His head pounded with fourteen overlapping lifetimes. In one, Sera, the knight-captain, had died protecting him from a demon. In another, he had executed her for treason she did not commit. In a third, she had been his most loyal ally, only to watch him fall into madness. All of it. All of her. All of them.

The door swung open.

We cannot. The story demands an ending. But this time... we offer a choice you have never been given.

A loose cobblestone, a startled horse, and the sharp edge of a noble’s carriage step. After surviving a thousand assassination attempts, a dozen palace coups, and the slow, sweet poison of his first wife, he died in a gutter outside a tavern called The Laughing Maiden. His own harem—the current, fractious, warring version—would not even mourn. They would be too busy fighting over his empty throne.

He pressed the button.

From the corridor, a third voice—sweet, terrible, the voice of the assassin who had killed him in timeline seven—called out: