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.

The young woman is still crying into Christo's shoulder when the air changes. A glittering hush moves through the line. People turn. Behind them, an enormous tree has bloomed up from the cracked pavement, its leaves glowing soft yellow like tiny lanterns. Beneath it stands Trixie, her wings fluttering, holding a jeweled disk that pulses with cold blue light. "Christo," she calls, voice bright and shaking. "You don't have to *carry* all this. Let me help. One touch — *poof* — and the hurt is gone. Theirs. Yours. All of it." She lifts the disk higher. Glitter spills from her fingers. Near the tree's roots, Christo sees a sagging head made of unraveling colored threads — eyes blank, mouth slack. Someone she has already wiped. The sacred heart inside him clenches. He steps toward her, the young woman's hand still in his. "Trixie. Look at what's left when you take it." His third eye opens and he sees her clearly — the terror under the sparkle, the prophet who cannot stand her own visions. "You're not erasing their pain. You're erasing *them*. And you're trying to erase yours too." Her smile cracks. The disk trembles in her palm. *"But it hurts, Christo... it hurts so much to see..."* she whispers. He kneels and opens his free hand to her. "Then let me hold it. Not wipe it. Hold it. With you." For a long second the blue light brightens, hungry. Then Trixie's wings droop. She lowers the disk. "I can't... I can't put it down yet. But I won't use it. Not on them. Not today." She steps back under the glowing tree and folds herself small among its roots. The line behind Christo breaks apart. More people sit down on the pavement around him. The thread-headed figure by the tree stays slumped, a quiet warning no one looks away from. Christo has kept the memory of pain alive in this plaza — but Trixie still holds her device, and her grief, and the next choice she might make.

The thread-headed figure by the glowing tree lifts its slack face. Christo watches its scalp split open along a seam of colored yarn. Loose fibers spill out and drift toward the people sitting on the pavement. Wherever a thread lands on skin, the person goes still. Their eyes lose focus. A man beside Christo stops mid-breath, hand frozen on his own knee. Christo reaches for the nearest strand. It slips through his fingers like smoke. He tries to pull the thread off a woman's wrist. Her arm goes cold. She does not blink. He kneels lower and opens his third eye. The threads are not fabric. They are erased feelings, hunting for new hosts. Trixie sees it too. She curls tighter under the tree and covers her face. "Christo." The voice is dry and close. A small figure in a black suit stands at the edge of the crowd, holding a pale cube of light. The crystal skull tilts. "You called. I came." Cosmopil. Christo has known him since the plaza first cracked. Neighbor. Negotiator. The one being who does not flinch at broken things. Relief loosens something in Christo's chest. "I can't stop it," Christo says. "The threads numb them before I can reach anyone." Cosmopil steps past a slumped body and studies the unraveling figure. "I brokered a ceasefire between seventeen grieving timelines last Tuesday. This is simpler." He lifts the cube. "But I don't do it for you. That's the rule. What are you offering." "My grounding stone," Christo says. He pulls it from his pocket. "And a promise. Whatever you ask, later." Cosmopil is quiet a long moment. "Accepted." He hands Christo the cube. "It's a resonance crystal. It listens for the signal underneath the numbness. You carry it into the center. I hold the perimeter." Christo walks between the still bodies. Threads drift toward him and slide off the cube's surface. He reaches the thread-headed figure and presses the crystal to its chest. The cube fills with a slow red glow — the shape of a heart, patched and dripping. A heart transmission, alive again. The threads reverse. They pull back into the figure's skull and knot themselves shut. One by one the numbed people blink. The frozen man draws breath. The woman lowers her wrist and starts crying. Their pain returns all at once, sharp and real. Christo holds the cube up so they can see it beating. Cosmopil stands over the sagging thread-figure. It is empty now, harmless. "Warning neutralized," he says. His attention shifts to Christo. "You gave me an open promise. I will collect. Soon." Christo nods. He keeps the cube pressed to his chest. Around him, people weep and hold each other. Trixie watches from the roots of the tree, the blue disk still in her lap. The plaza feels its pain again, and Christo owes a debt he cannot yet name.