He wasn't sure if it was morning. Or if mornings still happened at all. The light—if you could even call it that—filtered through the broken ceiling like a memory that didn’t want to be remembered. Pale, thin, not gold or blue or anything alive. Just… there.

  Vaelian stood at the threshold of what used to be his room, scarf dangling loose in one hand, the mirror shard cradled in the other like something too fragile to name. It didn’t reflect. Not anymore. Maybe never.

  The Tower groaned around him, all soft ruin and silent alarms. Lights blinked in and out with no rhythm. Sirens came and went like half-formed thoughts. And the air—God, the air had gone wrong. Too still, like it was holding its breath and waiting for the world to finish unraveling.

  People passed sometimes, but they didn't see him. Or didn’t want to. Their uniforms hung crooked, not out of sloppiness but as if their bodies no longer knew how to wear things correctly. Like they were slowly slipping out of themselves. One woman clutched a file that she never opened. A man stared at the floor as if something beneath it might save him.

  Vaelian didn’t speak. Hadn’t, not really, since Lysara vanished. Or was taken. Or… became something else. The memory folded in on itself when he tried to follow it. Like a book someone else had started for him and stopped halfway through.

  Sometimes, the mirror showed her. Not completely. Just the echo of a gesture. A stillness in a way she used to stand. Once, it had shown a hand—hers, he was almost certain—pressed gently to glass. No sound. Just presence.

  He’d smashed that one.

  This shard—new, unbroken, stolen from the reserve deck—he hadn’t looked into yet. Not directly. It stayed wrapped in a sleeve most days. Hidden like a wound you’re not ready to dress.

  Thren found him near the transit shaft. He didn’t hear her approach, just looked up and she was there. She looked older. Not wrinkled—just… worn out. Used. Like a blade that had been drawn too many times and no longer cut cleanly.

  “Site Twelve’s gone,” she said. Her voice was dry. Not cruel. Just tired.

  He nodded. Of course it was.

  “They sent a drone. Feed lasted six minutes. Then static. Echoes all over the outer fields.” She hesitated, like her next words were stuck to the roof of her mouth. “One of them looked like your sister.”

  His breath caught in his throat. Not enough to choke. Just enough to ache.

  Thren looked at him, and he looked past her. He didn't ask if she was sure. That didn’t matter now.

  “You want me to go in?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “No. You already did.”

  He blinked. “What?”

  “Not in the flesh. Not exactly.” She reached into her coat and slid a data shard across the bench between them. “Just… watch it.”

  He did. Because what else was there to do?

  The feed was grainy, timestamped just twenty-four hours back. It showed him—except it didn’t. He moved like him. Wore his face. But the eyes were wrong. Empty. Like glass held too long over fire. No scarf. No hesitations. Just smooth, purposeful descent into the dark.

  “That’s not me,” he said quietly.

  Thren didn’t argue. Just said, “But it wears you.”

  He didn’t ask what she wanted. He already knew. She wanted him to see it—this not-him—and maybe feel something. A twitch. A gut pull. Recognition. A tell. Something buried in the bones.

  But since the breach, memory had grown soft around the edges. Like bread left out too long. Dates blurred. Names lost shape. Even time, once linear and stubborn, had gone sideways. Day, night, hour—all just flavors now.

  He left without another word. His feet carried him through the halls, even though the halls didn’t match the maps anymore. He moved like someone who used to believe in destinations. Now he just walked until walking felt like truth.

  Eventually, he found the observatory. Three days ago, the dome had shattered. In its place, a glimmering Aether seal buzzed faintly, vibrating against his teeth. He stood beneath it and stared at the not-sky.

  There was no sky now. Just a slow-motion whirl of cloud-like shapes that pulsed and breathed. Something about the movement felt familiar, wrong in a way he couldn’t describe—like a song you knew in childhood but only half-remembered now, and never in the right key.

  Within the spiral, he saw a face.

  Not his.

  Not Lysara’s.

  But close.

  It smiled, and something deep in his stomach turned over.

  That night, the river returned.

  In dreams, it always did.

