"This isn't the same Archive, is it?"
Aren asked it like a question.But Lira didn't answer.
Because she couldn't.
Because she wasn't in the room.
There were walls, but they were blank — no glyphs, no shifting paragraphs. Just a flat grayness that looked like unrendered space.
He was alone.
And the book was heavier.
Still bound in red thread.Still titled Pandora's Resonance: Volume 001.
But now, there was something else on the inside flap.
A name.
Aren Veil.
His name.
He didn't remember writing it.He didn't remember choosing it.But there it was — stamped in careful ink, with a black line through it.
AREN VEIL(Author rights revoked)
He stared at it. His fingers brushed the thread again.
Something pulsed.
Like a heartbeat, but wrong.
A whisper crackled in the room.
"--wri-- not --ere-- you-- shoul--"
It wasn't sound. Not exactly.It felt like a memory of hearing something.The kind of thing you hear in a dream and forget before you wake up.
The book thudded to the floor on its own.Pages flipped themselves.Aren backed away as the air took on a static charge.
He turned—
And saw the mirror.
There hadn't been a mirror a second ago.
But now it was here: tall, cracked, and framed in charred pages.
His reflection was standing perfectly still.
Too still.
"This place…"He muttered."It wants to see how stories break."
He stepped closer to the mirror.
And so did the reflection. But—
—It didn't match his steps.
The timing was wrong. Deliberate.
Aren stopped.
The reflection kept walking.
Until its face was just inches from the glass.
He expected to see himself.
But what stared back at him was—
Older.Not in years, but in burden.Tired in a way that made the silence scream.
The figure tilted its head.
And for a moment, the glass fuzzed like a broken screen.
Then it spoke.
"But who are you supposed to be?"
Not "Who are you?"Not "What's your name?"Not "Where am I?"
No.
"Who are you supposed to be?"
Like you don't belong anywhere.Like the universe wrote you down by accident and is now trying to erase the evidence.
Aren's breath caught in his throat.
His reflection blinked — and when the eyes opened again, they were filled with black script, like someone had inked words over the irises.
I remember this part.You're going to run now.
"No—"
But it's not going to work this time.
The mirror shattered without touching.
But the reflection didn't vanish.
It stepped forward.
Out.
Just a step. Just a toe over the line of glass and fiction.
And then—
Everything rewound.
He blinked.
He was on the floor.The room was gone.The walls were writing themselves again.Lira was standing over him.
"Hey!" She snapped her fingers. "You zoned out. You okay?"
He sat up. Heart hammering. Palms slick.
She helped him up. "The system's pinging again. Something's tracking you across tiers."
"Was I out long?"
"Like… six seconds. Why?"
Aren didn't answer.He looked down at his hands.
His fingertips were dusted with mirror glass.Real. Cold. There.
And somewhere deep inside the book still bound by red thread, a new line appeared on a page that didn't exist.
ARENS REMAINING: [UNKNOWN]Containment protocol failed. Divergence initiated.