Chapter 28 Elle #2
“He tortured me,” she said bluntly. “Called it calibration, testing, tuning. Strapped me to this living wood platform and pushed Bloom-energy through my marks until I screamed. Made me experience every sensation I’ve ever felt all at once.
Hours of it, while he took notes like I was a fucking science experiment. ”
The garden around us darkened. My corruption flared.
“But that’s not the worst part,” she continued, her voice steady despite the tremor I could feel through our bond. “The worst part is what he told me. About why he’s doing this. About the iterations.”
“Iterations?”
“Sixteen of them.” She looked up at me, and her eyes held knowledge that shouldn’t be there—ancient, terrible knowledge.
“Sixteen times this story has played out. Sixteen times I’ve come to Wynmire.
Sixteen times you’ve tried to save me. Sixteen times we’ve failed, and the cycle resets.
Now we are at the end of the seventeenth wondering if we will make the same mistakes again. ”
The words hit me like physical blows. “What are you talking about?”
“Auradelle told me.” Her hands fisted in my shirt. “About other timelines. I’ve died sixteen different ways, Kaelren. I saw you become a monster trying to save me, over and over. I saw us fail every single time.”
“That’s not possible—”
“Isn’t it?” She pulled back enough to look at me fully.
“Think about it. Think about the things that don’t make sense.
The way Eltrien talks about patterns and wheels.
The way he always seems to know what’s coming next.
The way he mentioned me dying in iteration fifteen before and then tried to cover it. ”
My mind was racing, corruption spreading faster as pieces clicked into place with sickening clarity.
“On the way to the monastery,” I said slowly. “I thought he was being cryptic, being Eltrien, but—”
“He knows.” Elle’s voice was certain. “He’s been carrying this knowledge the whole time. Watching us repeat the same mistakes, following the same pattern, failing the same way. And he never told us.”
The garden around us was dying rapidly now, my rage destroying everything my corruption touched. “How long has he known?”
“I don’t know. But Auradelle talked about being able to remember across iterations now that he’s done the research. I wonder if Eltrien is the same. Like he’s been watching this play out over and over, and he’s just been waiting to see if this time would be different.”
“Different how?”
“Me.” She touched my face, forcing me to focus on her instead of the fury building in my chest. “I’m different this time.
The pattern is ‘woman arrives, falls for you, has to choose between saving you or saving the realms, chooses wrong, everyone dies, reset.’ But this time, I know about the pattern.
I know what Auradelle’s planning. I know there have been sixteen other Elles who stood where I’m standing, and they all failed. ”
“So what does that mean?”
“It means we can break it.” Her voice held desperate determination. “If we know the pattern, we can change it. We can choose differently. We can—”
“We can’t do anything if you don’t survive the next session,” I interrupted, my hands tightening on her shoulders.
“Elle, you’re asking me to leave you in hell for another day while that bastard breaks you down further, and now you’re telling me this has all happened before?
That there are sixteen dead versions of you because we keep failing? ”
“Yes.” Her voice didn’t waver. “But charging in blind is exactly what you’ve done in every other iteration. You storm the Heartspire, corrupted beyond recognition, so focused on saving me that you walk right into his trap. And it never works. It never has.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because he told me.” She swallowed hard. “He wanted me to know. Wanted me to understand that resistance is futile, that the pattern always wins, that I’m just another Elle in a long line of Elles. He thought it would break me. Make me accept my role.”
“Did it?”
“No.” Her smile was fierce and defiant. “It pissed me off. Because if there have been sixteen iterations where I failed, that means I get to be the seventeenth one who doesn’t. The one who breaks the fucking wheel instead of being crushed by it.”
I stared at her—this impossible woman who’d crashed into my world and refused to accept any ending that wasn’t her own. Even now, even tortured and trapped and told she was doomed to fail, she was fighting.
“I’ve seen it.”
That halted all my thoughts. “What have you seen, Elle?”
“Other versions of us. When he tortured me and tested me against the Bloom it brought visions of some of the cycles before.”
“Show me,” I said suddenly. “Let me see these other iterations.”
She hesitated, fear spiking through the bond. Not fear of showing me, but fear of reliving it.
“I need to understand,” I said more gently. “If we’re going to break the pattern, I need to know everything.”