  But this time it flowed forward, and that was new. It wasn’t made of water. It shimmered with glass and memory. Each mirror drifted like a leaf, holding pieces of things he hadn’t realized he’d lost—his voice, barely ten and still full of hope; the smell of cinnamon from his mother’s apron; the last laugh he’d shared with Lysara before she stopped being reachable.

  She walked beside him, barefoot. Said nothing. Didn’t need to.

  She placed a hand on his shoulder.

  When he turned to look at her, her lips were sewn shut.

  And her eyes—God—her eyes were his.

  He woke choking on his own breath, blood salty in his mouth. He’d clenched the shard in his sleep, hard enough to cut. Not deep. Just enough to make it real.

  The blood didn’t soak into the glass. It shimmered on the surface like a warning. Or an invitation.

  He whispered: “What did I choose?”

  No answer.

  But the mirror showed a door.

  And behind it, a scream.

  By midcycle, the Tower had begun splintering—on the inside more than out. The outer ranks still followed protocol, loosely, like meat following gravity. But the leadership? They were slipping in quieter, sharper ways.

  Some said the breach was a weapon. Others, a message. And a few—Thren among them—stopped pretending there was a difference.

  Vaelian didn’t belong to any of them now. He wasn’t following orders or resisting them. He just moved. Not aimlessly. Just… sideways.

  In some intersections, the halls shifted around him. Once, he passed a polished wall and saw himself—but not the self he remembered. This one had a scar running from ear to jaw and wore a coat he’d never owned.

  He didn’t flinch. Not anymore.

  Time didn’t work the same down here.

  People whispered. About Lysara. About what she’d become. Or what had taken her. Most didn’t ask. A few did.

  He never answered.

  He found Thren in the old comm tower. Or what was left of it.

  The ceiling had fallen in two days back, but someone had hung a shimmerfield—probably by hand, no authorization—just enough to keep the wind and dust from swallowing the room entirely. Light poured through, not from any visible source, but like it had seeped into the metal from some other place. Silver. Quiet. Present.

  Thren stood over a fractured console. One hand rested on her sidearm. The other braced against the wreckage. She didn’t turn when he entered. Maybe she didn’t need to.

  He stood in the doorway, saying nothing. The light curled around his feet, curious.

  “I keep seeing her,” Thren said. Her voice was distant, pulled taut. “Not whole. Not clear. Just flickers. Like my brain’s replaying guilt instead of memory.”

  “She’s not dead,” Vaelian said softly.

  “No.” Thren let the word sit there for a moment. “She’s worse.”

  He stepped closer. The air didn’t resist, but it didn’t welcome him either. Like water adjusting to a shape it didn’t want to hold.

  “You think she’s part of the breach?”

  “No,” Thren said, finally meeting his eyes. “I think she is the breach.”

  That hit harder than he expected. He swallowed, the motion dry and slow.

  “She didn’t do this on purpose.”

  “No,” Thren agreed. “But she let it happen.”

  They stood close now. Not touching. That had never been their way. She’d always held herself like a soldier even when there wasn’t a war. Maybe especially then.

  “She was scared,” Thren said. “And brave. You can be both. But not forever.”

  Vaelian exhaled, slow. “She kept telling me I’d have to choose.”

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  “She meant herself.”

  “I know.”

  “You didn’t choose.”

  “No,” he said. “I didn’t.”

  That night, he made a mistake.

  He broke into the Vault.

  Not the weapons cache. The old one. The place no one mentioned out loud. Where the original Echo-bond studies were kept. The kind of place that didn’t have cameras, because the things inside didn’t want to be remembered that way.

  It smelled like cold and ink and the start of something bad.

  He didn’t know what he was looking for. Only that he wouldn’t sleep again until he found it. Maybe not even then.

  The documents were chaos. No digital indexing. Just stacks and shelves of paper and data crystals, some cracked, some pulsing. A few whispered when touched. A voice in a language that might’ve once been his.

  At the back, behind a false panel, he found a sealed box.

  Plain. Labeled only with:

  Subject: LV

  Designation: Seer Gate

  His hands went cold.

  He opened it.

  Inside: journals, drawings, maps—not of land, but of thought. Pages full of echoes and scribbles, fevered sketches of neural bridges and burn fields.

  On one torn sheet: a drawing of a blindfold. Burning. The caption below, written in Lysara’s quick, sharp hand:

  If I look, the world burns.

