They walked in silence.
Not the kind born from caution—
the kind left behind after something inside has already shattered.
Qaritas barely registered his footsteps. Each one landed wrong, like his bones hadn't caught up with the rest of him. The air didn't bite anymore, but it clung—humid, viscous. It smelled faintly of old incense and scorched parchment, like a cathedral mourning itself.
Memory clung to his ribs, tender and tight, like the weight of a name too long buried. His pulse echoed in his throat, not fast—but loud. The corridor behind them pulsed once, like a muscle spasming in its death throes.
Then it sealed.
With finality.
No more mirrors.
No more might-have-beens.
The quiet felt... heavier now. Like silence that remembered noise.
Qaritas kept his eyes forward. But his skin still itched with leftover glyph-light, a soft burn that whispered across his spine like a half-forgotten word. Not pain. Not curse.
Just proximity. To something old. To the part of himself that had almost said yes.
The others moved around him—but felt like ghosts. No one spoke, until:
"Where are you taking us?"
Niraí's voice broke the hush—not loud. Not trembling. Just there. Solid. Like iron cooling after it bends.
Qaritas glanced sideways, just briefly. She held herself too still. Like her question wasn't a demand, but a dare to be answered honestly.
Ecayrous didn't turn. He moved like a sermon with legs—smooth, reverent, and entirely too pleased with the weight of his own presence.
His grin didn't return.
But his voice did.
Silk-wrapped. Venom-soft.
"Ah. The question you should've asked before you begged for power."
Qaritas's stomach knotted. He didn't remember begging. But he remembered wanting. And Ecayrous had a way of making the difference irrelevant.
A pause followed—intentional.
Then Ecayrous continued, tone like scripture left to rot:
"I'm taking you to the place where you'll live.
And break.
And rebuild yourselves as something else."
He turned.
Slow. Like a dying god savoring the twist of a blade.
"The place where the last twenty-six days of your humanity will burn like pages."
Qaritas's jaw clenched. Not in rage. In restraint. Don't give him your breath, Ayla had once said. He'll salt it and call it wine.
Ecayrous stepped closer—not physically, but in presence. His words slid between their ribs like familiarity pretending not to be a weapon.
The walls behind him pulsed in time with his breath. Stone flexed like tendon. Light didn't reflect—it obeyed.
"Where the shadow-born begin to forget what they were.
And where the path to Becoming begins."
Qaritas felt something twist inside his chest.
The path. The word Becoming. It should have meant growth. Ascension. But in Ecayrous's mouth, it felt like erosion.
Daviyi lowered her gaze.
Hydeius exhaled like he was preparing to bleed.
Still—none of them stopped walking.
"It's not a prison," Ecayrous said lightly.
"It's training."
And then—he smiled. Not cruel.
Worse.
Honest.
"But not the kind with swords and promises."
A laugh escaped him—low and raw.
Like something that had once been joy but hadn't survived the fire.
"You'll learn by unbecoming.
And when you've lost enough...
We'll see who's left to wear the flame."
The corridor sighed. Not air—but pressure.
His words didn't just land—they nested. Burrowed behind their eyes. Grew roots.
The walls flexed inward, then inhaled—a backwards breath, like something trying to draw them deeper into itself. The floor warmed beneath their feet—not with heat, but pulse. As if the realm wanted them to become part of it.
Somewhere beneath them, the floor groaned—not from weight, but memory. Like something old had stirred at the word unbecoming and remembered its hunger. A soft sound followed—wet and distant—like a mouth opening where no mouth should be.
Qaritas's throat felt dry. Not from heat. From recognition.
He didn't ask what unbecoming meant.
He already knew.
It had started in the mirror corridor.
It would end... wherever this path led.
Then—
a hum.
Soft. Felt more than heard.
Like the air was remembering a song that had once killed something holy.
The stone beneath their feet had stopped echoing. As if even the corridor was listening now—walls leaning inward, not in collapse, but in reverence. The light dimmed without shadow, like the space itself was holding its breath.
Something shimmered ahead.
She stepped out of the silence the way grief steps into memory—sudden, slow, and entirely inevitable.
Something shimmered ahead.
She stepped out of the silence the way grief steps into memory—sudden, slow, and entirely inevitable.
Her dress flowed like mourning breath—fine, unstitched silk woven from something heavier than air. It didn't rustle. It breathed.
Her hair moved like it dreamed—black, liquid, laced with whispers. The ends curled and stirred as if they remembered being something else.
She bowed.
Not to Ecayrous.
To Ayla.
Qaritas froze.
It wasn't fear.
It was recognition without memory. Like hearing your name spoken in a language you forgot how to bleed in.
Her beauty wasn't aesthetic.
It was weaponized. Sharpened at the edges. Measured to unmake.
Her eyes passed over him.
