"Mom," she said. "Tell me about the amulet. The real story."
Elara stared at the lattice. The scroll's words echoed: The combination of stellar influences . It wasn't astrology. It was an instruction manual. The three lines—the ecliptic plane, the galactic current sheet, and the dwarf's axial tilt—all converged here, today, for a single nanosecond. This wasn't a monument. It was a keyhole.
"I did."
But Elara wasn't listening. She was looking at the three futures with the cold, clear eye of a logistics officer. Door One was a fantasy—it would consume her, remake her into a ghost haunting a life that never happened. Door Two was a duty—but a duty to someone else’s war, someone else’s ambition. She would be a figurehead, not a captain.
"And you came back."