(You can forget a life. But the mirror never does.)
Kai dreamed of fire again.
Not flames that burned. But ones that remembered. Heat that whispered names into the smoke. Her name. Over and over.
The girl with silver eyes.
He woke with blood on his tongue and ash beneath his fingernails.
Elio was already awake, sitting by the window of their ruined safehouse, staring at the skyline of a city that no longer obeyed logic.
"We can't stay here," Elio said. "Ilyor's folding in on itself. Time's collapsing."
Kai nodded, still tasting copper. "The mirror's drawing us somewhere. I think... she's awake."
"The girl?"
"No," Kai said, rising. "The version of me that loved her. The one I buried."
---
They packed in silence. Every step in Ilyor felt like stepping into a dream someone else had died in.
Outside, the city was no longer trying to be real. Buildings floated. Roads curved into the sky. A market stall sold clocks that ran backward and screamed when touched. The sun flickered like a film reel skipping frames.
And always, always, that whisper: "Remember her."
They passed a crumbling fountain where fish swam in midair. A street preacher with no face screamed the same word on repeat— "Syllis"—until his mouth tore open and vanished. The echoes didn't stop.
A girl skipped rope in a puddle of fire. Each time the rope hit the ground, the flames formed words: you failed her. you failed her.
Elio stared at the flames, then at Kai. "Do you think she's behind all this?"
Kai shook his head. "No. I think we are."
They reached a square where children played tag through dimensions—vanishing and reappearing through bursts of static and mist. One girl stopped mid-chase, stared at Kai, and said, "The mirror misses you." Then she vanished.
A bus drove by overhead, hovering midair, windows shattered, filled with versions of Kai and Elio looking straight down at them, their faces warped by grief.
The sky thundered—without clouds. A sun blinked twice.
Reality was thin here.
They found the next clue in a graveyard that wasn't always there.
Tombstones rearranged themselves. Some bore their names. Some bore names they didn't remember—but felt in their bones.
Kai stopped in front of one grave.
It read:
"Syllis Elaris. The First Flame. The One Who Waits."
Elio ran a hand over the inscription. "She's the girl, isn't she?"
"Or the ghost of her," Kai said. "We loved her. We destroyed her. Maybe that's why the loops began."
The sky cracked like glass.
The tombstone opened like a mouth.
And a scream poured out—high, feminine, endless.
They staggered back as light exploded from the grave. When the dust settled, a figure stood there.
Syllis.
She was no longer a girl. She was a revenant stitched from memory and wrath.
Her silver eyes blazed. Her voice was a thousand broken timelines stitched together.
"You made me a wound," she said. "And called it love."
Kai took a step forward. The air warped around her, bending heat and time.
"Syllis," he said carefully, "I didn't know. I didn't remember."
She laughed. A horrible, beautiful sound that echoed like shattered bells.
"You remembered enough to bury me. Enough to run."
Her body flickered—through ages, through lives. A child. A queen. A god. A corpse.
Elio raised a hand, magic crackling at his fingertips. "What do you want?"
"You," she said simply. "Both of you. Again. Always."
The graveyard twisted. Tombstones floated. Trees bled ink. The sky spun.
Then—
A mirror opened in the air behind her.
And from it stepped another version of Kai.
Bleeding. Laughing. Eyes wild.
"Loop's almost over," he sang. "Better pick a side."
Syllis turned slowly. "You're early."
"You're angry," he grinned. "Let's fix that."
Time shattered.
And the graveyard became a battlefield.
Ash fell like snow. The tombstones cracked underfoot.
Syllis raised her hand and the sky bled fire.
Elio pulled Kai behind a mausoleum just as the blast hit. Debris scorched through air that buzzed like a broken radio.
"We can't fight her," Kai gasped.
"We already are." Elio's voice was grim.
Behind them, the other Kai laughed—a manic, joyful sound, like a hymn corrupted. "You think this ends with me? She's not your ghost. She's your creation."
Syllis turned her wrath toward him, and the two versions of Kai collided—one with fire, the other with shadow.
Elio dragged the real Kai through a breach in the stone wall. They fell through it—into somewhere colder, deeper, darker.
They landed in a long hallway made entirely of mirrors. Each reflection held a different version of themselves: alive, dead, in love, at war.
One mirror showed Syllis cradling a newborn wrapped in flame.
Another showed Kai stabbing Elio beneath a blood moon.
Another still showed Elio holding Kai's body, whispering an apology into a battlefield soaked in their blood.
"Is this the in-between?" Elio whispered.
"No," Kai said, shaking. "This is what's coming."
Their reflections began to move on their own.
Syllis's voice echoed from all directions: "Every choice is a loop. Every loop feeds the mirror. Feed me again."
And all the mirrors cracked.
A wall of glass burst outward revealing a staircase spiraling up into starlight. But the stars blinked like eyes.
A new voice echoed: one neither Kai nor Elio recognized.
"You remember her wrong. That's the problem."
Then silence.
A gust of wind circled them—sweet and sulfurous, as if the past had perfume—and from the shattered mirror pieces, a tiny memory emerged.
A girl, maybe seven, sitting on Kai's shoulders, laughing. A carnival behind them. Fireworks in her eyes. Her voice rang out:
"You said you'd never forget me."
Kai blinked, staggered. "I remember this. I remember..."
But the image dissolved.
Elio whispered, "She's not just a ghost. She's a consequence."
Kai gritted his teeth. "Then it's time we stop running from her."
The stairway pulsed. Beckoning.
They stepped forward together.