CHAPTER 120: UNEXPECTED CONSEQUENCES

Lily POV

I was dying and not dying at the same time.

The silver fire tore through my body as I poured everything I had into closing the reality tear. Pain beyond anything I’d ever felt burned through every cell, but I held on because Caleb needed me to. Because everyone needed me to.

Then suddenly, the pain stopped.

I opened my eyes expecting to see nothing - expecting to be gone, swallowed by the spell. Instead, I saw everything.

Three different forms of everything.

In one world, I stood in the forest clearing where the witches had been casting their magic. The reality tear was sealed, leaving only scorched ground behind. Sage and her coven sisters were picking themselves up from the ground, living but exhausted.

In another world, the same area was covered in ice and snow. The witches were there too, but they looked older, sadder. Some were missing totally. The reality tear had never been fixed in this version - it had grown until it swallowed half the forest.

In the third world, there was no clearing at all. Just empty space where the ground should be, floating in a void filled with stars that weren’t quite the right color.

All three worlds existed at the same time, layered on top of each other like transparent pieces of paper. And somehow, I was seeing all of them.

"Lily?" Caleb’s voice came from somewhere far away. "Lily, can you hear me?"

I tried to answer, but when I opened my mouth, my voice came out in three different tones - one from each world I was seeing. In the first world, I sounded normal. In the second, my voice was hollow and sad. In the third, I didn’t seem to have a say at all.

"Something’s wrong," I managed to say, though I wasn’t sure which world heard me.

I tried to move toward Caleb, but my body wouldn’t obey. Instead, I felt myself shifting between the three worlds. One moment I was solid in the first world, the next I was a ghost in the second, then totally invisible in the third.

"The spell worked too well," Elder Iris said weakly. In the first world, she was leaning against a tree, living but drained. In the second world, she was crying over a grave plaque. In the third world, she wasn’t there at all.

"What do you mean?" Sage asked. Her voice echoed strangely across all three worlds.

"The seal required Lily to burn through her connection to normal reality," Elder Iris explained. "But instead of destroying her, it scattered her across different dimensions. She’s seeing different versions of what could have been."

I felt fear rising in my chest. "I can’t stop it. I keep slipping between them."

In the first world, Caleb reached out to touch my face, and his hand passed right through me. In the second world, he wasn’t even looking at me - he was staring at the ground where I must have died. In the third world, he was screaming my name into empty space.

"How do we fix this?" Caleb ordered, his voice breaking.

"I don’t know if we can," Elder Iris revealed.

That’s when I noticed something that made my blood run cold. In two of the three worlds, there were shadows moving in the forest. The same shadows that had been following us before - Void Lieutenants.

But these weren’t the same ones we’d fought. These were different forms, from the worlds where the seal had failed or never happened at all. And somehow, my scattered life was creating bridges between the realities.

"The Lieutenants," I mumbled, watching them creep closer in the second and third worlds. "They’re coming through the connections I’m making."

Sage spun around, but she could only see the first world where everything was safe. "What Lieutenants?"

"From the other realities," I said desperately. "My condition is bringing the worlds together. The Void creatures from the failed realities are crossing over."

As if my words had made it real, one of the shadow dogs from the second world suddenly appeared in the first. It appeared right behind Maya, Sage’s sister, its red eyes burning with hunger.

Maya screamed as claws made of darkness raked across her back. The other witches rushed for defensive spells, but they were exhausted from the sealing procedure.

"I’m causing this," I realized with horror. "Every time I shift between worlds, I’m weakening the barriers."

More Lieutenants began appearing - first one, then three, then a whole pack of them. They poured through the cracks I was accidentally creating, bringing with them the smell of failed realities and broken hopes.

Caleb shifted into his wolf form and jumped at the nearest Lieutenant, but his claws passed through it like it was made of smoke. The thing laughed and slashed at him with very real claws.

"They’re from different dimensions," Elder Iris said, trying to cast a protection spell. "Physical attacks won’t work."

"Then what will?" Sage commanded, helping her injured sister stand.

I felt myself shifting again, sliding between the three worlds like a ball bouncing between walls. In the second world, I saw something that gave me an idea - a version of myself that had never tried to seal the tear, who was still fully linked to normal reality.

"I need to merge with my other selves," I said, though I wasn’t sure if anyone could hear me. "If I can combine all three versions, I might be able to control the dimensional bleeding."

"How?" Caleb asked, avoiding another Lieutenant’s attack.

"I have to let go," I said, feeling tears running down my face. "I have to stop fighting the shifts and let myself fall between all the worlds at once."

"No!" Caleb howled. "You’ll disappear completely!"

He was probably right. Letting go of my grip on reality might scatter me so fully that I’d never be able to come back. But the alternative was watching these shadow monsters destroy everyone I loved.

"It’s the only way," I said softly.

I closed my eyes and stopped fighting the dimensional changes. Instead of trying to stay in one world, I let myself fall into the areas between them. The feeling was like drowning in reverse - instead of water filling my lungs, I felt myself becoming the water.

For a moment, I existed everywhere and nowhere. I could see infinite forms of reality stretching out in all directions. Worlds where the Void King had won, worlds where he’d never lived, worlds where magic was different or didn’t exist at all.

Then something grabbed me.

Not physically - something reached into the space between worlds and wrapped around my scattered consciousness like a hand closing around scattered papers.

"Found you," said a voice I recognized but couldn’t place.

I felt myself being pulled back together, all three versions of me snapping into line like puzzle pieces clicking into place. The dimensional bleeding stopped, and the shadow Lieutenants faded away as the walls between worlds solidified again.

When I opened my eyes, I was back in the first world, solid and real. But I wasn’t alone in my head anymore. I could still feel the other two versions of myself, like whispers at the edge of my thoughts.

"Who are you?" I asked the voice that had saved me.

A figure stepped out from behind the trees - tall, wearing a cloak that seemed to be made of stars. When they pushed back their hood, I gasped.

It was me. Another version of me, but older, with silver hair and eyes that held the knowledge of someone who had seen too much.

"I’m what you become," the older Lily said sadly. "In the timeline where you learn to control your powers instead of being controlled by them."

"That’s impossible," Sage breathed.

"Nothing is impossible when you exist between realities," the older Lily replied. "I’ve been watching, waiting for the right time to intervene. But my appearance here changes everything."

"What do you mean?" I asked, though I was afraid of the answer.

The older me looked at Caleb with deep sadness. "Time isn’t straight when you’re a Between Walker. By saving you from dimensional scattering, I’ve made a paradox. Two versions of the same person living in the same timeline."

"So what happens now?" Caleb asked.

The older Lily’s expression got grim. "Now reality itself will try to fix the riddle. And the only way it can do that is by erasing one of us totally."

She looked straight at me, and I saw my own face filled with regret.

"One of us has to die, Lily. And we have less than an hour to decide which one."