Tag: Every reflection asks a different question.
The first dawn after the Requiem rose grey and uncertain.
The city's veins glowed faintly beneath the mist, pulsing like a warning no one could read.
Azen stood at the center of what had once been the Council Plaza—now a circle of glass and silence.
Around him, three voices breathed.
Mira watched the light crawl across the ground.
Selene tuned the strings of her broken instrument, each note trembling like a heartbeat.
Kaelith stood apart, arms folded, her shadow sharp against the ruin.
The Vein had gathered them here.
And it was listening.
---
The Test of Voices
The hum thickened until it became words that none of them spoke aloud.
Show me what remains when faith is divided.
Mira's eyes flared blue. Visions flooded her mind—Azen standing beside her, rebuilding the city, his hand finding hers in light. The dream was beautiful. Too beautiful.
Then it cracked. The same hand turned to ash.
She gasped and fell to her knees.
Selene heard music instead—an endless chord that drew her toward Azen.
It promised peace, but when she reached for him the song bled into static.
Her melody had lied.
Kaelith saw nothing.
Only darkness—until a single flame appeared, shaped like a heart.
The moment she touched it, it burned through her palm, leaving no wound but a symbol of the Vein.
Azen turned slowly, feeling their fear mingle with devotion.
"The Vein's testing you," he said. "Not your strength—your truth."
Kaelith's voice was low. "Then maybe it already knows ours better than we do."
---
The Distance Between Worlds
Far away, beneath the broken western dome, Lyra woke with her heart hammering.
Her pendant blazed with light, scattering golden shards across the floor.
Every fragment reflected someone she loved—Azen surrounded by three women, their faces half-known, half-forgotten.
"Why am I seeing this?" she whispered.
The Vein inside the walls pulsed once, faintly.
A whisper answered from nowhere and everywhere:
Because your story isn't finished. He still hears you.
She closed her fist around the pendant. The light cut her skin, but she didn't let go.
"If he's being tested," she said, "then so am I."
Outside, the rain began again—soft, deliberate, like the city trying to speak.
---
The Fracture
Back in the plaza, Mira rose first. "We can't follow him if we're broken apart by what we see."
Selene nodded, her voice trembling. "Then what do we do?"
Kaelith's answer was sharp. "We choose who he really is."
The ground beneath them flickered—three paths of light spreading outward.
One gold, one silver, one black.
Each led toward Azen.
He looked at them and finally understood the Vein's purpose: it wasn't choosing for him.
It wanted him to see who would walk beside him when the world remembered its pain.
He whispered, "No more gods. No more ghosts. Just truth."
The light flared.
Each woman stepped forward—Mira first, Selene next, Kaelith last.
Their paths merged into one.
---
The Resonance
The Vein's hum softened, settling into rhythm.
Above the plaza, the sky cleared enough to reveal the fractured moon—a mirror for everything that had been lost.
Azen lifted his gaze.
"Lyra," he said quietly, "I can feel you."
Across the city, she felt the same words in her pulse.
The distance folded for one heartbeat—just enough to remind them both that the story was still being written.