The relic called to me long before I saw it.
Buried beneath layers of frost-rubble, hidden behind a false wall in the lower catacombs—it wasn't supposed to be found. Not by accident. Not by strangers. Not by the version of me who walks upright and mortal.
But it knew.
It waited.
And the moment my fingers brushed the stone that covered it, I heard the echo of its voice.
Not in words.
In memory.
A breath that did not belong to the present.
The others had gone ahead. Kael scouting the riftward tunnels. Lyra setting a ward perimeter. Seris… watching shadows. Eirin stood above, sensing something beneath and silently letting me descend alone.
They knew when not to follow.
Because some things were only ever meant to be remembered in solitude.
The chamber was smaller than expected. Carved with intention—rounded edges, no corners, runes etched to flow like water. The space felt safe, in the way old altars do. Sacred. Quiet. Grieving.
And at its center…
…a pedestal.
The relic rested atop it. Simple.
A small obsidian cube, etched with celestial runes that shimmered faintly—pulsing like a slowed heart. Like a thing trying not to wake up too fast, lest it break the dream that's holding it together.
But it wasn't dreaming.
I was.
I reached out.
I touched it.
And the moment I did—
I died.
Not now.
Then.
My mind was pulled backward. My breath halted. My blood forgot the beat it had learned.
I collapsed to my knees—
—and remembered everything.
It was my third life.
Not my first as a Riftborn.
Not the strongest.
Not the weakest.
But the one that screamed loudest in the dark.
I had no name in that life. Only a title: Veilcaster. A wanderer between realms. A man who studied the echoes of things that should never be spoken aloud.
I lived on the edge of realities, listening to forgotten gods breathe.
I was afraid of the stars.
And I was in love.
Her name was Miren.
Or maybe Mirea. It changes every time I remember it. That's how I know it was real.
She wore dreamglass in her hair. Sang in languages the wind remembered. Touched me like I was a promise, not a prophecy.
She said I wasn't cursed.
She said I chose to be this way.
That I sought out the Rift in that life. That I opened it with my own hands.
And when it turned on me…
She stayed.
Even when my shadow began to bleed. Even when I woke up screaming names that hadn't yet existed. Even when my veins began to shimmer with light that didn't belong in our realm.
She stayed.
Until the Choir found me.
They didn't want to kill me.
They wanted to harvest me.
To rip out the fragment of truth I had become. To bind it in song. To use my memory like a key.
And I let them.
To protect her.
To keep Miren alive.
I walked into their temple. I knelt in the ash of the fallen gods. I opened my chest and sang the Rite of Hollowing myself.
They didn't even have to finish the ritual.
I did it for them.
I watched as they took it.
My soul.
Fractured it.
Stored it in glyph-spheres, then buried the memory in a relic like the one I held now.
And as my body died, burned from within by spellfire I whispered into myself—
Miren screamed.
I still hear it.
That final sound.
Love watching you vanish.
The vision faded.
The memory did not.
I gasped, falling backward.
My hands still clutched the relic, but the world was sideways. My cheek against stone. My chest heaving.
Tears spilled down before I even registered they'd come.
I remembered her.
Miren. Mirea. Whatever her name had once been.
Her smile broke me more than the death ever did.
Because she was never supposed to be in the story.
She was the part I'd buried too deep.
The one I couldn't afford to keep remembering.
Because it hurt too much.
A voice stirred behind me.
Not a whisper.
A presence.
Eirin.
She said nothing.
She didn't have to.
She just knelt beside me. Pressed her palm to my spine. And steadied my breath with hers.
"You remember too much," she said quietly.
"I forgot her," I choked.
"No," she replied. "You hid her."
"Why?"
Eirin looked toward the relic.
It pulsed once.
And she answered with a softness that shattered me:
"Because love is the only death you haven't learned how to survive."
I closed my eyes.
Not to sleep.
But to seal the memory again.
Just for a little longer.
I wasn't ready to carry her fully.
Not yet.
As I stood to leave, the relic pulsed again.
And this time…
It whispered another name.
A new one.
A future one.
"The Mirrorborn waits…"
And I understood.
The next death wouldn't be remembered.
It would be faced.