Bullet swayed on his feet, the world tilting dangerously.
Too many wounds to count streamed blood. His cloak was in shredded tatters barely recognizable as clothing anymore. The pipe shook in his grasp because of shaking hands that signaled exhaustion and blood loss. His ribs screamed at every shallow breath he tried to take. His vision faded at the edges, the darkness creeping in.
The mirrors around him in the shrine stopped writhing, ceased showing their false visions, and froze. The malice of Province 391 had quieted. For the first time since he'd entered this place, the air felt still.
Triumph felt fleeting, hollow. His scar kept its steady beat, burning, pulling him on. This victory had been hewn from his blood, bought in pain.
The guilt lingered like a physical weight. Patch, who'd given him this cloak. Cowboy, who'd died in the sand. Glow, trapped in the jungle's dreams. All of them heavier than the mirrored shards scattered around his feet.
The riddles remained unanswered. Who was he? What was the pull? Why did his scar sync with the Mirrorheart's rhythm? What did the etched shard in his pocket mean?
No answers. Only more questions, more blood, more walking.
The pull beckoned even now, refusing to let him rest; it was urging him out from this shrine, away from Province 391, to whatever came next.
The hum was gone. The mirrors were just mirrors now, reflective but not malevolent.
He moved resolutely ahead, his steps heavy with blood dripping from them, while his legs threatened to give out. The mirrors reflected his battered form once more as he walked towards the door.
He looked like death himself. Soaked in blood, clothes in tatters, scars visible through torn fabric. Still, his eyes were focused. Still determined.
Still moving forward.
He passed through the mirrored expanse and left the shrine behind.
Past the eyeless wanderers, who still muttered to themselves, lost in their private nightmares. His footsteps echoed in the eerie silence. Past the corpses with their reflections that continued shifting even in death, creating an endless gallery of the dead.
He didn't look back. Couldn't afford to.
The mirrors felt cold beneath his bleeding feet. The auroras were fading on the horizon, their violet and amber light gradually growing dimmer as day, or whatever passed for day here, ended.
The pull was toward a new horizon. His scar throbbed with each heartbeat. The shards in his pocket, both the etched and Spark's, were still heavy with questions.
But he kept on walking. Because that was all he could do.
Forward, always forward, toward whatever waited in the next province.
--------
Far away, the shadows clung to ancient stone within the chamber of the castle as if painted.
Before the console, the man in the robe stood. Its light pulsed, casting his face in stark relief. His eyes, sunken, reflected the glowing holographic map before him.
"The mirrors of Province 391 have stilled." he rasped, his tone as dry as dust scraping on stone. "The Mirrorheart's signal has gone dark. He was there. He did this."
He paused, fingers hovering over the controls. "But there's no Nexus signal. No bio-signature we can track. His path remains completely veiled in shadow."
The leader stood from his throne, charcoal suit sharp and perfect against the surrounding gloom. The dim light reflected back from his eyes as if from polished steel. Cold, calculating, and inhuman in intensity.
"The Mirrorheart sleeps." he said, his voice even and controlled. "But I can wake it when needed." He began to pace, each step deliberate. "Widen the Seeker's hunt. Deploy more sentinels to the provinces he's likely to pass through. Increase patrols in the transitional zones."
The robed man nodded. New signals flared to life upon the map. Across the realm, crimson-eyed sentinels began to stir in their stations, receiving their orders.
"He's slipping through our grasp." the robed man said, a note of frustration creeping into his normally flat voice.
"For now," the leader replied. "But every province he enters, every trial he faces, we learn more. His patterns. His capabilities. His limits." He stopped pacing, turning to face the map. "And eventually, those limits will break him. Or we will."
--------
In the red sands of Province 618, far from the mirrors of Province 391, the Seeker moved through the camp like death given form.
His cloak was billowing behind him like a shroud. The air was thick with the promise of violence. The few fires that still burned in the camp seemed to gutter as if they were afraid of what approached them.
