The page trembled beneath her fingers.
Anya held the pen—slim, sharp, pulsing with memory like a vein.
Two versions of me stood before her.
One scarred from loops, the other rebuilt by freedom.
Both waiting.
Neither speaking.
She didn't look at either of us.
She looked at the page.
And wrote.
"Let one Chen remember. Let the other forget."
The air cracked.
---
Narrative Fork Detected: Consciousness Split
Pain hit like lightning.
My body split down the middle—not blood, but paragraphs. On one side, I remembered everything. Every loop. Every death. Every betrayal.
On the other side—I remembered nothing. Just Eden. Just her.
The scarred Chen collapsed, overwhelmed.
The peaceful Chen blinked. Looked around.
"Where... am I?"
---
The Pen Writes On
Anya exhaled.
The pen hovered.
She wrote again:
"Let Eden exist between them. One above, one below."
The void rippled.
Reality split.
Eden divided.
An upper world of memory and fire.
A lower one of peace and illusion.
Two Edens.
One truth.
---
The Secret Eden Below
Peaceful Chen awoke in a garden of golden leaves.
Children played. Birds sang. Anya kissed him good morning.
There was no loop. No war. No Mu.
He had never known pain.
His story began there.
And it was perfect.
---
Above: The Burdened World
Scarred Chen awoke in the ashes of a broken library.
The pages of failed timelines surrounded him.
He bore the weight of everyone who had died in his name.
Mu's shadow whispered from the broken tree.
"You were chosen to carry them."
He wept. But stood.
And began walking.
---
Twist: Anya is Dying
In the center of the page, a new line wrote itself:
"The pen consumes the hand."
Anya gasped.
The pen began to burrow into her fingers.
Its ink—her blood.
"I thought I could split the pain," she whispered. "But narrative doesn't divide. It multiplies."
She fell to her knees.
Both Chens felt it.
---
The Echo Call
Scarred Chen heard her first.
Her voice in his mind.
Not a call. A memory.
"Find me before I vanish."
He looked up.
The sky burned with letters again:
"Chapter 48: The Last Rewrite"
He ran.
Below, peaceful Chen froze.
Something inside him stirred.
A fragment.
A glitch.
Anya's voice.
"Don't forget me."
He clutched his chest.
It was empty.
---
Cliffhanger: The Pen Falls
Anya dropped the pen.
It split.
Two shards.
One golden.
One black.
Both pulsing.
One for each Chen.
Whoever finds theirs first...
...finishes the story.