Chapter 39: Kai's Dreams

Chapter 39: Kai's Dreams
Kai's Point of View

The beings of the previous universe came with the fury of creatures who had waited thousands of years for revenge. Their bodies were familiar and yet alien - recognizable as having originally been human, but warped by centuries of existing in the zones between universes.

But as they took form, something else was happening to me. Marcus's memories, hazy and fragmented since our souls' union, came into sharp focus all of a sudden. I remembered all that he had done, all that he had chosen, all of Nora's early life and death.

Marcus standing in his office, signing documents that would cause pack land to expand by the annihilation of neighboring families.

Mate meets secretly with Elena, plotting to kill her off gradually in the name of being a faithful mate.

Mate witnessing Nora suffering from periodic sicknesses, well aware of what they were caused by but valuing his bond with Elena over his mate's well-being.

"No," I breathed, the weight of inherited guilt bearing down on me.

"Kai?" Nora cried out, but I could barely hear her above the flood of Marcus's memories.

The night of Nora's death. Marcus held her in his arms as the poison tore through her system, murmuring sweet things as he did absolutely nothing to assist her. 

I'm sorry,\\" he'd explained. "But Elena is correct. You're too weak for what the pack requires."

Nora's brown eyes, with betrayal and confusion written across them, looking up at him as life slipped away. 

Marcus, please,\\" she'd said. "I love you."

"I know," he replied. "That's what makes this necessary."

"Monster," I'd spoken aloud, my voice shattering with the sobs of two worlds apart. "He was a monster. An absolute monster."

The memories still came in waves, uncovering the full extent of Marcus's sins. Not just against Nora, but against the score of other wolves over the years.

Authorizing the murder of pack members who had dared to question his methods.

Conspiring accidents for rivals who challenged his position.

With his Alpha power to conceal murders, disappearances, and institutionalized cruelty.

"Kai," Elena replied, her transformation restraint as I saw my hurt. "What's the matter?"

"I can see everything," I replied, Marcus's guilt mingling with my own anger. "All the crimes, all the betrayals, all the times he chose power over love."

The beings from the former universe were assuming position around the Council space, gazing towards the cosmic entities who had destroyed their world. But their leader, a shape that would have been beautiful once but was now twisted by centuries of rage, turned towards me.

"Marcus Silverback," it said in a grinding stone voice. "We remember you."

"I'm not Marcus," I said in a last-ditch effort. "I'm Kai. Marcus is dead."

"Are you?" The monster came closer, and I sensed madness burning in what had once been eyes. "You contain his soul, his recollections, his shame. That makes you guilty of his crimes."

I felt Marcus's terror mingling with mine in the shared consciousness. Even in death, he was still paying for his sins.

Mistakes: Marcus's first meeting with beings from in between realities. They had vowed to grant him power in exchange for some services.

"We need someone to thin reality walls," they had told him. "Someone to do enough spiritual damage so that the walls between worlds are weakened."

"What kind?" Marcus had asked.

"Sacrilege of the innocent. Treachery of trust. The shattering of bonds that unite communities. The more sacred the bond you destroy, the more powerful the damage.\\"

That was when Marcus had agreed to Elena's plan to kill Nora. Not for power, but because murdering his own mate would deal exactly the kind of spiritual damage the entities needed.

"Dear Moon Goddess," I breathed, finally understanding. "The pack house. The territory. It's all built on spiritual damage."

"What do you mean?" Nora asked, moving closer despite the encroaching entities.

"Marcus didn't murder people randomly. He targeted specific bonds, specific relationships. Mate bonds, parent-and-child, pack loyalties." The visions were making the pattern clear to me now. "Each murder collapsed the boundaries between worlds."

"Making portals for beings from other universes," the Moon Goddess declared in increasing horror.

"Such as us," the leader of the survivors from the last universe replied with dark glee. "Marcus Silverback's atrocities provided the fissures we required to break free from our cage."

The cosmic beings that engulfed us were beginning to realize the full scope of what was happening. The Convergence Eclipse wasn't just giving Elena a doorway to other worlds - it was giving every being ever displaced or eradicated a chance to return.

"How many worlds have been destroyed to make space for new ones?" I asked the leader of the survivors.

"Thousands. Millions. Whenever the cosmic beings are bored with a world, they destroy it and recreate another." The form of the creature was solidifying, becoming more formidable. "We are the echoes of all the worlds that have been killed."

"And you want to get your revenge," Elena said, her own metamorphosis accelerating.

"We want to be made whole. We want our realities restored to us." The creature extended its hand, and more survivors appeared - beings from countless broken universes, each of them radiating the anger of the unjustly killed. "And we want the beings who did these things punished."

The Primordial Concepts and their Negations were retreating now, at last acknowledging a danger they had not anticipated. But the Balance Child moved forward, her small form radiating peaceful authority.

"There is another way," she murmured.

"Child," the leader of the survivors snarled. "You do not understand what we have lost."

"Can't I?" The Balance Child's voice vibrated with harmonics that told of vast experience despite her apparent youth. "I was born of light and darkness, hammered out of the cosmic crucible of conflict. I know exactly what loss is."

"Then you see why we need justice."

"I see why you would want it. But I also know that revenge hurts more than it repairs." The boy gestured towards the cosmic entities that encompass us. "Look at them. They destroy and create in endless cycles because they never learned to repair what was broken."

With Marcus's memories, I was able to understand what she was telling me. The cycle continued through the eons - creatures gaining strength by eliminating, applying strength to build newer worlds, becoming bored with these worlds and destroying them to create newer ones.

"But what if the cycle were broken?" the child continued. "What if instead of making new damage in order to fix the old ones, we learned how to heal the hurt and fix all of them simultaneously?"

"Impossible," several entities chimed together.

"Is it?" The boy looked around the Council chamber with eyes of impossible depth. "Elena's intention is to combine with infinite iterations of herself in all realities. What if we altered that intention?"

"How?" Elena demanded, her shift still in progress but slowing as she listened.

"Instead of a single consciousness governing all realities, what if all realities were able to exist alongside one another? A tapestry of multiverses where every possibility, every world that's been destroyed, every lost universe exists in harmony?"

It was staggering. Not just restitution of the lost realities, but coexistence with all possible realities.

"The Convergence Eclipse makes this possible," the child went on. "For this moment, all boundaries are thin enough to remake completely."

"And what is the cost?" I asked, knowing from Marcus's memories that cosmic power never had a price tag.

"Someone would have to be the endless anchor, maintaining equilibrium between endless realities forever." The child's gaze fluttered from Elena to Nora. "Someone would have to give up their individual existence in order to be the living cornerstone of the new multiverse order."

Elena and Nora looked at each other, and I saw comprehension leap between them.

"Together," Elena breathed.

"Agreed," Nora agreed.

Before they could act, however, the survivor leader made a gesture that changed everything.

"We reject this solution," he uttered cold words. "The Primordial beings who perpetuated these atrocities must be punished before healing can begin."

The survivors attacked as one, not at the Primordial beings, but at the Balance Child herself.

"If we can't have restoration," the leader bellowed as cosmic energy burst towards the small figure, "then we will have revenge!"