Qaritas felt it in his teeth. Like being read. Not his thoughts—his bones.
When she finally spoke, her voice wrapped around his spine.
"Welcome home, Beloved Consort."
She didn't say it.
She delivered it. Like a sentence.
Ayla said nothing.
But the air around her pulled back.
Qaritas reached for the bond—felt the static.
She was holding herself still. Not in strength. In refusal.
Then—
Niraí moved.
Too fast.
Too sharp.
A spear screamed into the air, slicing reality like it owed her something.
The tip carved through space where the woman had just been.
Empty.
A chuckle followed—low, cool, and alive with the kind of venom that remembered laughter as an act of war.
"Aww, I missed you too, Niraí," the woman said.
"How's Nysaeon?"
The women tilted her head—not curious, but measuring. Her smile didn't touch her eyes. It slid across her mouth like a blade laid flat.
Niraí didn't hesitate. Her voice came like flint striking bone.
"Atramenta." , Niraí spat.
A gust of heat rolled down the corridor—not warm, but scalding with memory. The walls moaned softly, as if the name alone had teeth.
Atramenta straightened from her lazy tilt, her grin slow and black as eclipse light.
Her foot dragged slightly against the stone—not a misstep, but a warning. A deliberate sound. Like claws on polished bone.
"Oh good. You remember."
Her shadow surged forward again—quicker this time, like memory anticipating pain. It brushed the edge of Niraí's flame-light, and something recoiled that wasn't flesh.
Her voice cracked slightly on the last syllable—not from weakness, but from delight.
Her fingers flexed, not in readiness—but remembering. They curled like talons re-learning the shape of ruin.
Ecayrous's presence surged—not by movement, but inevitability. He didn't walk into the conversation. He claimed it.
He raised a hand, just high enough to bend the air.
"Careful," he said, voice like silk soaked in oil. "We don't tear the canvas before the masterpiece."
He looked at Atramenta, but the warning floated toward Niraí.
"You'll have your stage in the Hellbound, if you behave. Both of you."
His tone was light. Amused. The way fire sounds before it consumes a library.
Niraí's shoulders rolled back like an old sword re-sheathing itself. The light around her dimmed—not out of submission, but readiness held tight beneath the skin.
Then she didn't speak. She reached.
The bond between her and the others flared, threads of mindlight woven through flame and pain. Her voice entered their thoughts, laced with static and salt.
"Long ago, before time learned how to crawl," she said across the link, "when I and Nysaeon first rose into ascendance, we were bridges between the First and Second Universes. We bore the scars of crossing."
Qaritas's pulse spiked. His hand twitched toward the hilt he no longer wore.
"Atramenta and Noct... were what Eon shattered into when the Second Universe woke wrong. Two twins. Two blades."
A pause. Then her voice lowered, ragged with memory:
"When Eon died the first time, in the Second Universe... it didn't stay dead. It split. And what came back wasn't whole. Atramenta and Noct weren't born. They were left behind. Not gods. Not demons. Just reflections twisted back on themselves. Hungry. Incomplete."
The memory hummed:
Frozen altars. A boy screaming. A sky that bled upward.
The air had smelled like melted bone. The screams bent the atmosphere, turning sound into pressure. Niraí remembered the way her hands didn't stop shaking for three thousand years. Not from fear. From the way his memory wouldn't hold still.
"They tore Nysaeon open. Not to kill—" her voice trembled in the link, "—but to study. They erased his mind. Called it a mercy. Then they burned him."
Something inside Qaritas pulsed—wrong and bright.
Not his own memory.
A vision.
Stone. Ash. Silence.
A boy lay curled on a slab of obsidian veined with gold. His eyes were open, but empty—like mirrors turned inward. His soul-lights had unraveled into threads, fraying into the void. Every breath he took sounded like it didn't belong to him.
Nysaeon.
Not broken. Erased.
A figure knelt beside him. Not flame. Not shadow. Law.
Orhaiah.
Pale robes spun from judicial silk. Her hands glowed with quiet geometry—circles, scales, and oaths. Not warmth. Not comfort. Just precision.
She worked without sound. Stitching light where light had once lived. Her fingers moved like verdicts—gentle, but irreversible.
Each thread she restored pulled a memory back into place. A name. A laugh. A scream.
One memory twitched. Then blinked. Then wept.
Nysaeon's mouth opened. No sound. Just recognition.
And then Orhaiah whispered—not into his ear, but into the space where his self had once fled:
"Even gods need witnesses."
The vision snapped.
Qaritas staggered. His spine burned with the shape of the memory.
He understood now why Niraí's fury hadn't consumed her.
Because someone—someone—had salvaged just enough of her brother to keep her from drowning in vengeance.
And if they hadn't…
Gods help them all.
She remembered the moment they erased him:
His eyes didn't close. They just... emptied.
