The memories of the third incarnation blurred and faded quickly, thankfully. Yuriko’s face was still red from what that future version of her did every evening. The memories faded, but the sensations…

Oh Ancestors! The sensations remained. It didn’t surface all the time but merely thinking about it made it return with a vengeance. Was it really that good?

Yes.

And now Damien was back. He hadn’t spoken at all during the entire ordeal and she was sure he was absent throughout all of the visions. Why, though? It was as if those futures didn’t even know he existed and that she stumbled upon the Ancient’s Way all on her own. Oh, Fri’Avgi had been the key! The methods were locked inside her artefact, and it wouldn’t have taken much to learn from it.

Anyway, what now?

Yuriko opened her eyes and stared at her clones. The first, the Shaper, gave a sad smile. The second, the Destroyer, gave back a feral grin. The third, the Fate Spinner, returned a seductive smirk. Three futures. Three paths.

Choose which path you must take.

The whispered words came from nowhere and from everywhere at once.

Choose a path, choose one of the three futures laid out for you.

But…Chaos, no!

She didn’t want any of them to be her future!

Of the three, the Shaper’s was the most benign, but even that one she didn’t want to take. She didn’t even know why the Destroyer did what she did and she certainly wasn’t going to play the Fate-Spinner’s game. Even if she were dragged to the Abyss, she would not choose any of the three paths!

Something pressed against her mind, pressuring her to choose. She pushed back, at first with just her Will, but it wasn’t enough. She felt her mind start to buckle and she felt the need to choose, to lock in her Fate to one of the three presented. The visions were of the future, but they were not set. She could still adjust and change her path. The ones she saw were just the most likely to happen if she just went with the flow…

She felt her hand lift to point, and oddly enough, it was headed towards the third incarnation. But…NO!

The full weight of her Will and Intent, with a hefty helping of her Anima, she shoved the pressure away and took a deep breath.

Why was it pushing her to take a path? Those golden threads…were they the Threads of Fate? The lines used to weave the fabric of reality? The Threads were mentioned in the Church of the Everlasting Order in that they were the representation of each person’s life: past, present, and future. The past cannot be changed, the present is now, but the future is in flux. The Threads could lead to a possible event, but were not ironclad. Greater beings can pluck a thread, strum it to create beauty, even if the one strummed had their life cut short. The Fateweaver Loom was an artefact that protected the Threads of the Imperial citizens, preventing the Great Old Ones from tampering with their lives.

The three incarnations were made of the Threads. That, Yuriko was sure of. But how did the incarnations come to be? The World Trials mentioned by Damien? But…what was their basis?

Yuriko stared at the three, who stared back at her without changing expressions. When she squinted, she could just make out the golden threads they were made of. One strand led out the back, melting into the dreamscape. Another strand, coming from their feet, stretched out, and touched her feet.

She looked deeper into her dreamscape self. She’d always looked outward when she was here. Normally, it was with the Golden Silhouette from her Facet or Damien. But she rarely looked at her own avatar. The golden threads snaked into her body, winding up her legs and up into her core. There, they turned into chains.

The dreamscape continued to ripple, creating greater and greater waves that shook the immediate surroundings.

Hurry!

‘What?’ Yuriko thought crossly at Damien. ‘I’m not going to remain chained!’

I’m not asking you to! Just…don’t stay too long here. You don’t know who can watch.

The man’s voice was nervous and it was rather unlike him to act like this. But if she didn’t want to be forced into one of the three incarnations, what could she do? How long had she been in the dreamscape anyway? It must be close to morning by now…and if someone interrupted her, what would happen? Would her trials be interrupted, too, or would they be unable to wake her up?

She got the feeling that the trials must continue until it finished, and she could not avoid making a choice. But, were the three in front of her the only choices she could make?

Not making a choice was also a choice, wasn’t it? But, she felt that indecision wouldn’t work here. No one walking the Ancient’s Way was allowed to be indecisive. If she didn’t take a step forward, she would be taking a step back. If she did that…her Anima would be locked.

Yuriko’s eyes widened with that revelation. Move forward or forever remain stagnant. But…she now knew that the three in front of her were not the only choices. They were the easiest, and the worst.

They were from chains binding her core, her heart. But just because she knew it didn’t mean that the solution was easy to see!

No, focus! If they were from the chains that bound her, what were those chains attached to? Look closer!

Each strand of the threads, from each of the incarnations, were attached to her core. The end point was hooked around something. No, they were all hooked to the same thing. The thickest chains bound to the same place and through it, created a commonality between all three possible futures. What was it?

In all three…she served the needs of the Empire. With the first, she expanded its borders. With the second, she killed its enemies outside. With the third, she culled those who would subvert and change its directions! The Empire…

The hook around her core became clearer. It was in the shape of the Empire’s sigil, an eight pointed silver sunburst above an oak tree. The chains wrapped around the trunk. A closer look and she knew what it represented. Her loyalty and love for her nation. Grown from a seed planted by her parents and watered everyday with words and lectures. Her deepest desire had always been to keep her people safe.

She wanted to become a marksman like her Da. She wanted it because she wanted the power to defeat a Wyldling Wave as easily as Virgil did back when she had been a child of six years. She wanted to join the Legion Vagaris because her parents had met there, both in the service of the Empire. It was a tree that spread its canopy to shelter all of them from the harsh sun.

