Jonas didn't move.
The hallway in front of him was filling not with smoke or shadow now, but with faces.
His face.
Versions of himself.
Some looked tired. Others were younger. One had burn scars. Another, a military uniform. Each of them bore something he recognized a choice he almost made. A path never taken.
Mara backed up slowly, her voice shaking. "They're all you."
"I know."
"How is this happening?"
He didn't answer.
Because the answer was standing right in front of him smiling.
"You fragmented yourself so many times," the one with the scar said. "Wiped memories. Reset loops. Buried pain. Each one of us is a piece you didn't want to carry."
Jonas whispered, "That's not possible."
Another stepped forward. This one wore a lab coat.
"You called us errors. Failures. But we're not broken."
A third voice this one calm, emotionless.
"We are the backup."
Mara pulled Jonas toward the side wall. "We have to go. This is a hallucination. A trap. It has to be."
But Jonas shook his head.
"No. This… this is real."
He stepped away from her.
The copies didn't move.
They waited.
Because Jonas knew what this was now.
A reckoning.
He turned to the one in the lab coat. "You were the original architect."
The copy nodded. "I designed the structure that became the Gate. I wanted to make pain obsolete."
He looked to the one with the burns. "You tried to destroy it."
"Too late," that version said. "Eris had already grown teeth."
Jonas turned to the soldier.
"You tried to weaponize it."
The soldier smiled. "And got eaten from the inside out."
Mara stood frozen. "What does this mean?"
Jonas faced her slowly. "Every time I tried to undo the damage, I made another version of myself, a splintered echo. And I buried them. But they didn't die. They waited."
He looked back at the crowd of selves.
"And now they're awake."
The one at the center stepped forward the first, the scarred one.
"You asked Eris to take away your guilt."
He pointed at the others.
"We are what was taken. We are what you gave away."
Then his voice dropped into a whisper so sharp it cut through the air.
"And now we want it back."
The lights blew out.
Darkness crashed in.
And Jonas heard them move.
Not with footsteps, but with thought.
Each one a memory. A failure. A ghost.
Mara's voice broke the silence, trembling.
"Jonas, tell me something..."
He turned.
She was crying.
".....am I real?"
He looked into her eyes.
And for the first time… he wasn't sure.