The door screamed as it opened—a sound like a hundred violins played with knives. A sound that remembered pain. The air that spilled out was thick, like honey woven with silk, dragging at their skin as if the very act of stepping forward would change them.
Beyond the threshold stretched an impossible hall, stretching outward into infinity. The space twisted in ways that defied reality—the walls were not walls but something alive, pulsing with veins of liquid light, branching like frozen lightning. The ceiling, if there was one, shimmered with constellations that did not belong to any known sky, shifting and rearranging themselves as if searching for the right moment in time.
And standing in perfect rows, stretching farther than the eye could see…
Were the other Lyras.
Not reflections. Not illusions. Versions of her.
Hundreds. Thousands. More.
Each one was different, yet unmistakably her. Some were younger, their eyes bright and filled with innocence she could barely remember. Others were older, worn by time and battle, their faces lined with struggles unknown to her. One wore a crown of living flame, its embers licking at her auburn hair without ever consuming it. Another was clad in armor forged from solidified sorrow, its jagged edges shifting, whispering their regrets.
But the worst were the ones that had no faces at all.
They stood in silent stillness, their features smoothed away like statues unfinished. Some bore only empty sockets where eyes should be, their heads tilted as if listening. One had no mouth but was clutching a book with inked pages that bled into her fingertips. Another was suspended in midair, her entire body dissolving into numbers that constantly rewrote themselves.
The silence was thick, pressing against Lyra's eardrums like deep water.
Then Echo danced between them, barefoot, weightless, leaving no mark upon the ground. She twirled as if guided by an unseen rhythm, her laughter a ripple in the stillness. "Welcome home," she sang, though her lips never moved. The words were simply there, as if plucked from thought itself and given voice.
Callan stumbled through after Lyra, his dagger drawn. But the moment he crossed the threshold, the blade changed—white-hot, then frozen, then rusted into dust in his grip. He swore, jerking his hand back, his pulse thrumming in his throat. "What in the seven hells—"
"Is this?"
The voice did not come from Echo.
To their left, one of the Lyras turned. This one wore the robes of a scholar, alchemical symbols embroidered into the fabric, the glyphs shifting like living creatures. Her eyes gleamed with knowledge too vast to contain.
"The repository," she answered, stepping forward. "The archive. The dumping ground of choices made and unmade."
Finn came last, his glass body catching the chamber's light, refracting it into a spectrum of color that painted the shifting walls. But where his feet touched the ground, it did not remain unchanged. Tiny cracks spread outward, not in destruction, but in reaction—the way ice fractures across a still pond before it breaks.
The nearest Lyras turned toward them as one.
"She's late," said a warrior Lyra, her armor stitched together from grief itself.
"She's early," corrected a child Lyra, no older than ten, playing with vials of liquid starlight.
"She's right on time," murmured an elderly Lyra from a rocking chair that hadn't been there moments before. She swayed gently, her chair creaking in a rhythm that matched Lyra's own heartbeat.
Then, all of them spoke at once.
"Walk the line."
"See what you could be."
"See what you have already been."
A chill ran through Lyra's spine.
I. THE LYRAS OF POSSIBILITY
The first Lyra she passed was radiant. Dressed in pristine alchemist's robes, a golden circlet rested on her brow, the embroidery on her sleeves glowing faintly with magic. Her hands were steady. Her face was unmarked by scars. The perfect savior.
"The one who fixed everything," Echo murmured.
But Lyra's breath caught as she looked closer. The circlet was not worn—it was fused into the woman's skull, the gold threading through her veins like living metal. Her eyes did not shine with wisdom, but with fire, burning from within as if she were barely containing something vast and terrible.
The next Lyra crouched in shadow, her face partially obscured. When she lifted her head, her mouth was sewn shut, black threads binding her lips closed. Her hands ended in claws, fingers curled inward as if grasping for something that had long slipped from her reach.
"The one who spoke too much truth."
Further down, a Lyra floated in a tank of amber liquid, her body threaded with glowing filaments, her veins pulsing in rhythm with an unseen force. Her eyes were open, but vacant. A preserved thing.
"The one who tried to become the solution."
Each step revealed new horrors.
A Lyra with wings of fire, her feathers dripping embers onto the ground. A Lyra who had been rewritten into pure numbers, her body dissolving into calculations that never stopped. A Lyra with no shadow at all, as if she had traded it for something far worse.
Then she saw it.
At the very end of the endless hall stood a door unlike the others—black wood with a silver handle shaped like a key. But it was not just a door.
From beneath it, nothing seeped.
Not darkness. Not light. Not mist or shadow.
Simply… absence.
It was the kind of emptiness that should not exist, a void so complete it made Lyra's eyes ache just looking at it.
"And that?" Callan asked, his voice hoarse.
Echo's smile widened, too many teeth showing. "The one even the Titan fears."
Finn's glass hands cracked at her words, fine fractures splintering across his forearms. "We shouldn't—"
But Lyra was already moving.
She barely noticed how the other Lyras began whispering as she passed.
"Don't."
"Go."
"See."
"Run."
The silver handle burned without heat. It ached, like something pressing against the marrow of her bones. The moment she touched it, a foreign pain shot through her palm—a sensation that didn't belong to her. It felt like someone else's suffering had been trapped inside, waiting for her to claim it.
She turned it.
The lock clicked.
The door swung open.
And inside...
Was nothing.
No.
Not nothing.
Worse.
It was her.
Not a reflection. Not a possibility.
Her.
She stood in the center of the void, identical in every way—except for the eyes.
Hollow. Empty. Devoured.
Lyra's breath hitched. She tried to step back, but her feet were frozen in place. The air around her felt heavy, thick, pressing against her ribs like unseen hands.
The other Lyra's lips moved—soundless, her mouth forming words that did not belong to the living. Then, without warning, she reached forward.
And the world unmade itself.