The glyph held.
At least, that's what Arlo said the next morning.
Eli had stopped flickering. His body moved like it belonged in the world again. He even laughed—once—when Ivy nearly tripped over a ripple-shadow near the orchard gates.
But something still felt wrong.
It wasn't him.
It was everything else.
The school hallways didn't echo the same.
The lights blinked in unfamiliar patterns.
And Ivy had started hearing songs in the stairwells—ones she'd never heard, sung in voices that weren't there.
At first, she thought she was dreaming again.
Until she looked into the chemistry lab mirror and saw herself… with green hair.
Not dyed.
Not tricked.
Just a different Ivy.
Wearing a blazer she didn't own, standing beside a version of Arlo with a scar on his jaw and no ripple mark on his neck.
They didn't speak.
But they held hands.
Ivy turned away from the mirror—and nearly screamed when she caught her own reflection again, back to normal.
---
It got worse that afternoon.
She opened her locker and found a notebook that wasn't hers.
Inside: drawings of glyphs she hadn't learned.
One page read:
"Version 12: Rebellion broken by the crown's acceptance. Do not let her remember. Do not let her touch the mirror."
Her name wasn't on the cover.
The initials were:
C.S.
Calla Storme.
Ivy closed the book and slammed the locker shut.
The walls whispered.
---
She confronted Calla after sixth period.
Met her in the janitor's hallway, where the ripple cracked sideways through the tile like a scar no one else saw.
Calla leaned against the wall, arms crossed.
"I know what you're about to say," she said.
"I'm sure you do."
Ivy pulled the notebook from her bag and held it out.
"You kept records."
"I kept us alive."
"These aren't just glyph notes," Ivy snapped. "These are version logs."
Calla didn't deny it.
"You were breaking apart," she said. "Someone had to keep track of which version remembered what."
"Which means you've known more this whole time."
Calla looked away.
"I thought you'd wake up slower," she said softly. "I thought if I bought time, you wouldn't have to—"
"Choose?" Ivy asked bitterly.
Calla nodded once.
Ivy's voice dropped. "And what about the one who already chose? The version who shattered the Crown and gave up everything?"
"She's dead."
"She's me."
Calla pushed off the wall.
"I made a deal," she said.
That stopped everything.
"What kind of deal?"
"With someone who remembers more than both of us combined."
Ivy's chest went cold. "You went outside the Council."
Calla didn't flinch.
"They were going to take you if the third mark bloomed. They still might."
"And your solution was to make a deal with someone who doesn't even exist in this version?"
Calla's mouth tightened.
"She exists in enough of them."
---
That night, Ivy stood in front of the ripple-room mirror and saw herself flicker.
Not just shift.
Flicker.
Her skin went pale. Her hair changed color. The mark on her wrist shifted shape.
And for just one second, she saw no reflection at all.
Like the Veil was holding its breath.
And behind her—
The mirror whispered:
"The fourth word is not a word.
It is a choice."
---