Chapter 34

The silence that followed was too perfect.

No drip of water. No hum of air. Even the flicker of the torch felt subdued, as if it too had gone quiet out of respect—or fear.

Kye stayed on one knee, his breathing shallow. The weight of that figure's presence hadn't faded. It clung to the air like smoke after a fire, invisible but choking. His hands trembled slightly, not from pain but from the fragments of memory that still clung to his skin like dust.

He could still hear the girl screaming. He didn't know who she was. But his heart reacted like it did.

Renna knelt beside him. She didn't speak right away. Her hand rested gently on his back—not pushing, not pulling—just there. A grounding presence in the middle of the storm.

"You back?" she finally asked, voice soft.

Kye nodded, though it wasn't entirely true. A part of him still wasn't. A part of him was still somewhere else, somewhere lost in a version of his past that hadn't been meant to surface.

Veika stood a few feet away, arms wrapped around herself, clearly shaken.

"That… that thing," she said. "It looked like you, but it wasn't you. It felt wrong. Like he was wearing your face, but underneath was something twisted."

"He was me," Kye said hoarsely.

"No," Renna corrected gently. "He was what they turned you into. Before they sealed him away."

Kye slowly rose to his feet. His joints ached more than they should have. He wasn't wounded, but the exhaustion felt deeper than physical. Like his body knew it had touched something forbidden.

The boy—his mirror—remained silent, standing near the edge of the room. He hadn't moved since the dark figure vanished. He seemed smaller now, like a ghost reduced to an echo.

Renna turned to him.

"You knew this would happen."

"I hoped it wouldn't," he said. "But the moment you opened the hatch, it was already too late."

"What was that thing?" Veika asked again, eyes wide.

The boy looked at her, then at Kye.

"It was a sealed identity. A version of Kye created when the sword—Vireon's Breath—first bonded to him. It was too unstable. Too angry. The sword didn't know how to carry truth yet, and it made him into something else. That version lived only to destroy lies, no matter what they were attached to."

Kye closed his eyes for a moment. The fragments in his mind—the scream, the fire, the blood—all felt too real to dismiss.

"Why would they seal him inside a sword?"

"Because they couldn't kill him," the boy answered. "Not without destroying Kye along with him."

Veika looked between them, visibly distressed.

"So what now? He's just… out there? Walking through walls? Wearing your face?"

"No," Renna said. "Worse. He knows things Kye doesn't. And now he's loose in a world that thinks he's dead."

The boy nodded.

"And he's not bound to Vireon anymore."

Kye looked down at his own sword. It felt heavier. As if sharing the same space with its counterpart had left it scarred. The edge still shimmered faintly, but the light was dimmer. Fainter.

"Can I still use it?" he asked.

"I don't know," the boy said honestly. "It might not obey you the same way anymore."

Kye sheathed the blade carefully, trying to ignore the weight in his chest. It wasn't fear exactly. It was the kind of pressure that came when a storm was building—but you didn't know which way it would break.

Renna straightened.

"We can't stay here."

"No," Kye agreed. "We need to find him."

"And if we do?" Veika asked. "What, we fight him?"

"If we have to," Kye said. "But more than that… I need to know what he remembers. If he's part of me, then he might know why they rewrote everything."

The boy took a step forward.

"There's a place where he'll go first."

"Where?" Kye asked.

"Where it all started," he replied.

Kye's brow furrowed. "I don't remember a beginning."

"That's because it was taken from you. Burned out during the first purge."

Renna exhaled slowly. "Then we find it."

The boy hesitated. Then he turned and walked to the far wall of the chamber. He placed his palm against the stone, and a hidden mechanism clicked beneath the surface. A thin vertical line split open down the center, revealing a staircase spiraling downward into shadow.

"It's not on the map," he said. "This path was meant for those who were never supposed to return."

"Then we're the right people to walk it," Kye said.

---

The stairs were cold. Not from temperature, but from something deeper. The air tasted sterile—like even time had been drained from the stone. The torches on the walls didn't burn naturally. They glowed with a faint blue light, casting no warmth.

They moved slowly, Kye in front, Renna just behind him, Veika trailing with more caution than usual. The boy followed last, silent but steady.

After what felt like hours, the stairs ended in a narrow hallway carved into obsidian. Symbols lined the walls. Strange ones. Not the memory runes from before. Older. Curved. Organic.

"They look like fingerprints," Veika muttered.

"They are," the boy said.

Kye stopped walking.

"What do you mean?"

"These aren't just markings. They're traces of decisions people made here. Memories etched into the walls by force. Each one is a scar."

Renna stepped closer to one. It was small. Simple. But when her fingers grazed the surface, she flinched back.

She had seen something. Just for a second.

A glimpse of someone kneeling. Crying. Hands covered in blood.

"What was that?" she whispered.

"A decision someone regretted," the boy said.

"Whose?" Kye asked.

The boy didn't answer.

They kept walking.

The hallway ended in a stone chamber, smaller than the one above but no less heavy with history. In the center was a single pedestal. On it sat a cube made of white stone, pulsing gently with light from within.

"What is that?" Veika whispered.

The boy stepped forward, eyes unreadable.

"That," he said, "is what they tried to erase. The last uncut memory."

Kye's heart slowed.

He stepped forward, hand outstretched.

But before he could touch it, the cube shimmered.

And a voice filled the room.

Not loud.

Not angry.

Just tired.

"Don't open it, Kye," the voice said.

It was his voice again.

The other him.

But this time… it didn't sound twisted.

It sounded broken.

"Not unless you're ready to lose who you are."