  If I don’t, you do.

  He sat down on the floor. Not out of weakness, but because it felt wrong to stand.

  He didn’t cry. Not then. Maybe later.

  He turned the page.

  More diagrams. Brain scans, looping feedback spirals. Sketches of what happened to Echo-bonded minds when they were left too close to breach zones. At the center of one spread: a door, rendered in thick, black charcoal. Smudged fingerprints along the edge.

  The same door from his dream.

  He didn’t sleep after that. Just walked. The halls were quieter now. Not peaceful—hollow. Rooms that should’ve buzzed with light were dark. Offices still had mugs on the desks, but no hands to lift them.

  People weren’t dying. Not exactly.

  They were vanishing.

  One breath they were here. The next, gone. No scream. No flash. Just… absence.

  He passed a corridor where a kid used to sit cross-legged on the floor, fiddling with a dead transmitter. The transmitter was still there. Clicking softly. But the kid was gone. Not a trace.

  Just empty air.

  In his quarters, the mirror shard lay where he’d left it. Still. Unbroken. Waiting.

  He picked it up.

  No reflection. Not even a shimmer of himself.

  But it pulsed. Once.

  He whispered, “If I go through… do I come back?”

  No reply.

  Then—faintly, impossibly—it warmed.

  And it showed her.

  Lysara.

  Not haunted. Not screaming. Just… tired.

  Her lips moved.

  Welcome.

  The next time he blinked, it was morning.

  But not the right one.

  He wasn’t in his quarters. Not even in the Tower.

  The room was round. Seamless. No doors. Just mirrors. Floor to ceiling. Unbroken.

  Worse than broken.

  They didn’t reflect.

  They watched.

  Light filled the space. Pale and wrong. Like it had bled through some cracked timeline to reach him. It didn’t cast shadows. Just... softened edges.

  “Lys?” he called.

  No answer.

  Then the mirrors rippled.

  One by one, versions of her stepped forward. Not physically. More like impressions given shape. Shadows of possibility.

  One had no eyes. Another wept ink. A third flickered like flame.

  He stepped back.

  And the mirrors followed.

  Their mouths didn’t move, but her voice filled the room. Not one voice—hundreds, all slightly different, layered like a chorus that had forgotten harmony.

  “You asked too late.”

  He gritted his teeth. “I’m asking now.”

  A pause.

  “Then choose.”

  The floor cracked.

  Beneath: the river.

  This time, real. Or close enough.

  Flowing forward, as before. But faster now. Urgent.

  He stood at the edge.

  “Where does it go?” he asked.

  One mirror shimmered.

  It showed a silhouette.

  His. Older. Scarred. Holding something heavy.

  At his feet: a body.

  Small. Familiar.

  His stomach turned. “No.”

  The mirror shifted.

  Now: a world split in two. Aether bleeding on one side. Thalyss devouring the other. Both falling apart.

  In the center: Lysara. Suspended. Bound.

  Her voice—this time singular—cut through.

  “You can’t stop it. You can only steer the ruin.”

  He shook his head. “There has to be a way out.”

  Silence.

  Then her voice again, soft.

  “There is.”

  A final mirror appeared. Cracked, but not shattered.

  It showed him.

  Whole. Scarred. Alone.

  But behind him: stillness.

  No screams. No division.

  Just quiet.

  Then the mirror shattered.

  And he gasped—

  —and he gasped awake on the infirmary floor.

  No alarms. No voices. Just breath, rough and close and real.

  He sat up too fast. The cold hit first—then the ache in his ribs, like he’d been folded wrong. His palms stung. He looked: no shard. Just the echo of its shape burned into his skin, pale and pink, not quite a scar. Not yet.

  The room was empty. No movement. No machines humming softly in the corners. No lights on overhead. Only that thick hush. The kind that settles after people leave and forget to close the door behind them.

  He stood slowly, half-expecting the world to tilt beneath his feet. It didn’t. But it also didn’t feel steady. Just... paused. Like something was waiting for him to catch up.

  In his pocket: warmth.

  He reached in and froze.

  The scarf.

  It shouldn’t have been there.

  He hadn’t taken it. Not when he stepped into the breach. Not when the mirrors shattered. And yet, here it was. Whole. Untorn. Soft between his fingers.

