The Span was still—too still.
Kael remained to secure the perimeter, her footsteps echoing faintly off the cracked ground. Michael sat on a low ridge with Anna beside him, the sky growing dim above as if even the sun itself feared looking down.
He stared at his hands.
"I saw them," he said in a soft voice. "Different versions of me. All of them wrong."
Anna didn't respond immediately. She let him speak.
"One was a soldier. And another… a failed summoner. The most recent one I think I broke something. Someone."
His jaw clenched, voice husky. "I don't want to be any of those people."
Anna gazed up at him, her face still gentle but not soft.
"They weren't entirely wrong," she said.
Michael looked in her direction, startled. "How do you know what I did?
"I know what now you're doing," she said. "And the Thread doesn't display versions of yourself to shame you. It reveals it because it believes you're ready to bear the load."
He looked back down. "It felt like drowning."
Anna nodded slowly. "Because you were remembering in a place that's unremembering itself."
She waved at the burned ground around them.
"This Span is not only cracked physically. The Soul Thread here is a loose thing. Thin. The Unshaped isn't punching holes it's unraveling identities. Like: "If you travel through a place where souls come unwound and your Thread isn't anchored… it pulls.
Michael stared at her.
"So that's why? The place, the presence, my Thread… it's responding?"
"Yes," she said gently. "But also… because you are not running anymore from who you are. That's what awakened it. Not power. Choice."
He let her words settle.
Then, more softly, he said, "Do you ever remember? Your other lives?"
She smiled, not sad, but not without ache. "Sometimes. Not all at once. But the feelings? They never leave."
Michael gazed at her.
"How do you keep going?"
Anna stayed quiet for a moment. She held out her hand and delicately pushed a small piece of threadglass off his collar. Her hand hovered there, barely touching him.
"Because every life… somebody needed me. Even if I failed them. And I promised that I would try again, whether I remembered it or not."
He didn't speak after that.
But he didn't need to.
Because Anna made silence feel safe again.
.....
Here the light didn't act right.
It flickered without flame. It gleamed across surfaces without making shadows. As the trio continued further into the Cracked Span, the world felt less and less like Pyrrhion.
Michael's steps slowed. His fire spirit floated closer, crackling softly, almost protectively now. Kael walked sword unsheathed, the steel humming with latent warding. Not a word from Anna, but her fingers grazed her side every so often where a small rune-threaded charm pulsed faintly beneath her sleeve.
They reached the ridge.
Beyond it, the ground fell away suddenly into a lake of stillness.
And in the middle, alone, stood a boy.
He had on a dark, tattered cloak that caught no wind. His hair was messy, brushing over his eyes. His posture wasn't hunch-shouldered, but also not proud. He wasn't praying. He wasn't weeping. He just seemed to be standing there, waiting for a world that had lost track of him.
"What's he doing?" Michael spoke, almost in a whisper.
Kael narrowed her eyes. "Not breathing."
Michael looked at her. "What?"
"Look closer."
Michael did.
She was right.
The boy wasn't breathing.
Not deeply. Not slowly. Not at all.
They moved closer. The silence grew.
Michael's skin was itchy not from heat, but from absence." It was as if the boy had ripped a hole in the world. Not by force. Simply by being alive too long without being noticed.
Then Anna spoke.
"His soul is folded inward."
Kael frowned. "What does that mean?"
Anna's gaze never left him. "He was partially severed. His spirit tried to flee. Couldn't. Now it's hiding inside him. Waiting for someone to let him go home."
Michael swallowed. "From who?"
Anna stepped toward her, slow in her footfalls, gentle as if she were closing in on a wild animal that no longer believed in kindness.
"From himself."
Anna sounded closer, but the boy didn't move as she stepped within reach. His eyelids hung low and he stared out into the ash-tinged haze. He didn't flinch. He didn't speak.
But his lips were chapped. His hands were raw. Dried tear marks on his cheeks. He had screamed at some point.
And then stopped.
Anna reached out and didn't touch; she was just close. Her voice was quiet. Almost like she was sharing a secret with the flame itself.
"You're not forgotten."
The boy's lip twitched. Barely.
Anna's fingers settled lightly on his shoulder.
"You don't need to remember your name yet. You just have to remember that you're not alone."
Michael stood still and watched as the moment unfolded. Even Kael didn't speak.
Then the boy blinked once.
And whispered.
"Was I… someone?"