High above the world, where the clouds stretched like an endless ocean of white, two figures rested in peaceful silence, using the clouds as cushions.

  One y with their eyes closed in the other's p, getting their head gently caressed, akin to how a mother comforts her child. They looked nearly identical, minus a few differences and clothing choices.

  The one lying in the other's p spoke. "Hey, Emma?"

  Spoiler

  [colpse]"What is it?" came the response, her fingers still gliding through her sister's hair.

  Spoiler

  [colpse]"Aren't you bored?" Ava asked, her crimson eyes fluttering open to meet Emma’s.

  Emma hummed thoughtfully, a slight frown crossing her face. "Yeah, a little... but what is there to do?"

  Ava shifted slightly, throwing her hands up and sighing loudly. "I just wish we could live in the worlds from some of my favorite stories! I would literally die to meet Gojo. I’m so tired of just floating around here. I need something exciting."

  Emma's eyes sparkled a little as she tilted her head. "Well... something like that is possible since those worlds are real somewhere."

  Ava shot up, her red eyes wide with excitement. "Wait, seriously? How do we get there?!"

  Emma sat up, pivoting to look directly at her twin. "We’d have to understand and upload all the fiction into a magic circle. But it has to be done perfectly. If we mess it up, we could end up in a universe we’re not familiar with. We could destroy it and ourselves just by getting something wrong."

  Ava blinked, processing. "So... we have to know all the stories first?"

  Emma nodded. "Yes. We need to transcribe all the fiction into the circle in detail. It’s not just about the stories. It’s about understanding the worlds they create. Every rule, every possibility. If we can do that, fate will decide where we end up. But if we’re incomplete... It’s too risky."

  Ava's face lit up. "We can do it. We’ve got forever, Goddammit!"

  Emma smiled as she snapped, and a near-immeasurable pile of books appeared behind her. "When do you want to start?"

  Ava looked on in sheer awe. She didn't thoroughly think this through all the way, now, did she?

  And just like that, a century of non-stop reading came and went. Ava smmed a book shut, tossing it behind her with a sigh. She gnced over her shoulder at the insane pile of finished books, then to her right at the incomparably more insane stack beside her. The two of them had made a decent dent in the overall amount, but it was still quite daunting.

  Ava looked over at Emma, who was still completely absorbed in a thick, hardbound volume, her fingers moving over the pages as if she were tracing a scripture.

  Her blue-highlighted hair had grown longer over the century, with a few strands tucked behind one ear and the rest framing her focused expression. She hadn’t looked up once in hours, maybe even days.

  With a groan, Ava stretched her limbs, her joints popping like old wood settling. It felt like she hadn't moved in a hundred years, and honestly, she probably hadn’t. She flexed her fingers, rolled her shoulders, and stood on shaky legs that wobbled slightly beneath her.

  Carefully, she walked over and dropped down beside her sister, resting her head in Emma’s p with a long exhale. The movement didn’t pull Emma’s attention away from her book, but her free hand instinctively reached out, settling in Ava’s hair like it always did.

  Ava closed her eyes. "I hate that I’m getting used to this."

  Emma hummed absentmindedly, her thumb brushing slowly through her sister’s bangs as she turned another page.

  After a little while, Ava slowly made her way back to her spot, picking up a book and getting back to it.

  ~500 years ter~

  The sky hadn't changed. The clouds rolled softly beneath them, and the sun soaked everything in gold. Ava y sprawled across the clouds, her arms stretched overhead and her test book face down on her chest. She stared at the sky with a dreamy expression.

  Nearby, Emma sat surrounded by open journals and scattered notes, her focus as sharp as ever. Nearby was the giant magic circle she'd been slowly crafting over the centuries, radiating a brilliant blue and filled with countless runes.

  Ava eventually rolled over with a groan, dragging herself upright and shuffling over to Emma. Without a word, she eased down and rested her head in her sister’s p. Emma didn’t flinch; she just shifted slightly to make room and continued working, one hand idly brushing Ava’s hair out of her face.

  Ava nestled comfortably into Emma’s thighs. "Y’know… I’ve been thinking."

  Emma, still absorbed in her notes, gave a half-interested hum.

  Ava smirked. "You might actually be the nerdiest person in all existence."

  The scratching of pen against parchment stopped.

  Emma blinked once. Then resumed writing, as if pretending she didn’t hear it.

  Ava grinned wider. "Seriously. I’ve read about fictional characters with less dedication. You practically invented homework."

  Emma’s hand twitched, but her voice was even. "I'm ignoring you. And this was your idea in the first pce."

  "Ooooh, scary," Ava said, turning over to gaze up at her sister with a devilish grin. "Come on, Em. Admit it. You’re a super nerd. The queen of all nerds. The Nerdlord."

  Emma’s eye twitched.

  Ava sat up and cupped her hands around her mouth. "Hail! Hail to the divine schor of bnd!" she yelled to the clouds, theatrically throwing herself back as if struck by divine revetion.

  That did it.

  Emma closed her book with an audible snap, her expression ft but her aura suddenly a bit heavier. "Do you want to die?"

  Ava grinned like a child who had just broken a window. "What, no clever comeback? Come on, live a little."

  "I live plenty," Emma said, standing now. "You simply confuse chaos with fun."

  "Well, it is fun," Ava gagged, already popping to her feet.

  Emma’s gaze narrowed.

