The tower's doors groaned open like lungs exhaling after centuries of silence. Eren stepped inside, boots clanging against the metal floor, each echo a reminder that the city above was alive and watching. Neon veins seeped through cracks in the walls, tracing the outlines of pipes and wires, as though the tower itself pulsed to the rhythm of the world outside.
Kael walked ahead, his coat brushing the air like a shadow in motion. His gray eyes glinted in the neon — cold, precise, yet unreadably tense. He moved with the confidence of someone who had walked this path a thousand times, yet every step seemed measured, as if he were weighing not just the distance, but Eren himself.
Eren followed, amber-hazel eyes flickering with every reflection off the cracked metal. Gold threads beneath his dark chocolate skin glimmered faintly, tracing the rhythm of the Pulse that throbbed deep inside him. The glow pulsed like a secret heartbeat, hidden from everyone but him — and now, it seemed, everyone could feel it.
"Where are we going?" Eren asked, his voice low, almost swallowed by the hum of the tower.
"Up," Kael replied. His hand hovered over the elevator gate as if the slightest touch could fracture the world. "There's someone you need to meet."
"Who?"
"The one who built the first mirror."
Eren frowned. "You mean—"
Kael's gray eyes held his for a heartbeat longer. "The Observer. The one who taught the city how to dream."
The elevator lurched as Kael forced the gate open, metal whining in protest. Its motion was slow, deliberate, clanging like a countdown, every second stretching impossibly long. Eren caught Kael watching him through the reflection on the elevator wall — not directly, but like he was measuring something unseen, weighing the tension coiling in Eren's chest.
"You said the Pulse isn't a god," Eren murmured.
"It isn't." Kael's voice was steady, but the tiniest flicker of shadow moved behind his gray eyes.
"Then what are you?"
Kael didn't answer immediately. He just watched the mirrored steel between them, lips pressed thin. "Once, I was its silence," he finally said.
Eren turned toward him, amber-hazel eyes narrowing, the rainlight from the city above reflecting faintly on his veins. "And now?"
"Now," Kael said quietly, "I'm the consequence of you trying to wake it."
When the elevator doors opened, the world above felt different — charged, fractured, alive.
Vareth sprawled in a kaleidoscope of fractured beauty: rain-soaked streets, neon bleeding into puddles, shadows stretching longer than they should. Somewhere in the distance, a tower pulsed faintly with crimson light, a heartbeat out of sync with the city, yet undeniably its own.
Eren could feel it calling. His veins flared, violet and gold threads glowing beneath his skin, echoing the pulse above.
Kael stepped out first, expression softened just enough to hint at warmth, though his voice remained measured. "The city remembers you, Eren. It just doesn't know if it forgives you."
Eren looked up, rain cutting cold trails down his face, chills crawling across his spine. Somewhere behind the city's noise, the Pulse whispered his name again — tender, terrible, inevitable. He didn't look away this time.
____
They approached the tower's main entrance. Its doors were obsidian, smooth and unbroken except for a faint glow that traced the outlines of patterns too intricate for human comprehension. The air around it shimmered, and Eren felt the Pulse stretch inside him like tendrils reaching toward something ancient and waiting.
Kael stopped, hand brushing against the surface. Sparks of white heat danced across his fingers — controlled, restrained, but capable of cutting through anything. "This is it," he said. "Inside is someone who remembers everything — even the things the city wants to forget."
Eren swallowed hard. The tower's hum seemed to wrap around him, pressing against his chest. He could feel the remnants of the shattered mirror from before — fragments of memory and light now woven into him, vibrating faintly beneath his skin.
The doors parted, dissolving at Kael's touch. Inside, the room opened into something impossible. The floor was water — perfectly still, reflecting a ceiling of infinite mirrors. Every step sent ripples that fractured the reflection into countless Eren-shaped fragments.
And at the center stood her.
The Observer.
She was a figure stitched together from silver threads of light, humanoid in shape but not quite human. Her eyes were hollow mirrors, reflecting Eren's amber-hazel gaze back at him over and over, until he felt himself split across a thousand reflections.
"The Observer," Kael murmured, voice barely above the room's quiet hum.
Eren's pulse quickened. "She's… alive?"
"Alive is generous," Kael said. "She remembers. That's what keeps her here."
The Observer turned, and her voice spilled into the room like a chorus stretched across glass. "Eren Vail. The Pulse-Bound."
Eren's veins flared brighter, gold threads tangling with violet. "How do you know my name?"
"Because you were written here long before you were born."
Kael's jaw tightened. "Show him."
Around them, the mirrors shimmered. Streets from Eren's childhood appeared — the hospital bed, a trembling hand, flashes of light and scream. Each reflection rippled with the Pulse's memory, memories Eren hadn't lived… or had forgotten.
Eren staggered. "No. That's not—"
"You woke the Pulse when you died," the Observer intoned, "and you brought it back when the world forgot it existed."
Kael stepped close. "This is why I brought you here, Eren. You're not just bound to the Pulse. You are its return."
The Observer's hollow gaze turned toward Eren. "Because creation always begins with ruin."
The floor-waters rippled, carrying whispers of the city — voices, names, prayers, memories. A child's plea. A scream. A woman calling "Find the heart."
Eren bent to the water, touching it. The whispers surged inside him, reverberating in his veins, until he was trembling.
Kael's hand pressed on his shoulder. "You're not losing it. The city's just remembering through you."
Eren met Kael's gray eyes, soaked rainwater running down his face. "And what if I don't want to remember?"
Kael's expression softened. "Then it remembers for you."
The Observer's voice echoed, gentler now. "There is still time, Eren Vail. But the Silence is thinning. And when it breaks—"
The room flickered. Mirrors fractured into shards that hung midair like broken stars.
"—you will have to choose what lives through you."
A low electric roar tore through the tower. Kael's eyes flared white.
"They've found us," he muttered.
"Who?"
"The ones who remember differently," Kael said, fire surging around his veins.
Eren's pulse quickened, gold and violet streaks blazing beneath the surface. The Observer lifted a hand. A shard floated to Eren's chest, embedding itself in the pulse beneath his skin.
"Take this," she said. "And when the Pulse calls again… listen."
The room shattered.