Not fear.
Just absence—like his name had been lifted out from behind his ribs, and nothing had grown back.
He looked at her, not recognizing the shape of her grief.
And then the light in him folded inward.
Like a temple collapsing around a god no one remembered how to pray to.
Atramenta laughed—not girlish, but ritualistic. Like she was lighting a candle with someone's grief.
She stepped forward—graceful, deliberate, like she was waiting for the room to remember who owned its air. Her smile widened, but only her mouth moved. Her eyes stayed still, bright and dead. Measuring.
"We took care not to damage the important parts," she said sweetly. "You know how older models are."
Something twisted behind Niraí's ribs—hot and wrong, like a second spine trying to rip free. Her vision doubled. Not with tears—with blood. The corridor tilted slightly underfoot, or maybe it was just her balance unraveling. Her pulse wasn't fast—it was seismic. A heartbeat trying to remember how to become a weapon.
But something in Niraí hadn't cracked the way Atramenta expected.
Her grin held—but her fingers twitched. A microsecond late. Like her hand had remembered something her smile refused to acknowledge.
Her gaze dipped—not to Niraí's face, but her shoulder. The one scarred with the mark of twinlight.
It should've been gone. It wasn't.
For the first time, Atramenta didn't look amused.
Qaritas's breath caught. His body screamed to react—but Ayla hadn't moved.
Ecayrous sighed, mock-sorrowful. He stepped into the space between them like a priest stepping between confession and temptation.
"Be patient," he said to Atramenta. "Let her boil properly. After what you two did to her stubborn twin... she's earned the double feature."
The ground beneath their feet rippled—like a muscle tightening beneath skin. Not threatening. Not yet. Just… poised.
He looked to the group now, all of them.
Qaritas glanced sideways—just briefly—toward Ayla.
She hadn't moved. Not a breath, not a blink.
But the angle of her jaw had shifted, sharp now with restraint. Her hands remained at her sides, but her knuckles whitened, just slightly—like every tendon remembered how to shatter without shaking.
Not stillness. Containment.
She wasn't unaffected.
She was bracing like someone who had learned to endure in front of mirrors that watched her break and applauded.
Niraí didn't move at first.
Her hand hovered—twitching, then still. Not restraint. Just... redirection.
Heat pulsed off her skin in sharp waves, the kind that made metal sweat.
Across the link, her heartbeat echoed once—twice—like a war drum underwater.
Even Atramenta stilled.
Not fear.
Calculation.
A flicker of instinct crossed her face—a predator acknowledging another with teeth.
Komus stepped forward.
Sharp. Fast.
He didn't reach for a weapon—he reached for her shoulder.
Komus didn't move like a warrior. He moved like someone trying to unmake a prophecy—quietly, with one hand on a fuse.
He remembered her eyes after they buried Nysaeon the first time. How they didn't cry. Just closed—like slamming a door on a world that betrayed her.
He'd never asked what she'd lost that day. He'd only watched the silence take root.
To stop her.
Ayla reached for her—mentally first. The link sparked, then crackled.
"Niraí. Don't. Not yet."
But her voice didn't reach. Not through the wall of flame and memory. Not through the part of Niraí that still heard her brother screaming.
She turned to Komus, fast and low:
"Stop her."
Niraí was already mid-lunge.
Komus didn't grab her like a leader. He touched her like someone who'd seen what happens when the fight comes too early. He knew the cost of drawing blood before the world was ready to carry it.
His palm met her shoulder. It was soft. Gentle. And somehow felt louder than a scream.
And maybe—just maybe—he didn't want to watch another god break the only person left who still looked like she knew him.
His grip met her pulse.
"Not yet," he said. "Not for him."
Qaritas watched her shoulders heave once—like a war about to finish breathing.
He didn't know if Komus had stopped a mistake or stolen a moment that Niraí had earned.
Ecayrous grinned. Sharp as ritual glass.
"Ah, loyalty," he said. "It always sings sweetest before it snaps."
Qaritas didn't believe in gods anymore. Not the kind that asked for worship.
But he believed in thresholds.
And he was watching Niraí cross one.
Qaritas couldn't move. Not properly. His spine remembered battle. His blood remembered obedience. But none of that helped here.
This wasn't a fight.
It was a resurrection of every scar Niraí had buried.
His skin felt too tight around his ribs. Not pain—just the sensation of being carved into understanding.
And all he could do was watch her shake beneath the weight of a name she hadn't spoken since her brother forgot her face.
His breath caught against the back of his teeth. His palms stung—he'd clenched them without realizing.
Was this Becoming?
He didn't feel divine.
Just small.
And somehow, terribly visible.
Becoming wasn't a flame.
It was a scalpel.
Only if you were watching when they opened.
Thresholds didn't wait. They opened like mouths—and not all of them closed once you stepped through.