She nodded. The garden shifted, reality bending, and suddenly I was experiencing her memory.
The ritual chamber. The platform. The wood binding her while she was still injured from the guard’s beating. Her cracked rib screaming. The frost burns from the guards’ hands.
Then Auradelle, clinical and detached, pressing his hand to her collarbone and pushing.
I felt it all through her senses, and then started getting glimpses of other timelines.
Me, storming the Heartspire so corrupted I looked more shadow than man. Cutting through guards, destroying everything in my path. Reaching Elle just as Auradelle completed his ritual. Watching her dissolve into the Bloom while I screamed and the corruption consumed me.
Another version: Elle making a different choice, sacrificing herself to save me. The realms collapsing anyway. Both of us dying as reality tore itself apart.
Another: Me arriving too late. Elle already gone. My corruption eating the Heartspire itself in rage before it consumed me too.
Sixteen failures, each slightly different but all ending the same way. A wheel turning endlessly, grinding us both to dust.
When the memories finally released me, I realized I’d destroyed the entire garden. We stood in an empty void now, nothing left but Elle and me and the all-consuming rage threatening to tear me apart.
“Kaelren.” Her voice was distant. “Come back to me. Stay present.”
I was shaking, my whole dream-form vibrating with fury so intense it was rewriting what little reality remained around us.
Not just fury at Auradelle, though that burned hot and bright.
Fury at Eltrien. At the healer who’d been guiding us, advising us, watching us, all while knowing we were repeating a pattern that had failed sixteen times before.
“He knew,” I snarled, and my voice made the void itself shudder. “Eltrien knew about the iterations. About the failures. About all of it. And he never told us. Never warned us. Just watched us stumble toward the same ending like we were pieces in a game he’d already lost sixteen times.”
“I know. Maybe that’s the only way he’s stayed sane through sixteen iterations of watching everyone he cares about die.”
“I don’t care about his sanity.” The words came out cold and vicious. “I care that he’s been playing puppet master while pretending to help. I care that he’s known the exact shape of the trap we’re walking into and he’s been letting us walk anyway.”
“What if he thinks we need to walk into it?” She grabbed my face, forcing me to focus on her. “What if the only way to break the pattern is to understand it first? To see how it fails so we can change it?”
“That’s too fucking convenient—”
“Or it’s the truth.” Her eyes searched mine. “Kaelren, I know you’re angry. I’m angry too. But think—if Eltrien could just tell us how to win, wouldn’t he have done it by now? Maybe the pattern doesn’t work that way. Maybe we have to figure it out ourselves, or the wheel just keeps turning.”
I wanted to argue. Wanted to reject the idea that Eltrien’s deception might serve a purpose. But she was right—if there was an easy answer, sixteen iterations wouldn’t have failed.
“I’m going to have words with him when this is over,” I said darkly. “Extensive words. Possibly involving my hands around his throat.”
“Get in line.” She managed a weak smile. “But first, we have to survive. And that means you can’t come charging in like every other Kaelren in every other iteration.”
“Then what do I do?” The question tore out of me. “How do I break a pattern that’s been repeating for—what, centuries? How long has this been going on?”
“I don’t know. But I know what doesn’t work—you, corrupted and desperate, storming in exactly when Auradelle expects you. That’s the pattern. That’s what fails every time.”
“So I wait.” The words tasted like ash. “I wait while he tortures you again. While he pushes your marks further. While he breaks you down piece by piece.”
“One more day,” she said, her voice cracking slightly. “Give me one more day to find his weakness. To understand what he’s really planning. To figure out how to sabotage it from the inside.”
One more day. Which meant waiting while she was tortured again, while I was too far away to help.
“You’re asking me to let him torture you,” I said, the words like broken glass in my throat. “I’ll feel it through the bond—muffled, but there—and I won’t be able to reach you.”
“I know.” Her hands tightened on my shirt. “But in every other iteration, you arrive early and walk right into his trap—exactly when he expects you to do. That’s the pattern, Kaelren.”
“And if I wait?”
“You strike at dawn on Convergence day when he’s preparing for the ritual.”
She was right. I hated that she was right, but she was. The tactical part of my mind could see it—arriving early meant fighting through his full defenses. Arriving the night before meant catching him mid-preparation.
But it also meant leaving her there longer to be tortured.