The disconnection was always jarring, but this time was different.

  Mia's body convulsed as the VR interface disengaged, the neural connections severing with a sensation like lightning coursing through her skull. Her eyes flew open to the dim light of her apartment, but the brightness still stabbed into her retinas after the misty mountains of the Azure Cloud Sect where she'd spent her final moments with Master Yun.

  The third fragment. Gone. Integrated into the digital silver locket in her game inventory. Though it existed only in the virtual world, she could still feel its phantom weight against her chest, as if the boundary between game and reality had begun to blur.

  She tried to sit up, but her limbs refused to cooperate. How long had she been immersed this time? The chronometer on her nightstand read 76 hours—a retively short dive compared to the twelve years she'd spent in the Azure Cloud Sect. But those years hadn't been real. None of it had been real.

  Had it?

  Mia pressed her palms against her temples, trying to sort through the cacophony of memories flooding her consciousness. She could feel the phantom weight of Sir Kael's broadsword in her hands, taste the metallic tang of the New Albion air, sense the flow of qi through meridians she didn't possess in this reality.

  "I am Mia Thompson," she whispered to the empty room. "I am twenty-three years old. I live at 1142 Westke Avenue."

  But the words felt hollow, rehearsed. Was she truly Mia Thompson anymore? Or was she also Calliope Winters, the mechanic's daughter? Lin Mei-Li, the disciplined cultivator?

  She managed to swing her legs over the side of the bed, her muscles protesting after days of disuse. The room swam around her, and she gripped the edge of the mattress to steady herself.

  "System?" she called out, forgetting momentarily that she was in the real world. There was no comforting, familiar voice to respond here. No guidance. No connection to the fragments she'd collected.

  A sob escaped her throat, raw and primal. Three lives. Three loves. Three deaths. Each one carving a deeper hollow in her chest until she felt like nothing more than a vessel for grief.

  She staggered to the bathroom, nearly colpsing against the sink. The face that stared back at her from the mirror was a stranger's—gaunt, pale, with dark circles under haunted eyes. Whose eyes were these? They looked like Mia's, but they held memories that weren't hers. She had spent twelve years as Lin Mei-Li in the Azure Cloud Sect—longer than she had lived as Mia Thompson in the real world. Her muscles remembered forms of martial arts her body had never learned. Her mind contained knowledge of meridians and cultivation techniques that shouldn't exist here.

  "Who am I?" she whispered to her reflection, watching as tears tracked down hollow cheeks.

  Was this worth it? The question surfaced unbidden. Was loving the same soul across different worlds worth the fracturing of her own identity? Worth the pain of watching him die three times, each death as agonizing as the first?

  Her fingers fumbled with the VR interface's control panel, tracing the option to permanently delete her account. One touch and it would all be gone—the memories, the fragments, the promise of reunion. She could try to be just Mia Thompson again, could try to rebuild a life in this reality.

  But would that Mia be real, or would she be just as artificial as the worlds she'd visited?

  Her hand trembled over the delete button. The system had promised that Noir was gathering his strength, that once all fragments were collected, he would find a way back to her in the real world. But was that true, or just another yer of the game's storytelling? She had only found three fragments so far—how many more journeys, how many more deaths could she endure?

  The screen blurred through her tears. What if she was just a woman who had become so deeply immersed in a virtual world that she could no longer distinguish fantasy from reality? What if there was no god of death searching for his body, no cosmic love story spanning realities—just a lonely woman who had lost her grip on sanity?

  She slumped to the bathroom floor, drawing her knees to her chest. The cold tile pressed against her skin, a reminder of the material world she had once belonged to without question.

  "I need help," she whispered to the empty apartment. The thought of expining any of this to a therapist was absurd. I've been living multiple lives in a virtual reality game where I repeatedly fall in love with fragments of an imprisoned death god's soul. They'd have her committed before she finished the sentence.

  Maybe that was where she belonged. Maybe the human mind wasn't meant to contain multiple lifetimes of memories, wasn't built to love the same soul across different incarnations and watch it die each time.

  Her gaze drifted to the medicine cabinet. She could end this. Could stop the confusion, the pain, the unbearable weight of identities stacked within her like nesting dolls. She could—

  Her VR interface unexpectedly pulsed with a soft blue light that shouldn't have been possible when disconnected from the game. It projected a holographic image of the silver locket from her inventory. Mia froze, watching as the light intensified, casting strange shadows across the bathroom walls.

  Wait for me.

  The voice wasn't audible—it seemed to resonate directly within her mind, a familiar amalgamation of all the voices she had loved. Kael's steadfast strength, Alexander's intellectual curiosity, Master Yun's ancient wisdom...

  "Are you real?" she asked the empty air, not expecting an answer.

  The locket pulsed again, stronger this time.

  As real as you are, Mia Thompson.

  She closed her eyes, tears streaming down her face. "I don't know who that is anymore."

  You are the woman who found me across three worlds when gods themselves could not. You are the bridge between fragments, the constant in a universe of variables. You are more real than the reality you question.

  "I'm afraid," she admitted, her voice breaking. "I'm afraid I'm losing my mind."

  What is sanity but the agreed-upon illusion of a single reality? You have seen beyond that illusion. You have walked between worlds.

  Mia pressed her forehead against her knees. "If I'm not crazy, then what am I becoming?"

  The answer came not in words but in a cascade of images—stars being born, gaxies spinning, the vast cosmic dance that made gods themselves seem small and transient. In that vastness, two points of light spiraled toward each other across impossible distances.

  Wait for me, the voice repeated. The final piece awaits. When we are whole, I will return to you. Not in virtual reality, but in the world of flesh and bone.

  "How long?" she asked, though she already knew there could be no certain answer.

  Time means nothing to those who have lived multiple lifetimes.

  The light from the locket faded gradually, leaving Mia alone in the darkness of her bathroom. She remained there for hours, or perhaps minutes—time seemed as fluid and unreliable as identity.

  Finally, she rose on unsteady legs and made her way back to the bedroom. The VR interface waited, the delete account option still blinking on the screen. With a steady hand that surprised her, she dismissed it and instead selected "Continue Journey."

  A new world awaited—the fourth fragment, with many more still to find. After all of them... after that would come the true test of her fragmented sanity.

  As the neural interface engaged and reality began to dissolve around her, Mia whispered to herself and to the consciousness she carried within her:

  "Real or not, I will wait for you."

  The world went white, and Mia Thompson—and all the women she had become—stepped once more into the unknown.