But…the Radiant Sun gave its energy to allow life to flourish. She absorbed it to give herself the power to destroy, and to defend. She didn’t need to be sheltered from the sun.

All at once she felt a kinship to the celestial body. The Radiant Sun! The essence within her was a microcosm, and if she continued to feed and grow it, it would become as powerful as the Radiant. The Empire…

In all three lives, her service to it dictated her course in life. She married someone she didn’t want or love because that was her duty. And in doing so, her life had warped from freedom to bondage. Even if those chains were light, they altered the path enough that she could barely recognize herself.

She cannot. Oh, she cannot bear it. She will not be chained. Not by her love for her nation, and not by her love for her family and the weight of their expectations. She couldn’t take it. She just couldn’t. Maybe it was because of Damien, too. The man’s ideals, of power great enough to grant the ultimate freedom, had seeped into her consciousness. However, that would never have happened if not for how it resonated with her own Will.

But the Empire’s sigil wasn’t the only hook that the chains were latched to. She recognised the symbols too. The crosshatched stripes and the five-petalled flower for the Mishala Clan. The crossed Plasma Caster and Lancet with a kite shield behind for the Davar Clan. The faces of her parents and her brothers.

Heron’s face. Orrin and Braden. Gwendith Devi Sharine, for some strange reason, and even Kale Kinnock. Reinhardt’s face was there, too, along with Finan’s. Krystal and Mikel, her dear friends. The chains bound her to them too, and she had no desire to be free of them.

Throughout all of that, the Empire’s chains were the heaviest. The Atavism Ritual had been the source of her power, or it was at least what brought out her potential. Only the Empire can do that. Didn’t she owe her allegiance even if just for that?

But no, those chains were too heavy. She didn’t even follow the path her Ancestors laid out for her. The weight of responsibility was too disproportionate. And because of that, she knew that she could shatter those without any great consequence.

The chains binding her to her family and friends were much lighter. They served to anchor her to the earth, but they didn’t bind her. She could leave those be. For now.

Fri’Avgi materialised in her hands, and with a tremendous roar, she smashed the artefact against her own core, aimed at the Imperial chains. If she were free of those, she knew she wouldn’t have to choose amongst the three incarnations. She would truly step away from a preordained path and walk however she chose.

It didn’t mean that she didn’t love the Empire. It merely meant that she wouldn’t be blind.

Fri’Avgi’s dull edge crushed the thickest chains, and for a moment, Yuriko felt nothing. And then…it was as if she was trying to tear her own heart out.

Yes!

Damien’s exultant cries spurred her on despite pain even worse than what she’s ever felt before. It was not something physical. Her body could bear it, but not her Anima. Cracks spiderwebbed across the entirety of it, widening and revealing the darkness beneath. Even worse, the cracks permeated everything, even unto her core. She was merely moments away from shattering and turning into a mindless husk.

She could feel herself grow distant, the pain receding. But that was much, much worse. No pain. No body. No Anima. If she could not feel, then wasn’t she dead?

The tendrils of her Will, bolstered by stubbornness inherited from both sides of her family, spread out from within and held together her shattering self.

I will not bend. I will not break! I will not die unless I choose to!

The pain returned but was ignored. The shattering of her Anima also shattered the chains that bound her to the Empire. Her Facet and Heritage…they were the source of it! How could she have missed that? But…

Her decisions back when she advanced to Apprentice…those were still valid. Her Heritage and Facet were her connection to her family! If she wiped that away, she would be adrift. However…couldn’t she choose to wander at their side? She didn’t have to be chained to their boat to float next to them.

Ah, it’s not as if everything about her Heritage was a chain that bound her. No, only the outer part. With a thought, the incomplete and fuzzy Heritage lines started to blur and fade. Her Facet did the same. It was no longer needed. She held the pattern, and she could always recreate it at need. But no longer would they become the anchor points of those chains.

Tears fell from her eyes, both in the dreamscape and from her body in the corporeal. It was necessary, but it still hurt. She would have laughed at her past self, who decided that she needed to keep both and would be all the better for it. She thought that she was pioneering a new path!

It was indeed new, but the only place it led to was a deadend. At the bottom of a ravine with the skies weeping and the threat of flood and death. The Facet was too weak to advance as an Imperial, and her Anima was constrained and unable to reach as far as it could.

The Ancient’s Way wasn’t certain either. She knew that it ended at this exact point, and how she proceeded was up to her. Actualization. It was time to determine who she was. The easy paths, the three incarnations, those could have been her. But they were not what she wanted to be. So she will not be them. Some parts of the three remain within her, but it will not determine her path. She will choose to be who she will be.

I am myself, and I will be the only one to choose.

And with those words, the dreamscape shattered around her, and darkness once more claimed her mind. But she knew that the trials were over, and she…was no longer chained.

______

“Someone has walked off the Ancient’s Way.”

The woman glanced briefly down, at the spark that shone bright enough to attract her attention. But it was fleeting. A child has left the nest and attempted to fly, ignoring the paths she’d laid out for them.

That was fine. She would always welcome those on the path to Exaltation.