Plot twist

**The Architect of Ashen Hollow**

"Damn... I forgot," Elias muttered, the echoes of the Oracle's voice still rattling in his skull. He staggered back from the ring of ash and mirrors, expecting the illusion to end. But it didn't. The world bent further, warped deeper—like a reflection caught mid-shatter, refusing to break clean.

He should've been afraid. Should've fled.

Instead, he smiled.

Not out of joy. Not out of fear.

But the kind of smile worn by someone teetering on the edge of a vast, unknowable truth—beautiful and terrifying.

"I'm the Architect of this city," he whispered.

A soft chime rang through the chamber.

The air froze.

And then something unfolded—slow, like the blooming of a cathedral wrought from memory and silence.

From the center of the mirror-ring, *he* emerged. Not Elias. Not the Oracle. Someone older than the city's bones. A fallen angel—not grotesque, but devastatingly graceful.

His left side shimmered with celestial grandeur—flowing robes of blue and gold stitched with constellations, moonlit skin, and a single pristine wing of radiant feathers stretching from his shoulder like a benediction.

His right side was pure ruin—charred bone and sinew, a wing dripping ink and whispers, his obsidian arm etched with forgotten prayers. A single red pupil floated in the darkness where an eye should be.

It stared directly into Elias—past skin and thought, into memory.

The contrast between divinity and decay was perfect.

Too perfect.

He spoke, and his voice was harmony and ruin combined:

"You wore the mask so well, you forgot it was never yours."

The city groaned. Above, the Clocktower bled time again—its bells tolling with red tears.

Elias stumbled back, not in fear, but awe. Despair-tinged reverence.

"Of course," he whispered. "Of course this was a game."

He raised his hand. A flicker of blue glimmered in the corner of his vision.

**[LOGOUT]**

A low hum. A silence deeper than sound.

The world fractured—glass folding into fractals, light turning into equations, his breath dissolving into floating code. He felt it, even as he let go: the loss of something sacred.

The Architect watched with a smile that knew too much.

And then—

Silence.

The VR pod hissed open.

Cold air grazed his skin. Elias blinked, disoriented beneath harsh fluorescent lights. His chest heaved. The silence here was wrong. Thin. 

"Damn," he muttered again, pressing his palm to his face. His skin felt real. But somehow *less* real than moments ago.

The rig powered down with a gentle chime. He stepped barefoot onto the cool metal floor of his apartment, his legs unsteady. Not from exhaustion, but from emotional weight—the *afterimage* of Ashen Hollow still clinging to his senses.

He made coffee. Steam curled upward, disturbingly similar to the incense that had choked the Oracle's chamber. The scent was supposed to be grounding.

It wasn't.

"Why am I drawn to this crap?" he muttered. Horror. Survival. Forgotten truths buried in madness. And yet...

In the mirror above his sink, he caught his reflection.

And for a flicker of a moment—

His left eye glowed red.

He froze.

Then blinked.

Gone.

He stared at himself for a long while. His lips curled—not quite a smile. Not quite anything.

"Maybe it's not just a game after all."

Outside, the sky brooded with a pale gray. The world wore its mask again.

And Elias?

He wasn't sure if he ever took his off.