There was no air. No ground. No heartbeat.
Mira floated through the emptiness, though the word float felt wrong — there was no direction here, no weight, no up or down. Only the slow movement of light, threads of silver weaving through infinite dark. They coiled around her limbs, her hair, her skin, like quiet memories refusing to fade.
She tried to remember where she was.
Tried to remember who she was.
The last thing she recalled was Kael's face — pale beneath the fractured sky, his eyes wide with something between despair and defiance. Then there was heat. A voice. The Watcher.
And the light had consumed her.
Now, all she could feel was the echo of that moment — like a bell still ringing long after the tower has fallen.
Fragments of her memory drifted by in slow orbit: a child's laughter, a blood-stained blade, the scent of rain on stone. She reached out, trying to touch one, and the image dissolved at her fingertips. Each time she tried, she felt herself lose something — a piece of her name, a thread of her past.
Mira.
Was that still her name? Or just the whisper of someone she used to be?
She moved — or thought she did. The light pulsed once, twice, then parted, revealing a landscape beneath her: an endless ocean of mirrors. Every surface reflected not her body, but her selves — hundreds of versions, each caught in a different moment of her life. In one, she was laughing beside Kael in the market square. In another, she was weeping, her hands covered in blood.
And in the very last reflection, she stood alone in the void, watching herself watch her.
Her throat tightened. "Kael…" she whispered.
At the sound of his name, the mirrors rippled outward — a shockwave of resonance. From the horizon of the void came a faint sound. A heartbeat.
One.
Then another.
It was not hers.
It was his.
Mira turned toward it instinctively, her body trembling with the first sensation she had felt since dying: longing.
The void resisted her, pulling her back like an undertow. Every step forward felt like moving through memories that wanted to hold her down — every regret, every promise, every lie.
Still, she walked.
As she moved, the mirrors began to shatter, spilling their light into the darkness. Through each broken reflection, she caught glimpses of something vast — a city of fallen angels, a forest of black glass, a sky split into two. Pieces of worlds that should not exist.
Then she saw it — a figure standing at the far edge of the void.
Tall. Wrapped in rags of light. Its face was blurred, but the eyes burned gold.
"Why do you walk toward the living?" the voice asked, both gentle and terrifying.
Mira's voice cracked. "Because he's calling me."
"The living cannot call the dead."
"He's not… calling with his voice. He's calling with his soul."
The figure tilted its head slightly. A sound like a sigh passed through the void. "Then you are bound — to him, to the curse, to the Watchers. You will not rest until the chain is broken."
Mira took another step closer, the light burning beneath her feet. "Then tell me how."
But the figure only raised its hand. Light burst outward, enveloping her.
As it did, she heard it whisper — softly, like an echo from before time began:
"You were never meant to be the end, Mira.
You were meant to be the return."
The light consumed her, and the heartbeat grew louder.
When Mira opened her eyes again, the void was gone.
In its place stretched a long corridor — endless, silent, carved from obsidian and bone. Pale suns hung motionless overhead, their light dim and tired, like memories of warmth. Shadows moved along the walls, whispering her name in voices that were sometimes hers, sometimes not.
Each step she took left a trace of gold on the ground, fading quickly. The corridor pulsed faintly — alive, breathing with her.
She remembered the figure in the light, the words it had spoken.
You were meant to be the return.
Return to what? To whom?
Her mind drifted toward Kael again — his face, the tremor in his voice when he said her name for the last time. The memory hurt. Yet, for the first time, the pain felt real, human.
Something was changing inside her.
She looked down at her hands and saw veins of light threading beneath her skin. When she flexed her fingers, the air shimmered — tiny souls flickering like fireflies, the remnants of those lost between worlds. They danced toward her, curious, as though drawn to her heartbeat.
"I'm not one of you," she whispered.
But the fireflies didn't care. They circled her head, humming softly — a chorus of what was left behind.
As she walked, she began to feel again — cold, hunger, the ache of exhaustion. She realized she wasn't a ghost anymore. The corridor was remaking her, rebuilding her form from the fragments she carried. Her body felt heavier with each heartbeat — the price of existence returning.
And then, a door appeared at the far end of the passage.
It wasn't a real door, but a shape cut from shadow — its outline flickered like a dying flame. On its surface, etched in silver, was a mark she recognized instantly: Kael's sigil. The same one he had carved into his sword the day they swore to protect each other.
She reached for it. The closer her hand got, the more the air trembled. She could hear his voice — distant, muffled, but unmistakable.
He was alive.
And calling her back.
But before her fingers could touch the mark, something stirred in the darkness behind her.
A low growl rippled through the corridor. The fireflies scattered in fear. Mira turned slowly — and saw them.
Figures cloaked in shadow, their eyes burning blue. Souls devoured by the void, hollowed out and reshaped — Watchers. But smaller, twisted, like echoes of the one Kael had faced. They slithered along the walls, whispering in the ancient tongue of the dead.
Mira's pulse quickened.
Her instinct — something deep and forgotten — awakened. The light in her hands flared, forming into a blade of pure radiance. The first weapon she'd wielded in death.
"I don't have time for you," she said quietly.
The corridor screamed.
The Watchers lunged.
And Mira moved — not as she had before, not human anymore, but something beyond it. Her blade sliced through the dark, each strike releasing bursts of light that carved new suns into the ceiling. One by one, the creatures fell — dissolving into dust and whispers.
When silence finally returned, Mira stood trembling. The blade vanished from her grasp. Her breathing was uneven, but her heart still beat.
She looked again at Kael's mark, now glowing faintly.
The door opened without a sound.
A rush of warm air brushed her face — real air. Wind. The scent of rain and ash. Somewhere beyond that threshold, she could feel him.
She stepped through.
And the corridor collapsed behind her like a dream forgotten.