  Ava rolled her neck, and with a fsh of red, her signature gauntlets formed around her arms, bck metal with blood-red engravings, cws glistening like polished obsidian. She bounced on her toes, the air around her pulsing lightly from sheer kinetic pressure. "Come on. You’ve been sitting for, like, six centuries. Time to stretch those legs."

  "This is ridiculous," Emma muttered. But her feet brushed back against the cloud, shifting her stance. "And I am not a nerd."

  "Denial~," Ava sang, pouncing forward.

  The first blow came like lightning, just a blur of red, and Emma didn't react in time to avoid it. She got a mouth full of pain as blood poured from a gash in her bottom lip. Ava's face churned with an insane smile at the sight of this, and she followed it up with another punch to her mug.

  Emma’s head snapped to the side from the second hit, her hair whipping with the force. She took a moment and straightened slowly, wiping the blood from her chin with the back of her hand.

  "Ooooh, still got it," Ava ughed.

  Emma didn't reply, but she now had a different look in her eyes. Darker. She was no longer looking at Ava as her other half, but as someone she wanted dead.

  Ava's smile twitched. She shifted her stance, her heart beating out of her chest with the thrill of a fight.

  Emma didn’t give a warning.

  The air around her colpsed in on itself with a soundless snap, and in an instant, she was in front of Ava, closer than she should’ve been. Ava barely raised her arms to block as an invisible force crushed down on her from multiple directions. It wasn't just pressure, but space itself trying to fold her ft.

  Ava grunted, teeth gritting. "That it?"

  Emma’s response was a kick to the gut that sent Ava flying backward. She had hardly nded before Emma was on her again, her movements clearly irritated.

  Ava smmed her fists together, and time around her slowed down exponentially. She hurled herself forward and intercepted Emma's strike with one of her own. The force behind it blew the clouds apart in a wide arc beneath them, revealing a glimpse of the earth far, far below.

  Emma skidded back across the thinning cloud yer, her feet slicing trails through the mist as she steadied herself. But Ava didn’t give her the chance to regroup.

  She closed the distance in the blink of an eye, her cws slicing through the air like raptors. Emma ducked the first swipe, but the second caught her shoulder, and the third scraped clean across her side, leaving deep gashes in her clothes and a line of blood in its wake.

  Ava was relentless, to say the least.

  She was faster and more aggressive. Her cws danced around, striking from high and low, spinning mid-air, and unnaturally switching angles mid-swing.

  Emma blocked one with her forearm, only for another to rake across her thigh. She gasped as Ava caught her again, this time with a clean uppercut that lifted her off her feet.

  Blood sprayed across the clouds.

  Emma hit the air hard, tumbling, eyes wide and momentarily dazed. Ava seemed to teleport in front of her, smming both fists into Emma’s chest like a battering ram. The shockwave shattered the sky itself, causing the clouds to explode in every direction as Emma was hurled backward like a comet.

  Ava panted, her eyes staring wildly ahead. "Are you getting serious yet?"

  Spoiler

  [colpse]Emma didn’t respond.

  Her body was still mid-flight with arms limp, mouth slightly open, and blood trailing behind her.

  Ava moved on ahead to continue assaulting her sister until something shifted.

  It wasn't anything physical, but presence.

  Emma’s form flickered and vanished.

  Ava’s strike hit nothing.

  A heartbeat ter, the world snapped sideways. A concussive force smmed into Ava’s side from nowhere, bending her body as she was yanked downward by an invisible hold. Her increased perception couldn’t help her now, since Emma had just changed the rules. With a sudden scream of tearing air, Ava was ripped from the sky and unched like a bullet toward the ground.

  She crashed through the cloud yer with an earsplitting boom, punching a hole straight through it. The world became a blur of green and brown as she tumbled down through the treetops of some colossal forest.

  Branches snapped like twigs as she fell, bark tore against her skin, until finally-

  CRACK.

  Ava smmed against the trunk of a massive, iron-thick tree, jolting the entire thing. Her body crumpled to the base, and her breath was knocked clean from her lungs. For a moment, all she could do was wheeze.

  Leaves drifted down zily from above.

  "Okay," she muttered hoarsely, a little blood trickling from her lip, "she’s mad."

  She stood up only to be pelted to her left at Mach 10. She didn't hit anything, but it felt like she had. It was as if an invisible brick wall had instantly halted all her momentum. Then she sensed everything around her constricting into a box, crammed by a hydraulic press. The box grew smaller and smaller until she ended up crushed, as if someone had stomped on a can of Coke.

  You're probably imagining something rather grotesque, right? Well, it certainly was. But luckily for Ava, this didn't actually happen.

  As she opened her eyes, Ava practically jumped out of her skin, having returned to her sister's soft, pillow-like thighs. Her whole body trembled as she sat up, looking around like she expected the trees to be there still.

  Emma blinked, startled by the sudden motion. "What?"

  Ava didn’t answer at first. Her chest rose and fell quickly, her eyes unfocused. This was the first time Ava had died, and also the first time she had... gone back in time? She didn't know what or how it happened, but snapped out of her stupor retively quickly and y back down.

  Emma looked away from her notes and down at Ava, a confused expression on her face. "You okay?"

  Ava exhaled slowly, staring up at the sky. "Yup."

  Emma shrugged and went back to her notes, muttering something about rune alignment under her breath. Meanwhile, Ava closed her eyes once more, the weight of her sister’s hand settling back into her hair.

  The clouds drifted on.

  And just like that, nothing had even happened.