Chapter 257: Lio’s Choice - Lord of the Foresaken - NovelsTime

Lord of the Foresaken

Chapter 257: Lio’s Choice

Author: Coolos3
updatedAt: 2025-08-02

CHAPTER 257: LIO’S CHOICE

The original Archivist stood before them like a paradox made flesh.

Lio’s breath caught in his throat as he stared at the impossible figure. This wasn’t another fragment—this was him, but whole. Complete. Unmarked by the terrible choices and sacrifices that had carved hollow spaces in his soul. The original Archivist’s eyes held depths that Lio had forgotten he once possessed, before the weight of infinite stories had broken him into pieces.

"You’re not real," the silver-haired fragment whispered, her voice trembling with recognition and disbelief. "You were shattered. We are the shards of what you became."

The original Archivist smiled—a expression so genuine, so unmarked by pain, that it was almost unbearable to witness. "I am as real as any choice that was never made. As real as any story that was never told." His gaze swept across the fragments, and in his eyes was something that none of them had seen in eons: hope without desperation.

"But that’s impossible," the teacher fragment said, her form flickering as she tried to process the contradiction. "You can’t exist in a state of non-choice. The moment you decided to fragment yourself, you ceased to be whole."

"Did I?" The original Archivist took a step forward, and where his feet touched the collapsing realm, the chaos stilled. Not stopped—stilled, as if reality itself was holding its breath. "Or did I simply create the possibility of becoming whole again?"

Around them, the cascade of infinite alternatives continued its rampage. The thirteenth fragment’s presence pressed against the bubble of calm that surrounded the original Archivist, but could not penetrate it. Even the voices of the discarded seemed muted in his vicinity.

"This changes nothing," the thirteenth fragment hissed, its voice carrying undertones of uncertainty for the first time. "The cascade cannot be stopped. All possibilities will become actual. All rejected choices will claim their right to exist."

"Perhaps," the original Archivist agreed calmly. "But not yet. And in the space between ’perhaps’ and ’yet,’ there is room for one more choice."

He turned to Lio, and the fragment felt something he hadn’t experienced since his creation—the weight of being truly seen by someone who understood him completely.

"You know what you have to sacrifice," the original Archivist said gently. "The memory that defines you more than any other. The one that made you who you are, for better and worse."

Lio’s hands trembled as the name formed in his mind: Shia.

The memory rose unbidden—not just her face, but everything she had been. The way she laughed at his terrible jokes. The warmth of her hand in his during the long nights when the weight of infinite stories threatened to crush him. The morning she had looked at him with eyes full of understanding and said, "I know what you have to do, and I know it will break you, but I also know you’ll do it anyway because that’s who you are."

She had been his anchor in the storm of infinite possibility. The one constant that had kept him sane even as he made the choices that would eventually shatter him into fragments. And now—

"I can’t," Lio whispered, the words torn from his throat like pieces of his soul. "She’s all I have left that’s purely good. If I unmake her memory, if I erase her from my timeline, what kind of monster does that make me?"

The warrior fragment stepped closer, her blade steady despite the chaos around them. "The kind that saves everyone else," she said grimly. "The kind that pays the price so others don’t have to."

"But she’ll become one of them," the child fragment sobbed, pointing toward the writhing darkness where the voices of the discarded wailed their eternal protests. "She’ll be trapped in the space between choices, screaming for recognition that will never come."

The original Archivist nodded slowly. "Yes. That is the price. To save reality, you must damn the one person who made your existence bearable. You must make her suffer an eternity of rejection so that others can continue to exist."

Lio felt his consciousness fracturing under the weight of the choice. Around him, his fellow fragments watched with expressions of terrible sympathy. They all had their own beloved memories—people who had shaped them, defined them, made them more than just echoes of possibility. And they all knew that in his position, they would face the same impossible decision.

The Gate of Unmaking pulsed with hungry patience. Its anti-light seemed to reach toward him, sensing the magnitude of what he was prepared to sacrifice. In its depths, he could see the shadows of other beloved memories that had been fed to the space between choices—lovers, friends, children, parents, all of them crying out from the darkness of unmade existence.

"Choose quickly," the thirteenth fragment pressed, its voice growing stronger as the cascade continued to spread. "Every moment you hesitate brings us closer to the point where choice itself becomes meaningless."

But the original Archivist held up a hand, and even the thirteenth fragment’s presence seemed to recoil slightly. "Time is a luxury we can afford for a few moments more. This choice deserves to be made with full understanding of its consequences."

He turned back to Lio, and in his eyes was an ocean of compassion that had never been diminished by necessity. "Tell me about her. Tell me why her memory matters more than the continued existence of all reality."

The question hit like a physical blow, but Lio found himself answering despite the pain. "Because she saw me. Not the Archivist, not the keeper of infinite stories, not the one who made the hard choices. She saw Lio—just Lio—and she loved him anyway."

His voice broke as the memories cascaded through him. "She used to make these terrible drawings of the places we’d go when everything was over. Little stick figure versions of us standing on beaches that existed in no reality, under skies painted with colors that had no names. She said that even if those places never existed, the fact that she could imagine them was enough."

The fragments listened in silence as Lio continued, his words painting a picture of love so pure it seemed to push back against the surrounding chaos.

"The night before I made the choice to fragment myself, she held me while I cried. She didn’t try to stop me. She didn’t try to find another way. She just held me and told me that no matter what happened, no matter how many pieces I broke into, I would always be the person she fell in love with."

He looked up at the Gate of Unmaking, its hungry void waiting to devour the most precious part of his existence. "How do I murder that? How do I take the one pure thing in my entire existence and feed it to the darkness?"

The original Archivist stepped closer, and when he spoke, his voice carried the weight of infinite understanding. "Because that’s what love is, Lio. It’s not possession. It’s not keeping someone safe in the amber of memory. Love is letting go when holding on would destroy everything they believed in."

"She believed in you," the silver-haired fragment added softly. "She believed you would make the right choice, even if it broke your heart."

"And this is the right choice?" Lio asked, his voice hollow with despair.

"No," the original Archivist replied, his honesty brutal in its compassion. "This is just the only choice. There is no right or wrong here—only necessary and impossible. And unfortunately, they’re the same thing."

Lio closed his eyes and felt Shia’s memory one last time. Her laughter echoing through dimensions. Her hand warm in his. Her voice whispering that she loved him, would always love him, no matter what choices he had to make.

He opened his eyes and stepped toward the Gate.

The anti-light reached for him like hungry fingers, and he could feel it already beginning to probe his memories, searching for the one that would serve as payment. The shadows within the Gate writhed with anticipation, ready to welcome another beloved soul into their ranks of the eternally discarded.

But just as he reached the threshold, just as the Gate began to pull Shia’s memory from his consciousness like a surgeon extracting a beating heart, the original Archivist spoke again:

"Wait. There might be another way."

Lio froze, hope and terror warring in his chest. Behind him, the thirteenth fragment’s presence surged with something approaching panic.

"No. The price must be paid. The pattern must be maintained. Love must be sacrificed for the continuation of reality."

But the original Archivist was smiling—not with joy, but with the terrible satisfaction of someone who had just realized how to break the rules of an impossible game.

"Who says it has to be his love that gets sacrificed?"

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