Chapter 12: The Inverted Eye

Night had fallen over the Sanctuary.

A strange night. Too heavy. Too quiet.

Kelvin stared at his reflection in a cracked mirror.

But it wasn't himself he saw.

It was his Shadow.

It no longer mimicked him.

It was watching him.

— "Do you feel that?" Lila whispered behind him. "Something changed... since the City."

Kelvin nodded.

— "It's like… I'm wearing a mask of myself. And it wants to fall off."

Echo, still lying down, trembled slightly. Since their return from Nyxeria, he had been murmuring incomprehensible words. His body seemed inhabited… out of phase.

Orane kept watch over him, worried.

— "He's… splitting," she explained. "Part of him stayed on the other side. And it's trying to come back… in its own way."

Kelvin turned sharply.

— "Is he in danger?"

— "We all are."

A scream echoed down the hallway.

Then another.

The ground shook.

They rushed out. The Watchers were running in all directions. Entire corridors turned black, swallowed by a matter that absorbed light.

A voice echoed from the Sanctuary's loudspeakers:

"Mental breach detected. Active intrusion. Reality unstable. Please initiate full lockdown."

But it was too late.

Something was escaping from Echo.

In the main hall, Echo had risen.

His eyes were no longer his own.

A second Echo stood upright. Naked. His body covered in shifting inscriptions.

But it wasn't a copy.

It was the Inverted Echo.

He looked at Kelvin and smiled. A smile without warmth. A smile of emptiness.

— "You think you understand the Shadows… but you've only seen a fragment. You're their vessel. I… I am their truth."

Kelvin stepped forward, trembling. He felt his Shadow stirring, alive, helpless.

— "What are you?"

— "I'm the trace Echo left in the Cities. The one he abandoned in exchange for escape. But fragments… never die. And now, I'm here."

He reached out his hand. The ground split open. A shape emerged:

An Eye. Inverted.

Floating. As big as a beating heart.

It pulsed in the void. Each beat twisted the room.

— "The Inverted Eye…" Orane whispered. "It shouldn't exist."

— "It always has," said the Inverted Echo. "It is the gaze of forgetting. The one that sees… what you refuse to see."

Behind them, Lila felt her mind begin to crack. Iskara curled into herself.

Kelvin clenched his fists. He closed his eyes.

And dove inward.

He found his Shadow.

But this time, it had taken his adult form. It stared at him.

— "I am you," it said. "All that you deny. All that you once were. All that Klinik-13 tried to erase."

— "Then help me. Or destroy me. But do it now."

The Shadow smiled.

— "Very well."

And it fused with him.

Kelvin opened his eyes.

And for the first time, his body and his Shadow were one.

He stepped toward the Eye. Reality warped around him but no longer shattered him.

He reached out his hand. The Eye looked at him.

And Kelvin looked back.

It was like falling upside-down into an endless abyss.

He saw memories that weren't his.

Tests.

Children.

Bodies immersed in vats of artificial memories.

Masked scientists.

People trading their memories for chemical oblivion.

And at the very bottom...

A man with a blurred face.

The Director of Klinik-13.

Kelvin staggered back.

The Eye closed.

The Inverted Echo screamed and shattered into black fragments.

Echo collapsed.

Kelvin stumbled, caught by Lila.

Orane rushed to Echo.

— "He's alive. But the Eye… fractured him."

Kelvin looked up.

— "I know who's behind all this."

— "Who?"

Kelvin stared at a distant point on the wall, where the Shadows seemed to have receded.

— "The Director. The first. The one who built Klinik-13. The one who stole our names."

He looked at his hands. They pulsed with a black glow.

— "And now… I can find him."