I didn't answer right away.
Because I wasn't sure.
---
That night, the Engine called to me again.
Not with a pulse.
With *vision.*
A single frame, flashing in the mirror that now hung silent in my bedroom wall. I hadn't hung it there. It simply... appeared.
Inside the reflection, a new version of myself stood in a city of light, surrounded by machines shaped like thought, holding something glowing and terrible in her hands. She looked older. Not in age—but in *experience.*
And written beneath the image, etched in the mirror like a signature:
> **Phase Two Approaches. Prepare the Echoborn.**
I stared at the words, heart hammering.
Echoborn.
Not tether.
Not reflection.
*Born* from the echoes.
A new category.
A new beginning.
---
I went to Rowen's clearing, but she wasn't there.
Not physically.
But as I stood in the moss-ringed circle, a soft hum began in my chest—familiar now. Not dangerous. Just... alert.
The Engine was quiet.
But not asleep.
It was changing.
And so was I.
---
The next morning, I found a sealed envelope on my windowsill. No postage. No name. Inside:
> **You chose to understand. Now teach the others to remember.**
Below that, a string of coordinates.
A place far from Mirror Lake.
Far from this town.
Far from the first fork.
I knew then—this wasn't the end of the story.
Just the closing of the first layer.
There would be more.
More choices.
More echoes.
More selves to find.
And maybe—just maybe—a world we could build not from illusion, not from regret...
But from **remembrance.**