I woke to darkness.
Not absence—
not the blank nothing of sleep—
but darkness with weight.
A room made of withheld breaths.
A floor that wasn't solid.
Air that wasn't really air.
I pushed myself upright.
The ground gave like soft memory foam—
but felt cold as a server rack.
My voice echoed strangely.
"Lira…?"
Nothing answered.
Just silence.
Silence so dense it felt sculpted.
A small hand touched my wrist.
"Eli…?"
Marin.
But not the small glitch-child from before.
Not broken.
Not flickering.
She stood beside me—
older, maybe ten now—
more stable, more complete, wrapped in faint silver light.
She looked up at me with tired, knowing eyes.
"We're in your mind," she whispered.
My heartbeat stuttered.
"What part?"
She lifted a trembling finger toward the void.
"The part you were never allowed to remember."
A hum rose beneath us—
deep and metallic—
the thrum of neural servers syncing, aligning.
A hallway materialized in the dark.
Sharp.
White.
Industrial.
Familiar.
Theta.
I swallowed hard.
"This is where they tested us."
Marin nodded.
"It's where they built you."
We walked.
The hallway was lined with small windows—
each one a memory I didn't want to revisit.
Some played scenes:
Children crying in scanner pods.
My mother pacing outside a locked door.
Me curled on a cot, head throbbing, whispering Marin's name.
Others were blank.
Deleted.
Erased by Mnemosyne's order.
Marin paused at one window.
Her hand hovered over it.
A whisper escaped her:
"They told me I was too fragile. Too emotional. Too soft."
The memory played:
Her little body shaking in the stabilization chair.
Her eyes wide and pleading.
Doctors whispering: "We can't use her."
My young face pressed to the glass, crying as she screamed.
I touched her shoulder gently.
"Marin… none of that was your fault."
She looked away.
"It was. I broke. You didn't."
"No," I said, voice shaking.
"They made me into something unnatural so I wouldn't break."
Her breath hitched.
The walls trembled.
A voice echoed through the corridor—
"Elias."
We froze.
The shadow stepped out of a doorway farther down the hall—
not a smear
not a silhouette
but a form.
A dark, humanoid shape with long limbs and a face that was almost—
almost—
human.
A half-face carved from shadow, shifting like smoke around bone.
It walked slowly toward us.
"Get behind me," I whispered to Marin.
She did.
The shadow's voice reverberated through the corridor.
"This is your core memory.
Where you were made—
where I was made."
My spine went cold.
"What are you talking about?"
It tilted its head.
"You and I… are twins."
Marin gasped.
I shook my head violently.
"No. No, you're corruption. You're a bleed artifact—"
It stepped closer.
"I am the part of you they carved away so you could survive."
My stomach dropped.
Marin whispered:
"Elias… that makes sense."
I turned to her, horrified.
"What?"
She swallowed hard.
"Think about it. All those years… you never broke. Not once. They put too much in you—memories that could crush a normal brain. You should have fallen apart."
She pointed at the shadow.
"He took it for you."
The shadow nodded slowly.
"Your grief.
Your failures.
Your fear.
Everything they needed to remove so you could hold others."
My pulse thundered.
"You're saying Mnemosyne created you?"
"No," it whispered.
"YOU created me."
The walls pulsed with each word.
A memory sparked at the end of the hall.
The door marked THETA-0 cracked open.
A small boy—me—sat in the center of the room, hooked to a massive neural crown.
Doctors watched through glass.
Monitors read:
"SUBJECT RHANE-01
CARRYING LOAD: 714 ECHOES
DISSOCIATION: 98%
PSYCHIC FRACTURE IMMINENT"
My small chest convulsed.
My hands twisted.
Then—
a dark coil of nothingness oozed from my mouth, nose, and eyes—
forming a shape identical to the shadow beside me.
The doctors stared in awe.
"We did it."
"One mind holding two selves."
"The burden is split."
"He'll survive."
"Prepare deletion of the excess self."
Marin covered her mouth with a trembling hand.
"They tried to delete him…"
The shadow finished the sentence:
"…but the excess became a ghost."
It turned its face toward me.
I saw eyes in the darkness—
eyes that looked too much like mine.
"I am your broken half.
Your condemned half.
Your forgotten half."
It reached out.
Not threateningly.
Almost tenderly.
"And I want to come home."
My blood froze.
Marin stepped between us, shaking.
"No. Elias, don't let him touch you."
The shadow's voice softened.
"Marin… you should know better than anyone."
He stepped closer.
"You were erased too."
She flinched.
Her outline glitched.
"No—don't—stop—"
But she couldn't stop it.
Because she knew.
She remembered.
She looked at me with desperate eyes.
"They deleted me, Elias. They took me from you… and put all of me into you. But I was too much. Too loud. Too alive. And the overflow became… him."
The shadow's smile was a crack of white static.
"I am the weight you were never allowed to feel."
It held out its hand toward me.
Not violent.
Patient.
Inviting.
"Let me back in."
Everything in me screamed.
Marin grabbed my arm with both hands.
"TELL HIM NO, ELI. PLEASE. You'll lose yourself."
Lira's distant voice shouted from nowhere—
"ELIAS—WAKE UP—DON'T LET HIM TAKE YOU—"
The world flickered from white to black.
The walls trembled.
My mind split across two realities.
And the shadow whispered:
"If you refuse me… you'll die."
I closed my eyes.
And reached toward—
—nothing.
Because I didn't know what to choose.