He'd followed the trail of this anomaly carefully. The crimson dunes of Province 618, the impossible water block of Province 472, rock lands and underground tunnels of Province 837. Beyond that, though, the trail went cold. No clear indication of which province the man had entered next.
So, the Seeker had come full circle, back to the beginning, to question those who'd known him first.
Shard stood her ground as he approached, knife drawn despite the fear in her eyes. She was defiant, fierce as the desert storms that sometimes swept through this place.
"Who are you?" she growled, her blade steady in her scarred hand. "This camp's not yours to raid. We don't bow to strangers here."
It was unnatural how swift his knife flashed.
It slashed across her throat before she could react, before she could bring her own weapon up to defend. Blood sprayed hot across the crimson sand, dark and glistening. Her eyes went wide with shock and pain.
Her body crumpled. The sand drank her life greedily, soaking in the blood as it had drunk so much else over the years.
Spark launched herself forward from where she'd been watching, a shard clutched in her burned hand like a makeshift weapon.
"You monster!" she screamed as her voice, so young, broke with rage and grief.
But the Seeker's blade pierced her chest with surgical precision before she'd taken three steps. The metal slid between her ribs, finding her heart with the ease of long practice.
Blood welled around the blade. Her eyes, those bright trusting eyes that had looked at Bullet with such hope, dimmed as she slumped forward. The sand clung to her burns as she fell.
Next, the Seeker turned to Patch.
She stood tall, but her face had gone white. She knew what was coming. Behind the Seeker, in the auroral light, an array of torturer's tools shone. Hooks and blades and things specifically designed to cause pain.
"The scarred man." the Seeker said, and his voice was as cold as winter steel. "The one with the bullet wound over his heart. What was his purpose here? Where was he headed when he left?"
He traced his blade along her cheek as he spoke, drawing a thin line of blood. Not deep, just enough to make his point clear.
Patch spat at him, her eyes fierce and unyielding even in the face of death. "You'll get nothing from me." she said. Her voice didn't shake. "Nothing."
One smooth motion, and his blade slit her throat.
Blood gushed, pouring down her chest. Her body fell limp, collapsed beside Spark's. The woman who'd mended Bullet's wounds, who'd given him her cloak, who'd shown him kindness when she had no reason to...gone in seconds.
The Seeker moved through the camp methodically after that. Others died screaming. Knives plunging into chests and throats, blood spraying across the red sands.
Their cries faded quickly into the wind, swallowed by the vast desert surrounding them. Maul fought back, his scarred face twisted with rage. But the Seeker was faster, more skilled, and utterly without mercy. The knife found Maul's heart, and he fell beside the others.
The camp which had taken Bullet in, which fed him and gave him shelter despite their desperate situation, became a graveyard. The scars, which told stories of survival, of hard lives lived in this cruel realm, were now silent graves in the sand.
The dunes of Province 618 were already red, but they were stained darker with new blood. The wind began to cover the bodies, bit by bit, grain by grain, obscuring evidence of what had happened here.
The Seeker gleaned only fragments from his interrogation before they'd all died. Stories of the scarred man's uncanny strength. His impossible endurance. The way he'd fought the raiders. The pull he'd mentioned, driving him forward. But nothing concrete about his destination, nothing even about which province he had entered after leaving 837.
The trail remained cold.
-------
Through Province 391, unaware of the massacre happening in the desert far behind him, Bullet pressed forward. Through the mirrors, bloodied but unbroken. His feet left crimson prints upon reflective surfaces. His breathing was ragged and painful. But he didn't stop.
The pull drove him forward, always forward...to whatever waited in the next province. Toward answers he might never find. Toward a destiny he couldn't remember choosing. His scar blazed over his heart. A reminder that he was still alive, still moving, still refusing to give up despite everything this realm threw at him.
Province 391 fell behind him, the mirrors dimming in his wake. Whatever was next, he would face it. Because moving forward was all he knew how to do.