The dream-world was breaking.
Clouds of fragmented memories drifted overhead like shattered mirrors, leaking the thoughts of long-forgotten dreamers into the fabric of unreality. The tower of mirrors began to crack from the top, raining slivers of illusion down onto the floating dais where Lior still knelt, clutching the Memory Shard in his hands.
But he wasn't looking at the sky.
He was looking at the place where Mira had stood.
Gone now. Along with one of the shards.
His breath caught. Everything felt too quiet, too still.
"Mira…"
The name left his lips like a question. Like a prayer.
She had betrayed them.
But why did it hurt more than anything?
---
Rhéa knelt beside him, trying to steady his shaking form. "Lior—are you alright? You're bleeding."
He hadn't even noticed. The Memory Shard's energy had cut across his palm — a reminder that memories were never freely given. He blinked, eyes glazed with images not his own.
Whole lives. Whole worlds. Thousands of them.
"I saw her," he murmured. "I saw… all the ways she could have turned. All the ways we might have saved each other."
Soren limped closer, grim. "Then one version of her still might. But not this one."
Lior turned sharply. "No. She didn't do this because she wanted to hurt us."
"And yet she did," Soren snapped.
"She made a choice," Rhéa said, gently but firmly. "One we have to understand. Because if we chase her without knowing why—"
"—then we become like the Wraithborn," Soren finished. "Reacting. Consuming. Not choosing."
Lior stood slowly, the Memory Shard fading into his arm. The other shards pulsed faintly in response, as if mourning her departure.
"Let's get out of here," he said hoarsely. "Before this world forgets itself completely."
---
The Return
Escaping the dream-world wasn't easy.
Each step back through the veil cost them something. Lior forgot his father's face for several hours. Rhéa spoke in another voice for minutes at a time. Soren's orb glowed black, whispering to him in a language only Dreamers understood.
But finally, they emerged back into the Hollow Grove — or what was left of it.
The world had changed.
The sky was no longer fractured — it was split.
Two halves: one bathed in silver mist, the other cloaked in endless night. The Veil had grown unstable. Entire landscapes now floated above the earth like broken puzzle pieces refusing to fit.
The rift they had entered through was now closed. No way back.
Only forward.
---
Mira
Elsewhere, far beyond their reach, Mira sat alone on a cliff overlooking a sea of red stars.
The Black Shard pulsed against her skin, cold and alive.
She was no longer in the dream. Nor was she fully in the real.
She was somewhere between.
And beside her, in the space where sound died and thought echoed, a figure watched.
"You came," Noxis said.
Mira didn't look at him. "You didn't lie."
"I never do," he replied smoothly. "I only show people the truth they hide from themselves."
She clenched her fists. "You said the world would collapse."
"And now you see the cracks."
He stepped closer. "You want to save them. I know. You always did. But saving a broken house by patching the windows is foolish."
"And tearing it down?"
"Gives you room to build something better."
He reached out a hand. "Join me, Mira. You and I — we could rebuild the Dream. Not the old one. A new one. One where no one is ever forgotten. One where the weak don't have to beg for scraps from a broken throne."
Her voice trembled. "Lior will come."
"I hope he does," Noxis said with a smile. "Because when he sees what you've built, maybe then… he'll understand."
---
Back at Camp
They set up shelter in the ruins of a wind temple overlooking the Broken Coast.
Rhéa couldn't sleep.
Soren meditated, orb floating above him.
Lior sat alone at the edge of a shattered balcony, watching the tides twist unnaturally — waves rolling backward, crashing silently, then resetting again like a world trying to remember how oceans worked.
He held the Memory Shard in his hands, letting it speak to him.
And it did.
He saw Mira.
Not just now — but as a child.
Laughing in the streets of a ruined city.
Fighting back against Wraithborn with nothing but broken glass.
Crying over her sister's body in a dream-battle gone wrong.
He saw her choose strength because she never again wanted to feel helpless.
And he saw her look at him — not with malice.
But with hope.
---
He whispered to the wind, "I'll find you. I'll understand. Even if the world breaks."
---
Soren approached quietly. "You saw, didn't you?"
Lior nodded. "She's not lost. Not yet."
"No," said Soren. "But neither is she the same. The shards… they change us. Every piece holds a story. A truth. And sometimes, truths cut deeper than lies."
Lior's eyes gleamed. "Then I'll bear every truth. Even the ones that hurt."
He stood, facing the east.
"We go after her."
Rhéa joined them, staff glowing. "Together."
---
Above them, in the split sky, a third star ignited.
Not natural.
Not real.
A shard, calling out.
The next step.
The final trial.
And maybe, the beginning of the end.