Christo holds the card in both hands, turning it slowly in the light. The three swords pierce straight through the center, exactly where a heart would be. He doesn't need his third eye to see what this means. Someone nearby is breaking so badly the pain has started to leak. He follows the pull deeper into the psychedelic district, past buildings that breathe and doorways that shift. The card grows warm in his pocket. His third eye opens without him asking it to, and suddenly he can see the threads of anguish trailing through the air like smoke. They lead him to a small plaza where a massive crystalline heart sits in the center, purple and pink, cracked down the middle. Light bleeds from the fracture in slow pulses. The ground around it is stained with pooling luminescence. People pass by quickly, heads down, hands pressed to their chests. They feel it but don't know why their own hearts suddenly ache. Christo kneels beside the broken heart and places one palm against the warm crystal surface. The grief floods into him immediately — sharp, bottomless, raw. He reaches into his pocket with his free hand and closes his fingers around the clear quartz he always carries. The stone grounds him. Reminds him where he ends and the pain begins. He stays there, palm pressed to the fractured crystal, holding what cannot hold itself. Slowly, the bleeding slows. The light dims to a steady glow instead of frantic pulses. The people passing through the plaza begin to walk upright again, their shoulders relaxing. Christo breathes deeply and whispers to the broken heart, "I've got you. You don't have to carry this alone right now." The sacred heart he protects pulses warm in his own chest, holding him steady while he holds another.

The crystalline heart still glows steady beneath his palm when Christo hears it — a low hum spreading through the air, mechanical and sweet at once. A voice without words, promising something impossible. The relief of never hurting again. His third eye opens and he sees it: a massive heart-shaped structure three blocks away, radiating waves of color into the sky. Swirls of pink and blue and gold pulse outward like a transmission signal, and beneath each wave he can see what people are feeling as they walk toward it. Grief turning to numbness. Fear dissolving into blank peace. A woman drops a dark crystal star in the street without looking back, her face smooth and empty. Christo's chest tightens. The sacred heart within him pulses warm, urgent. This isn't healing. This is erasure. He reaches the building just as a man steps up to a sleek console embedded in the wall, its holographic interface glowing with options. The man's hands shake as he scrolls through categories: regret, loss, shame, loneliness. He selects three and presses confirm. The light from the heart-structure above washes over him, and Christo watches through his third eye as the man's pain simply vanishes — not transformed, not held, just gone. The man walks away with hollow eyes. Christo steps between the console and the next person in line, a young woman whose desperation he can taste in the air. She tries to push past him but he doesn't move. "This won't save you," he says quietly. "It'll just make you nothing." She stares at him, tears streaming down her face. "I don't want to feel this anymore." Her voice breaks. Christo takes her hand and places his grounding stone in her palm. "Then let me hold it with you until you can carry it again." She doesn't pull away. Behind them, others in line begin to hesitate, watching. The transmission keeps pulsing, but three people step out of line and sit down on the ground near Christo, waiting. He's created a crack in the signal's hold — not everyone will choose it, but some will choose to be held instead of erased. The woman squeezes the stone tight and her shoulders shake as she finally lets herself break in front of someone who won't look away.