The plain was so wide it felt endless, a mirror stretched across eternity. Kael's first step left a faint ripple, like walking on the surface of water made of light. Above, the void shimmered with silent constellations, but the stars weren't stars—they moved too fast, tracing strange spirals, their light bending as if reflected through invisible waves.
Astra knelt, running her fingers along the surface. "It's not glass," she murmured. "It's memory. Condensed. The leftovers of the dream."
Kael looked down. Beneath his reflection, he saw shapes—cities crumbling in reverse, oceans flowing backward, faces flickering through the depths. Whole worlds looping and folding into themselves.
"So this is what happens when a god wakes up," he said, trying to sound steady.
Astra didn't answer. She was watching the sky, eyes narrowing. "We're not supposed to be here. The Outside isn't made for living things."
"Then why aren't we dead?"
She hesitated. "Maybe we are. Or maybe the dream hasn't finished erasing us yet."
Kael laughed, a short, cracked sound. "Comforting."
They began to walk—toward what, they didn't know. The horizon kept bending away, always just beyond reach. The silence pressed against their ears until it became unbearable.
After a while, Kael started hearing whispers—faint, like wind against glass. He tried to ignore them, but they grew clearer with each step.
You shouldn't have left.
You broke the seed.
Now the root will rot.
He stopped, turning sharply. "Astra, did you hear that?"
She glanced back, wary. "Hear what?"
"The voices."
Her face tightened. "Don't listen. They're not real. They're echoes of what the dream wants you to remember."
He nodded, though unease coiled in his gut. But when he turned forward again, he froze.
Something stood in their path—a shape like a man, but made of reflected light, every movement distorting the air around it. Its face was blank, like the glass beneath their feet.
"Who are you?" Kael asked, voice low.
The figure tilted its head. "Who were you?" it replied, its voice an exact echo of his own.
Kael's breath hitched. The reflection stepped closer, mirroring him perfectly—same stance, same heartbeat. Astra's hand went to the dagger at her belt, but she didn't draw it.
"That's not him," she whispered. "That's the dream's memory of you."
Kael stared at his double. "Why show me this?"
The reflection smiled faintly. "Because you still think you exist."
Then it lunged.
Kael reacted instinctively, drawing his blade. The two clashed, steel ringing against something harder than metal. Sparks flew, scattering across the mirror plain like dying stars. Astra tried to intervene, but invisible force pushed her back.
"Kael!" she shouted.
He couldn't answer. The reflection was fast—too fast. It fought like him, thought like him. Every strike met its twin. The fight wasn't a battle; it was a repetition.
Finally, Kael dropped his guard intentionally. The reflection struck, slicing a shallow line across his chest. Pain flared—and so did understanding.
If it mirrored him, then he could break the pattern.
He smiled grimly. "You fight too perfectly."
The reflection paused, its expression flickering. Kael took advantage of the hesitation and drove his sword straight through its chest.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then the reflection shattered like glass, fragments scattering into the sky and dissolving into light.
Kael fell to one knee, panting. Astra ran to him, gripping his shoulder. "You shouldn't have bled," she said. "If this place is made of memory, wounds mean something's rewriting you."
Kael pressed his palm against the cut, watching crimson seep through his fingers. "Then I guess I'm being edited."
"Don't joke," she snapped. "Every moment we stay here, the Outside remembers us differently."
He met her gaze. "Then we find a way out before it forgets who we are."
Astra looked ahead again. In the distance, the glass plain began to slope upward toward a faint light—white, soft, pulsing like a heartbeat.
"That might be it," she said. "The Axis—the place where the Seed's dream connects to what's beyond even this."
Kael rose unsteadily. "The heart of the real world?"
"Maybe," Astra murmured. "Or its grave."
They walked toward the light, their reflections stretching behind them—long, distorted shadows rippling over a horizon that no longer knew which side was sky.
Behind them, the crack where Kael's reflection had shattered began to widen. From its depths, something vast and unseen shifted.
The Outside had noticed them.