The corridor tilted.
The walls flickered from white to black, then white again, like a memory caught between two owners.
The shadow stood with its hand outstretched—
calm, patient, horrifyingly gentle.
Marin clung to my arm.
"Don't take it," she whispered.
Her voice shook.
"You'll disappear. He'll consume you."
The shadow didn't deny it.
"We will become one.
An unbroken whole."
My pulse hammered.
The air felt too sharp to breathe.
Somewhere far beyond this mental plane, Lira's faint, distant voice echoed like a glitching radio:
"Elias—listen—whatever you're seeing, it's lying to you—don't—"
But her voice cut in and out.
The shadow stepped closer.
I felt him before he touched me—
a cold, familiar presence creeping through the folds of my mind.
"You were never built to survive."
A soft, terrible truth.
"I carried everything you couldn't."
Marin's grip tightened.
"No. He stole everything Elias couldn't process."
She turned to me, tears shimmering in her eyes.
"If you let him in… you'll stop being you."
The shadow tilted its head, speaking as if to a frightened child.
"No. He will stop being incomplete.
There is a difference."
I backed away.
My voice cracked.
"Why… why do you want me?"
The shadow smiled—
a ripple of white static across a faceless void.
"Because you belong to me."
Marin screamed at him:
"YOU LEFT HIM! YOU TRIED TO KILL HIM!"
The shadow didn't flinch.
"I did what was necessary. He was breaking.
I was the part they cut away."
He pointed at my chest.
"The trauma. The grief. The fear.
You forgot because I took it."
My throat closed.
He continued—
"All of the despair you never felt…
all the memories you don't remember losing…
all the pain you refuse to see…"
His shape swelled.
The corridor darkened.
"…I am all of it."
Marin stepped between us.
"No. You're a parasite. A distortion. A monster—"
The shadow moved faster than thought.
One elongated hand wrapped around her throat.
She glitched violently.
I lunged—
"LET HER GO!"
He held her up effortlessly.
Marin's small legs kicked, her fingers clawed at his grip, her light flickering out.
The shadow whispered:
"You want her safe?
Then come to me."
My heart shattered.
Marin choked out:
"E…li… don't…"
The shadow squeezed.
She screamed.
Light poured from her eyes.
She was breaking.
Something deep in me split.
Not a memory.
Not a thought.
A primal, instinctive terror.
I stepped forward.
The shadow loosened his grip slightly—
exactly enough to keep her dying
but not dead.
"Say the words, Elias.
Invite me in."
Marin gasped.
"D-Don't… don't you dare…"
Tears burned down my face.
"I don't want to lose you," I whispered.
She sobbed:
"You'll lose yourself instead…"
The shadow's voice slid across my bones:
"Choose."
And I did.
I stepped forward—
and reached for him.
"No!" Marin screamed, reaching out as he pulled her away, tossing her like a rag doll into the wall of the memory corridor—
her form shattering into silver dust.
But I kept going.
I touched the shadow's hand.
The world stopped.
Silence.
Absolute, suffocating silence.
The shadow whispered—
"Good."
His presence flooded into me like ink pouring into water.
Cold.
Heavy.
Violent.
It seeped into my veins.
My muscles seized.
My back arched.
My breath caught.
I felt his memories slam into mine—
A thousand days of erased trauma.
A thousand echoes of grief I never knew I had lived.
A thousand versions of myself screaming in the dark.
I felt my mind bending—
stretching—
cracking open.
My voice broke into a whisper:
"Please… stop…"
The shadow answered from inside my skull:
"You wanted to save her.
You chose.
Now become whole."
The corridor dissolved.
My body dissolved.
Time dissolved.
There was only pain—
and his voice filling the spaces where I used to exist.
I was slipping.
I was losing edges.
Losing shape.
Losing me.
Then—
something warm touched my cheek.
A faint golden light.
A whisper:
"Eli… no…"
Ari.
Or what was left of her.
Her single remaining spark flickered weakly in front of me.
"You can't do this," she whispered.
"Please… come back…"
I shook.
I couldn't find my voice.
Couldn't find my body.
Couldn't find my name.
The shadow snarled from inside my mind:
"Leave us, ghost."
Ari's spark pulsed.
"No."
And she tried—
against all logic, all physics, all rules—
to pull me back.
The shadow roared.
The corridor cracked.
The world snapped.
And I—
I screamed.
A scream that shook my memory to its foundation.
A scream that tore a hole between who I was and what I was becoming.
A scream that said:
"I CHOOSE NEITHER."
The shadow shrieked, recoiling violently.
Ari's spark flared.
Marin's dust reformed just enough to cry out.
And I—
I ripped the shadow's hand away from mine.
I tore him off me.
I rejected him.
But it cost me.
I felt something tear inside my chest—
a piece of myself ripping free—
and the shadow took it with him.
He staggered back, half-formed, half-eaten.
I collapsed to the ground, shaking, bleeding golden light.
Ari's spark faded.
Marin flickered.
The shadow hissed:
"You will regret this."
And then—
everything shattered.