The night bled into silence.
Rain dripped from the rooftops, tracing the edges of the Hollow Coin's sign in silver streaks.
The city had fallen quiet—not asleep, but holding its breath.
From my window, I could see Eryndor's towers glowing faintly through the mist.
Each spire pulsed with divine runes, faint signals of the Church sealing the upper districts.
The gods had locked their city from the inside.
A cage made of faith.
Inside me, the System pulsed again.
[Synchronization Protocol: Active.]
Locating Reflections…]
The air shimmered.
For a moment, I saw threads stretching out from my body—thin blue filaments vanishing into the horizon.
Each thread pulsed once, twice.
And then—voices.
Soft at first. Faint.
Whispers speaking in different tones, different languages, yet all carried my cadence.
"Who am I?"
"Why did I fall here?"
"The sky cracked, and I saw myself."
My heart slowed.
My fingers trembled against the windowsill.
Lirya stirred from the chair beside the fire, her cloak draped over her shoulders. "It's happening again, isn't it?"
I nodded slightly. "They're waking up."
Her expression hardened. "Reflections?"
"Fragments," I said. "Pieces of me that didn't die when I did. The Limit System isn't just a gift—it's a network. Every world, every possible me… connected."
She stood. "Then they're real."
I looked back at the threads glowing faintly across the skyline. "Real enough to kill me."
The tavern door creaked.
Footsteps echoed in—slow, deliberate.
The conversations around us died instantly.
A man entered, cloaked in crimson.
Not a priest—something older.
The runes on his sleeves flickered black and white, twisting symbols that seemed to breathe.
The hunters went still. Even the air seemed to listen.
He stopped in front of me, lowering his hood.
His face was mine.
Not similar—mine.
White hair. Blue eyes. The same faint scar at the corner of the lip.
But his gaze was colder, distant, hollow like glass that had forgotten light.
Lirya's breath caught. "Rin—"
"I know," I whispered.
He smiled faintly. "You're the Origin, aren't you?" His voice was calm, deliberate. "The first who broke the limit."
The tavern lights flickered. The world pressed tighter around us.
[Warning: Dimensional Interference Detected.]
[Reflection Class Entity — Confirmed.]
The other me tilted his head. "I was wondering when I'd find you. The gods want your head; I want your existence. Same result."
He moved—and the room folded.
Tables splintered. Space twisted.
The hunters screamed as reality bent around him.
Two Limit Fields colliding was never meant to happen; the air screamed, tearing itself apart.
I saw his trajectory through the layers of space—every micro-angle, every curve of motion—and shifted half a step.
His fist passed through where my head had been a second earlier, detonating the wall behind me in a bloom of blue light.
Our eyes met mid-motion.
His shimmered like fractured mirrors, each one reflecting a different outcome.
"You see everything," he murmured. "But can you choose the right one?"
The second punch came faster.
Time fractured.
For an instant, I saw infinite versions of the next moment—me dodging, me dying, me killing him.
All at once.
Each outcome overlapping until I couldn't tell which was mine.
I exhaled. Focus.
The Six Eyes burned.
Every false possibility shattered into dust.
Only one thread remained.
I stepped into it.
The world snapped back.
My palm met his chest.
Light collapsed inward—blue swallowing red.
The air imploded.
Silence followed, and then the slow rain of glass as the tavern's walls reformed around us.
He knelt, gasping, blue veins pulsing beneath his skin.
"You're not supposed to exist," he hissed. "The Origin must die, or the mirror breaks."
I looked down at him. "Then break it."
A final pulse of light flared.
His form fractured—cracks racing through his body until he dissolved into thousands of mirror shards, scattering like dust.
Each shard reflected my face one last time before fading.
The tavern was gone. Only ruins and moonlight remained.
Lirya stood a few paces away, trembling. "That was you."
"Not me," I said quietly. "A possibility."
"And there are more of them?"
I looked up at the crimson moon.
Its surface shimmered faintly—thousands of tiny reflections staring back.
"Millions."
The city below was chaos—Church bells ringing, fires lighting the horizon, banners raised across districts as the hunt began.
The Voice of Order had failed; now the Inquisition had taken command.
Every mage, every soldier, every hunter in Eryndor had one name whispered through their orders:
"The Six-Eyed One."
"The Limitless."
I watched the skyline burn.
Somewhere beneath the noise, I could still hear the fragments—each reflection whispering from beyond the veil.
"You can't outrun yourself."
"Every world will mirror you."
"You are the flaw in creation."
Lirya touched my sleeve. "What will you do?"
I turned, the faint blue glow of my eyes reflecting in hers.
"Find the others."
"And after that?"
A pause.
"Decide which version deserves to exist."
The wind shifted.
Somewhere above the clouds, a faint hum echoed—like glass being drawn across stone.
The gods were whispering again.
But this time, I whispered back.
"You built a perfect world.
I'll teach it how to break."
And with that, I stepped into the rain.
The hunt had begun.
Not for survival—
but for truth.