Sayaka looks down at her hands, made pale and thin by moonlight, and thinks, This empty thing, it isn’t me. There’s a darkness growing inside her, somewhere between the heart and the lungs: a shadow seed taking root, branches unfurling; she knows this, but between knowing something and changing it lies a gulf that she can’t cross.

Someone might have, in some other universe, perhaps – or at least she had believed that once – but the time for branching paths is past; now she does the only thing she can, and rises and walks on towards the end that’s chosen her.