  He didn’t ask how. There were no clean answers left. Only remnants.

  By dusk, Site Twelve was no longer just a hole in the world. It had grown. Changed shape. Now it spiraled up—miles, maybe—threading itself into the static of the false sky above.

  He stood at the edge of it.

  Didn’t move.

  People were gathered on rooftops and broken terraces. Not panicking. Not anymore. Just… watching. As if the end had finally taken a shape they could understand. Some sat in quiet clusters. Others stood alone, arms crossed like they were waiting for a bus that would never come. A few walked forward. Into the breach.

  They didn’t scream.

  Didn’t flinch.

  They just… disappeared. Gently. Like pages turned backward.

  Thren found him near the edge. She didn’t say his name. Just stood beside him and watched.

  “You’re leaving,” she said, after a while.

  He didn’t deny it.

  Her eyes flicked to his hand. “The mark—”

  “It’s not spreading anymore,” he said. “Or maybe it’s finished.”

  She looked at him a long moment, then pressed something into his palm.

  A comm chip. Low frequency. Old tech.

  “Use it if you find anything.”

  He nodded. “If I find her.”

  Thren didn’t speak. She didn’t need to.

  They stood there together, letting the wind speak for them.

  Then she turned and walked away. Didn’t look back. Didn’t ask him to stay.

  At dawn, he stepped into the breach.

  It didn’t burn. Didn’t resist. Didn’t drag.

  It simply opened.

  Like a door that had always been there, waiting for the right question.

  And he walked in.

  No flash. No sound. Just a wet shift, like walking through sleep. Like memory. Like falling backward into something that already knew him.

  Inside, the world was quiet.

  But not peaceful.

  It was the quiet of an empty chair. A dinner plate still warm but untouched. A child’s voice echoing down a hallway no one lives in anymore.

  He stood on a shoreline.

  The water—if that’s what it was—moved in spirals. Not with waves, but with intention. The surface shimmered, reflecting stars that blinked in and out of order. Like someone had stitched a sky and forgotten the pattern halfway through.

  He could smell metal. And smoke. And something older, almost sweet. Grief, maybe.

  He walked.

  No real destination. No markers. Just a forward pull, like gravity but softer. Slower.

  Time didn’t follow.

  It watched from a distance, arms crossed, waiting to see if he deserved its attention.

  After what might’ve been hours—or nothing at all—a shape rose out of the haze.

  A structure. Tall. Angular. Like a cathedral made of smoke and regret. Its walls shimmered, almost breathing. It wasn’t solid. Not quite. It leaned in and out of itself like a memory refusing to settle.

  The doors didn’t open.

  They simply ceased to be there.

  He stepped inside.

  Mirrors, of course.

  No walls. Just reflection. Everywhere.

  But not of him.

  They held impressions. Hints. Memories with the edges worn off.

  At the center of the space: a chair.

  Occupied.

  The figure stood as he approached.

  It wore his face.

  Older. Grayer around the edges. Not sad. Just… thinner. Like something had been taken out of him, and no one had filled the space.

  “Finally,” the figure said.

  Vaelian’s throat closed around words. He swallowed them. Tried again.

  “What do you want?”

  The other him smiled. Not cruelly. But without warmth. “Closure.”

  And then it lunged.

  Not a fight in the usual way. No fists. No blades.

  They fought in memory.

  Each movement cut deep. Every step forward brought pain that wasn’t physical. It was the first lie he ever told. The time he let someone else take the fall. The look on Lysara’s face when she realized he wasn’t going to stop her.

  He bled moments.

  The other him? Nothing.

  It kept coming. Calm. Precise. Empty.

  “Why won’t you break?” Vaelian gasped.

  “Because you already did,” it said, voice flat.

  It lifted one hand.

  Held the scarf.

  Torn. Burning.

  “No,” Vaelian whispered.

  But the world didn’t care.

  The mirrors cracked. Shattered, one by one. Each shard held a different life. Some he recognized. Some he didn’t.

  In one: he saw Lysara laughing.

  In another: she was gone, and he never remembered her name.

  He dropped to his knees.

  “Please…”

  The echo leaned down.

  “You were supposed to ask the question.”

