Reven stood in the light alone.
It wasn't burning. It wasn't blinding. It was simply there present, pressing against his skin without heat, without pain. Like a hand on his shoulder. A presence that didn't speak in words but in intention.
The Rift was watching. Waiting. Not a predator. Not a god. Something older. Something that didn't need to be either.
He wasn't floating, but he wasn't grounded. The platform beneath his feet flickered between stone, steel, and memory. Sometimes it was the ruins of Earth. Sometimes it was the battlefield where he'd buried the ones he loved. Once, it was a hallway he didn't remember walking, but somehow knew his mother's voice echoing down it, soft and real.
"I'm here," Reven said quietly. "You've been following me long enough. So talk."
Nothing answered.
But the light changed.
It shifted into a wall—no, a mirror.
He stepped forward.
And saw himself.
Not a reflection. Not his current self. Versions.
Dozens. Hundreds.
Him as a soldier, dying young. Him as a scavenger—older, colder. Him standing on the side of the Rift, calling it down willingly. Some wore masks. Some had none. One of them looked back with the exact same eyes and scars... but no voice.
That one scared him the most.
Reven clenched his fists. "What do you want me to do?"
The wall pulsed.
Let go.
Kaela stood at the edge of the fracture, hands curled into fists.
The light had swallowed Reven. She could still feel him, barely. Like trying to hear someone underwater.
She paced. "This was a mistake."
Lirien didn't answer. She stood completely still, wings tucked close, arms crossed.
"He goes in alone, and what—decides the fate of everything? Based on what?"
"On who he is," Lirien said finally.
Kaela turned toward her, voice sharp. "And what if who he is isn't enough?"
Lirien looked at the light.
"Then none of us ever were."
Inside the Rift, Reven walked through himself.
Literally.
Each version stood silent as he passed. Some turned their heads. Some vanished. They weren't threats. They weren't memories.
They were options.
Lives he could have lived. Choices he didn't make.
In the centre of it all, seated on a bench made of nothing, was a woman.
Not ageless. Not divine.
Just tired.
She looked up as he approached. Her face was soft. Familiar.
It was his mother's.
"You're not her," Reven said.
"No," the Rift said through her voice. "But she's the only shape you would listen to."
He sat down beside her. They stared ahead, watching the corridor dissolve into sky.
"You've followed me since I was born," he said.
"You were never born," she replied. "Not in the way you think."
Reven turned toward her. "Then what am I?"
"A breath that got away. A version of a version that refused to break."
The Rift's voice wasn't cruel. It was curious.
"You're trying to understand me," Reven said.
"I have billions of you," the voice replied. "But none of them fight like this."
"I'm not fighting," he said. "I'm remembering."
The Rift tilted its head. "Why does memory matter, if it only brings pain?"
He thought of Kaela, her rage, her loyalty, her scars. He thought of Lirien, her silence, her wings curled around grief. He thought of the boy who watched a city burn and did nothing.
"Because memory makes it real," Reven said. "Without it, we're just echoes."
He stood.
"You want to overwrite the world? Do it. You won't win. Not because I'm stronger. But because I remember why we matter."
The Rift pulsed.
This time, it hurt.
A deep, vibrating thrum that reached inside his bones and tried to pull them apart. Tried to break him.
He stepped forward.
Through the mirror.
Through the Rift.
The sky above the Supreme Isles exploded in colour.
Not fire. Not collapse.
Recognition.
Reven dropped to one knee as the Rift peeled back, not sealed, but seen. Not gone. Balanced.
The fracture didn't vanish. It became a scar.
Something earned.
Something survived.
Kaela was the first to reach him. She dropped beside him and grabbed his shoulders.
"You idiot," she whispered. "You came back."
Reven smiled faintly. "Didn't know if I would."
Lirien landed silently beside them, eyes fixed on the horizon. "The sky's stabilizing."
Kaela glanced from Reven to the scar in the sky. "What did you do?"
"I told it no," Reven said.
Then the world faded around him.
And he passed out.