I stood at the edge of a mirror that wasn't a mirror.
It was breath. Memory. Glass that dreamed.
It did not reflect me.
It revealed me.
Not as I am now, not as I wish to become—but as I was before choice, before fate, before time spun its first lie.
He stepped through it.
Me.
But not.
His body shimmered like a flame beneath the surface of a lake. Shifting. Fractured. Glorious in the way only something broken and immortal can be. He wore my face. My eyes. My voice.
But older.
Ancient.
Finished.
"You found me," he said softly.
His tone was gentle.
Too gentle.
The kind of calm that only those near oblivion learn to master.
"I didn't know I was searching for you," I replied.
"You were."
He stepped closer.
My own eyes stared into mine—gold with stars, not just painted but etched. He was beautiful. Not in the human sense. In the way a ruined temple is beautiful—haunted, holy, half-forgotten.
His smile hurt to look at.
"Which life were you?" I asked.
He tilted his head.
"The third. The thirteenth. The lost one. The one who never made it to the throne."
His gaze dropped, not in shame—but weight.
"I'm the version that cracked open too early. The Sovereign too soon. The one they buried beneath the mirror so no one else would remember what it cost."
"Why show yourself now?"
"Because you're ready."
"Ready for what?"
"To let me go."
I flinched.
He didn't.
Instead, he stepped forward again. Closer now. A few feet away.
His outline flickered—light trapped in a rift too narrow.
"You don't understand what I am, do you?"
"Enlighten me," I said.
He smiled wider.
"I'm your damage."
My breath caught.
He continued, voice like silk around blades.
"I'm the pain you forgot. The deaths you edited. The version that wanted power and paid the price in people."
"Miren," I whispered.
He flinched.
And smiled again—this time with teeth.
"She loved me more than she ever loved you."
I struck him.
Not with my hand—with a thought.
A pulse of starforce cracked outward, and he staggered back, laughing.
Good. He could bleed.
Even here.
Even now.
"You're not real," I said. "You're an echo."
"I'm the last you before this you was born."
"Then why beg for release?"
His face changed.
All joy drained.
What remained was tired.
So tired.
"Because I'm trapped. Because I burned too bright and no one came to put out the fire. Because I've been screaming in this mirror for centuries, hoping one of us would finally reach in and do what none of the others had the will to."
He walked forward—stopped inches away.
"I'm asking you," he whispered. "Please."
My throat ached.
He looked so much like me.
And so much like the god I'm afraid I might become.
"Why now?" I asked.
His voice broke.
"Because if you don't kill me, I become you again."
I reached for him.
He didn't resist.
His eyes closed.
His breath hitched.
And I placed my hand on his chest.
His heartbeat was familiar.
Too familiar.
Like coming home to a place that should no longer exist.
"I'm sorry," I whispered.
He smiled.
"I'm not."
And I pushed.
It wasn't a blade. It wasn't magic. It wasn't a spell.
It was permission.
To end.
To stop becoming something he no longer wished to be.
He shattered.
Not into light.
Not into pieces.
Into stars.
He dissolved in my hands like myth undone, falling into the void between us. Every piece of him drifted toward me.
And sank into me.
The ground split.
The air bent.
My body collapsed to its knees, but I didn't feel the stone.
Because something inside me peeled.
Not skin.
Not flesh.
Layer.
The false-self.
The shell.
The fear.
It burned away, peeled back in slivers of glowing sigils that floated off my frame like ash. My mouth opened—but no scream came. Only a sound I did not recognize as my own.
The sound of becoming.
Of reclaiming.
My hands pulsed with light—light that mapped itself like constellations across my arms, chest, jaw, eyes.
I wasn't glowing.
I was a star system given form.
And then—
I heard her.
At last.
Elyndra.
The goddess of the Silent Aether.
She whispered like wind through galaxies:
"Now…
you truly begin."
I rose from the stone floor, still glowing, still unraveling.
The constellations across my skin shifted.
And somewhere in the distance—
Lucien looked up.
He felt it.
He knew.
And he whispered:
"He's ascending."