  Vaelian’s voice broke open. “What question?”

  But the mirrors collapsed before he could hear the answer.

  He woke on the riverbank.

  Alone.

  The breach was gone.

  No door.

  No figure.

  Just wind. Just sky. And something like silence—dense, tired silence. The kind you only find after everything has already been said.

  He stood.

  In his pocket: the scarf.

  Whole.

  Still warm.

  He didn’t speak. Just began walking.

  The mirrored sea lapped gently behind him.

  And far ahead, a light blinked.

  One.

  Then again.

  Steady.

  Waiting.

  The light wasn’t bright. Not even especially noticeable if you weren’t looking for it. Just a small pulse, tucked low on the horizon, the kind that could almost be mistaken for a glitch in your vision. But it stayed. Rhythmic. Patient.

  He followed.

  The ground shifted beneath him as he walked—sometimes gravel, sometimes smooth, once even a patch of what looked like childhood carpet, stained with something he didn’t stop to identify. The air grew warmer. Not hot. Just enough to make the back of his neck sweat.

  Eventually, the light led him to a stairwell.

  Concrete. Rusted railings. The kind of thing that belonged in an underground facility, not… wherever this was. It descended sharply, the steps bending in wrong ways. Some too long, others short and sharp. No logic to them. Like the blueprint had been rewritten halfway through.

  He took the steps slowly.

  The deeper he went, the more it smelled like bleach and wet stone. Familiar. Disgustingly so.

  The stairwell opened into a room.

  White walls. Linoleum tiles. Buzzing light fixtures overhead.

  It was the infirmary.

  But not the one he knew now. The old one. From before the breach. Before Lysara had gone distant and quiet. Before she started looking at him like she was trying to remember who he used to be.

  She was there.

  Sitting on the cot in the center of the room. Her hair pulled back. Her boots unlaced.

  She looked alive.

  Whole.

  And smiling.

  He froze.

  She tilted her head slightly. “Vael.”

  His heart felt like it stopped, then slammed back into motion all at once.

  “I’m not real,” she said, gently. “But this is.”

  He stepped closer, hesitantly, like a wild animal who wasn’t sure if the kindness was a trap.

  “How?” he asked.

  Her smile didn’t falter. “Not everything that’s gone is lost.”

  “I thought you were—” He stopped. Tried again. “I thought you were the breach.”

  She nodded. “I was. For a moment. A doorway can’t stay open forever.”

  He sat beside her. The cot didn’t creak. The room didn’t smell like antiseptic anymore. Just dust. Old breath. Stillness.

  “I saw versions of you,” he murmured. “One made of fire. One blind. One… hollow.”

  “I’ve been all of them,” she said. Not proudly. Just truthfully.

  “You forgave me,” he said. “In the letter. But I never sent it.”

  “You did,” she said, tapping his chest. “Right here.”

  He looked down. The mark—once dark and angry—now pulsed with something quieter. Softer. Like it wasn’t punishment anymore.

  A rhythm.

  His.

  “You’ll have to go back,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “And you’ll have to choose. Really choose.”

  He swallowed. His voice was small. “I’m afraid of what that means.”

  “Good,” she said. “It means you still have something to lose.”

  They sat in silence after that. He didn’t try to hold her. That wasn’t what this was.

  Time passed in a way that made sense. Or maybe it didn’t pass at all. But it felt… clean. Like resting in a space outside of hurt.

  Then, softly:

  “Are you ready?” she asked.

  “No,” he said.

  But he stood anyway.

  The world shifted.

  Tilted.

  And he woke—this time not violently, not gasping—just… returned.

  At the edge of the Verge.

  The breach had collapsed behind him. Not sealed. Not erased. Just done.

  The sky above was cracked, but whole. Like something broken had been mended without quite hiding the damage.

  The Tower still stood.

  Bent. Flickering. But there.

  And in the east—something rose. Maybe the sun. Maybe not. But it was light. It was warmth.

  Thren stood nearby. Her coat was patched. Her hair tangled. She looked like a survivor.

  Her eyes widened when she saw him.

  “You made it,” she breathed.

  He nodded. Quiet.

  For the first time in what felt like years, his voice came without weight or splinters.

  “We all might.”

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