Each step on the crystalline bridge rang out like a chime, echoing in the vast, star-lit silence.
Ayame held tightly to Kael's hand, the chill of the void brushing against her skin like the edge of a memory she wasn't ready to revisit. The stars above were dimmer now. Or perhaps it was that the bridge grew brighter, humming beneath their feet with each truth they had surrendered.
She looked at Kael. His face was calm, but she knew that calm. It was the one he wore when he was barely holding together—like frost on glass, beautiful but one breath away from breaking.
"Do you think this is it?" she asked, voice hushed.
Kael didn't answer immediately. He was watching the end of the bridge, where a swirling obsidian curtain loomed like the mouth of a great cave. "No," he said at last. "But I think what's behind that veil is."
As if summoned by his words, the veil shifted. It didn't open. It *dissolved*.
What lay beyond was… silence, again. But a different kind.
A hollow, aching silence—the kind that follows a scream no one heard.
They stepped through.
The room they entered was unlike any place they had seen before. Not vast. Not grand.
Small.
A circular chamber made of black stone. Smooth. Featureless. Except for the center.
At the very heart of the space floated a single glowing orb, suspended mid-air, its surface rippling like water disturbed by sound. And beneath it… a figure.
Ayame gasped.
It was a girl. Or something like one. She was curled on the floor, sleeping—no, not quite sleeping. *Suspended*. As if time itself had given up on moving around her.
Hair like starlight. A silver marking on her wrist.
Kael froze. "That's…"
Ayame whispered it before he could. "Liora."
But not as they remembered her. This Liora was younger—barely thirteen, maybe. There was pain etched into her stillness. Her chest barely rose. She looked like a statue carved from moonlight and sorrow.
Ayame took a step forward. The orb pulsed, reacting.
The Keeper's voice echoed faintly in their minds, though the being was nowhere to be seen.
> "The soul is here. Fragmented. Guarded. Afraid."
Ayame knelt beside the sleeping girl. "Why is she so young?"
Kael crouched too, frowning. "Maybe this is the last version of her that was still whole."
The orb above began to hum louder, its glow intensifying. Ayame reached toward it—and the moment her fingers touched the light, visions slammed into her skull.
---
**A cabin burning. A scream. Liora, running. A shadowed figure—Kael?—reaching toward her, calling her name. But she doesn't look back. She runs into the woods. And the world ends around her.**
---
Ayame fell back, gasping.
Kael caught her. "What did you see?"
"She… she ran," Ayame whispered. "She was scared. She thought you were the one who—who hurt her."
Kael flinched. "I *tried* to help her. But she didn't believe me."
Ayame looked down at Liora again. "She locked herself in here. With the soul shard. And now she's trapped."
Suddenly, the orb shattered—without a sound—and the room shifted.
Black tendrils erupted from the walls, swirling with anguish, wrapping around the chamber like vines desperate to choke the truth. The sleeping girl stirred, eyelids fluttering, lips parting in a silent gasp.
A voice filled the space—not Liora's, but something deeper. Ancient.
> "You are not welcome."
The tendrils lunged.
Kael shoved Ayame aside just in time, raising a barrier of flame that deflected the first wave. The air roared with heat and grief.
"Not again," he growled. "We didn't come this far to watch her fade!"
Ayame scrambled forward, eyes on Liora. "It's not the darkness attacking us. It's *her fear*."
She closed her eyes and reached out—not with her hands, but with her heart. With memory.
*Liora,* she thought, *you're not alone. We came back for you. We never stopped looking.*
The darkness shrieked—an awful, high sound like breaking glass underwater.
Ayame forced herself closer to the girl. A tendril grazed her shoulder, slashing a shallow cut, but she didn't stop.
*You were scared. I was too. But hiding won't make the hurt go away. We can carry it. Together.*
The black vines recoiled. The light from Ayame's chest—a soft lavender aura—burst outward, pushing the shadows back.
Liora's eyes fluttered open.
And for a second, just one small second, the fear vanished from her gaze.
She whispered, "Ayame?"
Ayame burst into tears. "Yeah. It's me."
The girl stirred, and the moment she sat up, the chamber began to crumble—stone splintering, shadows shrieking as the illusion unraveled.
Kael ran to them. "We have to get out—now!"
Ayame grabbed Liora's hand. "Hold on!"
The room collapsed around them, the void above splitting into light and darkness as the soul shard floated down—whole, glowing, and pulsing with Liora's heartbeat.
They leapt together into the light.
---
They landed hard.
Grass. Real grass. The scent of rain. The sound of birds.
Ayame blinked up at a sky that was *blue.* The real kind.
Kael groaned beside her. "I don't even know what dimension we're in anymore…"
Ayame sat up—Liora clutched in her arms, alive, breathing, safe.
For now.
But something in the sky caught her eye.
The stars.
They were moving.
---