Echoes Through Stone and the Unknown

The sun never truly reached the academy's lower levels. Even at midday, the vault beneath the east wing was swallowed in a faded twilight, lit only by the flickering lanterns carried by Selene and Elias as they descended the cracked stone stairwell. Dust hung in the air like fog. Each step echoed like a whisper of something once alive and now forgotten.

"It's dangerous down here," Elias muttered, stepping over a collapsed beam.

"Then it's exactly where we need to be," Selene replied.

Her cloak dragged on the ground, its edges stained by ash. The deeper they moved, the stiller the air became, heavy with aura residue and buried secrets. Selene's breathing was quiet but sharp. Her eyes grew restless again, searching for invisible threads of intent in the air.

They reached the end of the path: a massive stone doorway, sealed by age and long-disused aura glyphs. With her own hands, Selene traced the broken symbols. Her aura stirred, reluctantly but strongly, pulsing over the ruins of the runes.

She stepped inside.

The chamber was octagonal, vast, and silent. A diagnostic array sat at the center, buried under rubble. Shelves of rusted instruments lined the walls, their labels rotted beyond recognition. And in the center of it all, something called to her.

Selene slowed as she crossed the broken floor, her boots crunching over debris. Elias watched closely but kept his distance. She reached a shattered console and pulled aside the rubble. Beneath it, she found a sealed scroll case marked with a triangle inside a ring—the symbol of Langley's old technomancer guild.

She pried it open and read the contents under the lantern light. Each line hit her harder than the last.

"Subject 014, aura overgrowth, suppression successful, identity preserved, recommend continued containment."

Her hand trembled.

No name. Just a designation.

And the date was from before she ever entered the Cromwell Palace.

Her stomach churned, and her hands shook.

She felt her throat tighten.

"What am I?" she whispered.

But there was no answer. Only the silence of the past and the soft hum of a truth too vast to understand.

That night, she went to sleep without resisting once more.

The mindscape this time was dimmer and stranger.

The mirror hall still stood, but the reflections had changed. Some mirrors were taller, others crooked. Their surfaces glimmered with faint red lines like cracks or veins. She stood in the center again, barefoot. Her breath fogged in the cold.

And across from her stood the chained version once more.

But this time, the reflection turned to face her.

Their eyes locked.

Crimson against crimson.

Selene opened her mouth to speak, but her throat locked. Her heart raced, and her vision warped.

Then pain blossomed behind her eyes.

She stumbled back, gripping her head.

The mirrors pulsed.

Her other self took a single step forward, and Selene collapsed, gasping, as darkness swallowed her surroundings. A scream echoed in her skull—it was her voice, or maybe someone else's.

Her eyes opened.

She lay on her side. Something was different.

Her body felt free.

There were no bindings or restraints. Her aura wasn't silent. It sang.

She sat up slowly.

Lantern light flickered above her in her chambers.

The air crackled around her skin.

She looked at her hands, her fingers twitching as the aura around her surged unpredictably. The walls shook softly. Books slid off shelves. Runes etched into the walls flickered, then went dark.

In the halls beyond, wards and sensors failed. Lights sparked and went out. Instruments used to monitor aura snapped, releasing coils of steam.

Somewhere in the palace, alarms rang and then fell silent.

She stood calmly.

Outside her door, the guards knocked, but their speech was slurred. They collapsed within seconds of being near.

She walked to the mirror and saw herself—eyes glowing, veins lightly pulsing with radiant crimson. Her reflection stared back without a sound.

Then a knock.

A voice.

"Selene?"

It was Elias.

She didn't answer.

He entered carefully, aura shield active. "There was a surge," he said. "Everything went dark. The palace is locked down. What did you—"

She turned to him.

And for a moment, he froze.

Her expression wasn't just different.

Her aura wasn't the same.

It flowed like a storm, untethered and deep. It rippled across the room in silent arcs, making every object around her tremble.

"…Selene?" he asked again.

She tilted her head, studying him.

Then, in a voice that felt like neither hers nor someone else's, she said, "Who are you?"

The voice echoed, distorted and hollow.

Elias's eyes widened.

He instinctively stepped back.

A burst of aura exploded from her, invisible yet crushing. Windows shattered outward, and the table between them cracked apart.

Elias fell to one knee, pressing both palms to the floor.

His aura shield flickered violently, unable to hold.

His voice broke as he gasped, "You're not Selene."

She took a step forward, her bare feet silent against the floor.

And all Elias could hear was the steady hum of her aura surrounding the room like a silent storm.

She looked at him with something close to pity.

Then she turned her eyes to the door.

The palace had begun to stir.

Elias stayed on the floor, sweat dripping from his brow as the energy in the chamber pressed against him like a crashing wave. His instincts, finely tuned, were crumbling under the pressure radiating from her.

This wasn't just energy. It was something ancient, raw, and incomprehensible.

He gritted his teeth. "You are not Selene."

The figure in front of him tilted her head slightly, as if considering the name. The red glow in her eyes reflected off the shattered surfaces in the room. Her fingers twitched, causing more cracks to spread through the stone floor.

She didn't reply with words; only silence and pressure. It was the kind of pressure that bent metal and warped magic seals. The air around her shimmered like heat haze. The walls groaned.

Elias shifted his weight and forced himself upright, his knees still trembling. His aura shield flickered violently before reforming.

"Whatever you are," he said carefully, "you're using her body. But this place and these people will not survive you free."

She blinked slowly.

The room pulsed again.

Behind her, dozens of hovering tools, artifacts, and instruments mounted on the walls sparked, whined, and then exploded one by one. Every mana-bound object collapsed. The palace alarms were already failing. There were no containment failsafes left—only Elias and the echo of a power that once slept.

Then she finally spoke.

"Shackled," she said in that otherworldly voice. "Yes. You built them well."

Elias flinched. "We?"

She took a step forward.

"It is not the first time your kind feared what cannot be controlled."

Another step; the energy intensified again.

Elias staggered, his knees threatening to buckle once more. "Then tell me—what do you want?"

For a moment, there was no answer. The glow in her eyes dimmed slightly.

Then she looked at the cracked mirror beside her and whispered, almost mournfully, "To be whole."

The words echoed low and hollow, resonating deep into the stone walls.

Elias stared at her. The image of Selene—the woman he had come to begrudgingly trust and follow—was still there, but altered. The same voice, twisted. The same stance, but different. Something ancient loomed in her shadow.

He lowered his guard—not his aura, but his stance—and spoke more gently. "If you want to be whole… then what about her?"

That question halted the energy cold.

Just for a moment.

She blinked slowly, as if waking from a distant dream.

"I am her," she said.

"No," Elias murmured. "You were her."

The lights in the corridor flickered back on briefly—only to die again with a final sizzle. Faint screams from distant halls filled the air, scholars and guards disoriented and overwhelmed. Yet none dared to come closer.

She stepped toward Elias again. Her voice held no anger—only determination. "She broke first. I watched her shatter. I am what remains."

A long silence followed.

Elias, despite the weight of the energy, stood his ground. "Then prove you are more than what remains. Let her return."

A faint twitch crossed her face. A blink. Almost human.

But then her hand lifted.

Energy surged outward once more, forcing Elias to slide back, his heels scraping along the polished floor. Behind him, doors buckled. Windows high above shattered into glittering shards.

She turned toward the inner sanctum of the palace.

"Selene is asleep," she said. "And for now, I will walk."

With that, she left him kneeling in a whirlwind of shattered glass and silence.