Silence.
Weightless, endless, perfect silence.
Kael opened his eyes and found no world waiting for him—only reflections.
He stood in a place without ground or sky, surrounded by fragments of light suspended in nothingness. Each shard floated like a piece of broken glass, reflecting scenes that flickered in and out of being: faces he didn't know, cities that no longer existed, wars that might never have been.
He reached out to one shard, fingers brushing its surface. It rippled like water—and the vision inside sharpened.
A battlefield. Smoke and blood and fire. Thousands of armored soldiers kneeling before a dark figure standing atop a mound of ash. The man's eyes burned violet, his voice echoing across the carnage.
"Rise. For the flame demands a world reborn."
Kael's breath caught. The voice was his.
He stumbled back, the shard cracking, spilling light across the void. The memory dissolved—but its weight remained, pressing against his chest like a wound reopening.
"Is this… what I was?" he whispered.
The Mirror Realm answered not with words, but with another image. Another shard lit up behind him—this one showing a young boy running through a sunlit field, laughing, a woman's voice calling his name. The warmth of that moment almost hurt.
Then the image shifted. The same boy, older now, watching the field burn while his mother screamed his name one last time.
Kael fell to his knees, clutching his head. "Stop it!"
But the mirrors did not stop.
They multiplied—thousands of them blooming like flowers of glass, each one showing a different life, a different Kael: a scholar hunched over a desk of runes, a soldier kneeling before a throne, a wanderer staring up at a broken sky. Each version lived and died, over and over, in endless loops of light and shadow.
And in every reflection, the same thing lingered—the emberfire.
The curse that binds across lifetimes.
Kael's voice broke into the void. "Why are you showing me this?"
The mirrors shivered. From their collective glow, a figure began to form—tall, robed in light, its face shifting constantly, made of every version of him stitched together.
When it spoke, its voice was not one, but many—layered, echoing, ancient.
Because you asked to remember.
Kael's pulse hammered. "You're me."
I am what you've left behind, the reflection said. Every death, every failure, every betrayal you refused to carry. You cast us away to keep climbing. To keep pretending you were still becoming something new.
Kael rose, trembling, but defiant. "Then tell me—why? What was I climbing toward?"
The reflection tilted its head, eyes blazing like twin suns. To kill God.
The words struck like lightning. The mirrors all around them shattered at once, spilling their contents into the air—worlds colliding, timelines overlapping. Kael saw it all in an instant: the Tower rising from oceans of flame, gods falling from thrones of light, the System birthing itself from the ashes of their war.
He saw himself at the center of it—each version burning the last in an endless cycle of ascension.
"No…" He staggered backward. "That's not me. That's not what I wanted."
It's what the fire wanted, the reflection whispered, stepping closer. You gave it shape. You called it the System. You built this Tower to contain your sin—and then you forgot.
Kael's knees buckled. The fire within him surged, answering the reflection's presence with a violent pulse of power. His skin split with threads of violet light, the emberfire trying to reclaim its host.
He screamed, forcing it down, his body trembling.
"Then what am I now?" he gasped.
The reflection's eyes softened, almost mournful. You are the fracture. The moment between destruction and creation. You can still choose—but the choice will unmake everything.
Before Kael could speak, the reflection reached out. Its hand touched his chest, over the emberfire. The contact sent a shock through him—memories flooding faster now, unstoppable.
He saw Liora.
Not as she was—but as she had been. Not human. Not born. Made. Forged in the fires he had once commanded, built to end him if he ever returned.
The revelation hit him like a blade.
"No…"
You created your own redeemer, the reflection said. And she does not know it yet.
Kael fell backward, gasping for breath. The Mirror Realm trembled around him, cracks racing through the glass like veins of lightning.
The reflection stepped closer, its voice turning low, almost kind. If you leave this place without breaking the cycle, the Tower will rebuild itself again. The System will start anew. And you will wake once more at its base, remembering nothing.
Kael forced himself to his feet, every muscle screaming. "Then how do I stop it?"
The reflection smiled—a perfect, hollow echo of his own face. You already know.
Then it shattered.
The mirrors collapsed, imploding into pure light. The realm dissolved around him, leaving only the sensation of falling—endless and weightless—through time itself.
He saw glimpses as he fell: Liora climbing the Tower alone, the Watcher turning his gaze toward her, the emberfire flickering weakly in his absence.
Then—darkness.
He opened his eyes to find himself lying on cold stone. The air was still, heavy with the scent of ozone. The Tower's glyphs burned faintly across the walls, pulsing like the echo of a heartbeat.
Liora knelt beside him, her expression torn between relief and fury. "You were gone for hours," she said. "What happened in there?"
Kael pushed himself up slowly. His voice was hoarse. "I remembered."
"Remembered what?"
He met her gaze, and for the first time, his eyes burned not violet, but pure white—flame without heat, light without mercy.
"Everything."
Liora stepped back, her fingers tightening around her weapon. "Kael…"
But before she could speak again, the Tower itself trembled, a low, resonant sound rolling through its foundations. The air warped. Glyphs shifted.
The System had felt his awakening.
Kael rose to his feet, the emberfire coiling around him like a living storm. His voice was calm, but something in it had changed—deeper, older.
"I know what the Tower is now," he said softly. "And I know what it fears."
Liora's heart pounded. "And what's that?"
He turned toward the spiral above—the final ascent.
"Memory."
The Tower roared.
Light erupted from its walls, swallowing them whole.
And in that blinding brilliance, Kael finally stopped running from himself.
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