I didn't remember falling. Only landing.
Hard.
The stone beneath me pulsed with something ancient and cold. It wasn't blood, but it moved like it. In slow, hungry spirals. I tried to breathe, but air didn't feel like mine anymore. It entered someone else's lungs. My chest rose and fell, but I wasn't in it.
Voices whispered just out of reach. Not Selene's. Not the boy's.
Mine. And not mine.
"He never made it this far.""You always do.""One of us has to survive."
I didn't know if my eyes were open.
But I saw things.
A door-wide, gold-trimmed, locked from the inside. A mirror, cracked, bleeding ink. A voice, my voice—saying a name I didn't recognize. A name I loved.
"Alpha." Selene's voice pulled like thread through cloth. Ripping, not stitching.
"I'm here," I said, or meant to.
I blinked. The chamber was real again. Mostly. The stone. The scroll. Selene kneeling beside me, one hand not quite touching my chest, the other wrapped around the boy's wrist, holding him back.
She looked… afraid.
Not of the room.Not of the scroll.Of me.
What did she see?
"I saw… something," I rasped. My throat was dry. My voice sounded aged. "I saw"
"You're not supposed to remember all of it," she said. Her voice was quiet. Measured. "It wasn't meant for a full mind."
Then why do I remember more than one?
I didn't say it aloud.
The visions kept coming, uninvited:
A field of blades, planted like crops. Children chanting in a language I knew only in dreams. A hand ,my hand, clutching Vanitas, but older. Not this Vanitas. A twin? A reflection?
My stomach twisted. I stumbled to my feet. Selene caught me before I hit the ground again.
"You saw it," she said, and for the first time, I saw grief in her eyes.
"I saw him," I said. "The Echo."
Selene didn't answer.
He wasn't a shadow. He wasn't malevolent. Not this time.He was... tired.
And he wore my face.
The boy looked up at me, his eyes wide, frightened. "Your eyes changed."
"What color are they?"
"Not yours."
I paced the edge of the chamber like a wolf in a cage, fingers twitching near Vanitas. It hummed again. But this time, it wasn't cold.
It felt… warm. Familiar. Like it recognized me. Or someone else.
Who wielded you before me?
Selene finally spoke.
"Do you know what the Rite is for, Alpha?"
I shook my head. "You said it was a test."
She smiled. Thin. Hollow. "It's a mirror."
She walked toward the scroll and sat before it, legs crossed like a priestess before a pyre. "The Echo is born of the magic that binds our kind to fate. It doesn't come from us. It comes from the moment we change. The moment we break."
"And the Echo?" I asked. "It's just... what? A phantom?"
"No." Her voice cracked like old glass. "It's the part of you that survives when you don't."
My throat tightened.
"I didn't die."
"You almost did."
The chamber blurred again.Stone twisted.Shadows lengthened.
I turned and saw him.
My Echo. Standing in the doorway.
He didn't speak.
He only stared, head tilted slightly, like he didn't understand why I was still here.
Neither do I.
Selene didn't move. "You're seeing him now, aren't you?"
"Yes."
"And what's he doing?"
"He's watching."
Her eyes closed. "He remembers things you've forgotten. That's how it begins."
I fell to my knees.
Not out of weakness.
Out of understanding.
Those weren't just visions.
They were lives.
"I've seen this place before," I said. "In my sleep. Before we ever arrived."
"You've been walking toward him longer than you think."
Selene touched the scroll with her fingertip.
"The Rite is only the beginning, Alpha. You crossed into the mirror. And now, it's cracking."
CRACK.
The sound didn't come from the stone.
It came from inside me.
A fissure running straight through memory and self.
The Echo opened his mouth. And this time, he spoke.
But not to me.
To her.
"You made your choice, Selene. And now he has to make his."
Her face went pale.
She stood up, fast, reaching for her blade.
But the Echo vanished.
The chamber was silent again.
Only my breath remained.
Only my doubt.
"Tell me," I said to Selene. "What choice did you make?"
She turned away.
Her voice, when it came, was soft. Too soft.
"I chose to live."
The chamber was gone.
Or maybe I'd closed my eyes again.
But when I opened them, I was somewhere else.
Not in a dream.
Not awake.
Just… drifting.
There was snow.
Red.
Falling like ash.
And a battlefield of mirrors, shards of glass, steel, memory, all half-buried in crimson frost. Each one held a reflection. Each one twitched. Not in sync. Not mine.
I moved, but not as Alpha.
The body was mine, but the breath was older.
Worn. Like a coat passed down through too many winters.
"This is where it started, "a voice said, my voice, but not.
I turned.
He stood beside me.
The Echo.
He didn't look like a monster. He looked like a memory.
His expression was hard to read. Not cruel. Not kind. Just… real.
More real than me.
"Do you know what it's like to be erased?" he asked.
I didn't answer.
I didn't need to.
Because I remembered.
Suddenly.
A name I shouldn't know.A face I'd never seen.A battle I'd never fought.
Flashes. Too fast to hold:
Me. Kneeling before a dead god, both arms bleeding.
A twin-wielder laughing as he stabbed himself, not his Echo.
Selene—young, terrified—facing her reflection with a blade too big for her hands.
A voice whispering:
"Only one of you is real."
I staggered.
Pain bloomed across my ribs, phantom wounds.
The Echo kept walking through the frost.
Each step cracked the ground.
Each mirror hummed.
And with each hum, I remembered more.
I'd been here before.
Not as Alpha.
But as him.
As many of him.
Versions of me that never made it. Echoes that weren't erased. Or maybe, I was one of them.
"Why are you showing me this?" I asked.
He stopped walking. Turned toward me.
"Because you're closer than anyone has ever been."
"Closer to what?"
"To choosing."
I blinked.
And I saw a ritual. Ancient. Silent.
Two wielders. Two swords. One moon.
A mirror between them.
One would die.
The other would live.
But only the Echo would remember.
"That's what the Rite does," the Echo whispered."It doesn't reveal your power. It reveals your shadow. And asks if you're willing to kill him."
And suddenly, I wasn't sure which one I was.
I screamed.
But no sound came out.
Because my mouth wasn't mine anymore.
The Echo was inside me.
Not possessing.
Remembering.
And I was remembering with him.
I fell to my knees before a vision of the first Wielder—Kael, the one who split his soul to create a blade sharp enough to wound time. The one whose Echo refused to fade.
Vanitas was born from that wound.
I saw the ritual again.
But this time, Selene was there.
Only she wasn't whole.
She held the sword like a coffin lid. Her Echo already gone.
And she was crying.
"She didn't choose to kill him," the Echo said."She chose to forget him."
I gasped.
And then,
I woke.
Back in the chamber.
Covered in sweat.
Hands trembling.
Eyes… not my own.
Selene sat across from me.
Watching.
Silent.
The boy nowhere in sight.
"You saw him again," she said.
I nodded.
"My memories," I said. "They're not all mine."
She exhaled like she'd been holding her breath for years.
"They never are."
I looked down at my hands.
Then at Vanitas, now resting beside me like a sleeping dog.
"What happens if I keep remembering?"
Selene's answer came slow.
Soft.
Tired.
"Then eventually… you'll have to decide which one of you stays real."
The Echo was still in the chamber.
Just outside the mirror's edge.
Watching.
Waiting.
And maybe.
Just maybe,
Wishing I'd choose him.