Lyra had always said the city breathed differently at night.
Now she knew why.
The Pulse wasn't sleeping anymore.
She stood on the balcony of an abandoned archive, the wind thick with static and faint whispers. Vareth's skyline shimmered — not with neon, but with veins of faint, living light crawling beneath glass and metal. The city was remembering itself, and that terrified her more than anything.
Her reflection on the fractured window looked unfamiliar. Pale skin, eyes like violet smoke, faint circuits of silver light running from her temples down to her throat — reminders of what she once was. Of what the Observer had made her.
The first mirror was never supposed to break, she thought.
Behind her, the air rippled — a hum, low and strange. Lyra turned, one hand instinctively brushing the holster at her hip, though she knew it would do little good against what came through the shimmer.
The figure stepped forward slowly, hood drawn low, face obscured. But the voice — smooth, precise — was unmistakable.
"You've been avoiding me, Lyra."
Lyra's spine straightened. "Because you lie, Draven."
He chuckled softly. "Lie? Or tell truths you're too afraid to face?"
The shadows behind him seemed to bend, folding like glass under pressure. He stepped into the light — impossibly calm, unnervingly human. His gray eyes gleamed with a strange, quiet hunger.
"You felt it too, didn't you?" he said. "The surge when Eren awakened. The Pulse stirs because he remembers."
Lyra didn't flinch. "You don't understand what you're tampering with."
"Oh, but I do," Draven said. "The Pulse was never meant to sleep forever. The Observer sealed it with mirrors and silence — but he's breaking through her design."
Lyra's throat tightened. "You mean Eren."
Draven smiled. "You make him sound so delicate."
"He is delicate," Lyra said, her voice steady. "But so is glass — until it cuts."
The light around them shifted, reflecting pieces of the past across the walls. For a second, Lyra saw something she'd buried — a girl standing beside the Observer, hands pressed against a mirror alive with light. A promise made in silence. A promise to protect the child born of the Pulse.
"Do you remember now?" Draven asked softly.
Lyra blinked. The image faded. "I remember enough to know I won't let you reach him."
He smiled faintly, as if amused. "Then you'd best start running faster."
The sound of wings — metallic and sharp — echoed above them. From the sky descended silhouettes shaped like ravens made of glass, their eyes glowing red with corrupted Pulse energy.
Lyra drew her weapon — a shard-forged revolver, humming with mirrored light. "You always send your ghosts to do your work?"
Draven's smirk faded. "No. But I enjoy watching how you handle them."
The first creature lunged. Lyra fired once — the bullet a burst of refracted energy that split the raven into glittering shards. Another came from the left; she pivoted, fired again. The room filled with light, motion, and the taste of heat. Her movements were precise, almost graceful, honed through years of surviving Vareth's haunted underbelly.
But the ravens didn't stop. They multiplied, reflecting endlessly through the fractured glass around her.
Mirrors, she realized. They're using the mirrors.
Lyra slammed her palm against the nearest wall. "Override pattern—Echo Nine."
The mirror shimmered, then cracked, releasing a pulse of white light that tore through the reflections like a wave. The ravens dissolved into dust, their cries fading into silence.
When she turned back, Draven was gone.
Only his voice remained, echoing faintly from somewhere deep within the broken glass.
"You can delay the inevitable, Lyra, but you can't protect him forever. The city remembers what it lost."
Lyra stood alone in the aftermath, her breath uneven, the city still humming beneath her feet.
For a long time, she said nothing. Then, quietly, she spoke to the Pulse itself.
"If the city remembers," she whispered, "then so will we."
She looked out toward the skyline — where faint lightning traced the horizon.
Eren was out there. Alive. Awake.
And if Draven was right, then what was coming next would either save them all… or burn Vareth down to its last breath.