The sound of shattering glass echoed through an endless dark.
Kairo gasped as if waking from drowning. The air burned like smoke, and the world around him was nothing but fractured mirrors suspended in blackness. Each reflection showed a different version of him – the boy at St. Kareth's Academy, the Tyrant King with a bloodstained crown, the scared child on a laboratory floor.
His voice came out cracked and trembling.
"Reika…? Taro….?"
No one answered. Only the echoes of his own voice, looping infinitely.
Then – laughter. Deep, distorted, omnipresent.
"You still call for ghosts," the voice said, rippling through the void. "Even now, you cling to illusions of friendship."
Kairo turned slowly. The Tyrant King stepped out of one of the mirrors – his face identical to Kairo's but older, regal, cruel. His eyes shimmered like molten gold.
"This place," he said, spreading his arms, "is your truth. Not Amaranth. Not the academy. You live here; in the mind I forged for you."
Kairo's pulse thundered in his ears. "I broke free of you."
"You thought you did." The Tyrant King's smile widened. "I let you dream, little flame. I let you believe in laughter and love. And when you started to think you were free…I took it away."
The mirrors began to hum – each one flashing with memories: Reika laughing, Taro crying, Lucan's hand on his shoulder, the final explosion in the Rift.
Kairo fell to his knees. His hands trembled. "It wasn't real…"
"Everything real starts as a lie," the Tyrant whispered. "The question is – whose lie will you die for?"
Meanwhile, in the waking world – Reika and Taro raced through the collapsed ruins of the Rift chamber. The ground still pulsed faintly, whispering in voices neither of them could bear to understand. Taro's usual joking tone had vanished; his eyes were wide, haunted.
"I keep hearing him," he muttered. "Laughing and crying at the same time…Kairo's trapped in there, Reika."
Reika clenched her fists. "Then we'll go in after him."
"Through the Rift?" Taro said. "You saw what it did last time! You go in there, you'll come out speaking in static."
She turned to him, her voice trembling but resolute. "Then I'll speak in static if it means I can reach him."
Taro blinked – and for once, he didn't joke. He just nodded.
As Kairo drifted between the mirrors, one suddenly flickered – showing Reika's face. Crying. Screaming his name.
He reached out, and for the first time in what felt like eternity, the mirror cracked from his side.
The Tyrant King's expression faltered. "What have you done?"
Kairo rose, shaking but burning with defiance. "I remembered."
The light burst – and the mirrors shattered, flooding the void with fire and song. The illusion began to collapse.
But as the glass fell away, Kairo saw something deeper beyond the flames – another layer of illusion, darker, older, hidden even from him.
The Tyrant King laughed again, but this time there was fear in it.
"Then descend, little god. Descend to where even your memories burn."