Tag: Every light casts more than one reflection.
The rain had stopped, but the city still glimmered like a wound that refused to close.
Velora's towers leaned toward the quiet, their glass spines breathing in the new rhythm that had replaced the storm. The world was healing, but not the way anyone expected.
The Vein was no longer beneath the city.
It was the city.
Azen walked through the ruins in silence. Each step left a faint shimmer that sank into the ground. People who saw him whispered his name as if it were both prayer and warning.
He did not answer. He was listening—
—to the pulse,
—to the memories,
—to the voices calling his name through the cracks of time.
---
The First Voice — Mira
She appeared at dusk, when the reflection of the towers turned the streets into mirrors.
Her eyes glowed with soft blue light, the mark of someone touched by the early fragments of the Vein.
"You woke the old city," she said. "And now, every heart that ever carried its spark is awake with you."
Azen studied her. "You can feel it?"
"I am it."
When she touched his arm, he saw another century—Velora before the Game, before power turned into code. She was one of its builders, reborn through the pulse.
---
The Second Voice — Selene
Night fell, and from the ruins of the eastern tower came music—low, haunting, played on a stringed instrument older than the city itself.
Selene sat amid the debris, her skin traced with silver patterns, her eyes shadowed by grief.
"You remind me of the gods that forgot us," she said.
Azen's tone was quiet. "Maybe I am one."
She smiled without joy. "Then learn from their mistake—don't worship the silence that follows power."
---
The Third Voice — Kaelith
Before dawn, a storm of black light swept through the lower district. From it stepped Kaelith, cloaked in ash and fire.
Unlike the others, she did not bow or speak softly.
"You think you ended the war," she said. "You only paused it. Every time the Vein breathes, someone pays for it."
Her gaze was sharp, and for a moment Azen saw Lyra's reflection in her eyes—
the same defiance, the same faith, the same wound.
---
By sunrise, three women stood before him—each different, each drawn by the echo that linked them to his awakening.
None of them were illusions.
They were remnants—fragments of the Vein made flesh, the city's memory given voice and will.
Azen's pulse slowed.
"The city remembers through you," he said.
Mira nodded. "And through you, it dreams again."
Selene touched the ruined glass beside her. "Then let's see what it dreams of this time."
Kaelith turned toward the rising light. "Pray it doesn't remember the pain."
---
The wind shifted. The golden veins beneath the streets flared once more, and Azen felt something stirring deeper than the pulse—a rhythm older than the city itself.
The Vein was not finished.
It was gathering its chosen.
And in that moment, surrounded by echoes of love, loss, and power, Azen realized that every connection came with its own shadow.
He whispered to the empty air:
"Lyra, wherever you are… the world isn't done remembering us yet."