The scroll unfurled with a whisper, parchment aged and brittle, its ink a faded red that pulsed faintly in the candlelight, like dried blood remembering a heartbeat.
Alpha didn't want to touch it. But the boy already had.
His fingers trembled slightly as he traced the symbols carved across the page, glyphs that pulsed once, twice, then shimmered into unfamiliar clarity. And as they read, half-whispered, half-remembered, Alpha's vision slipped sideways.
The floor tilted.
The breath in his chest coiled, caught.
"Alpha?"
The boy's voice echoed twice, one behind his ear, the other inside his skull.
He blinked. The chamber hadn't changed. But everything inside it had shifted. The air was too still. The shadows, too watching.
Selene was on her feet already, her blade half-drawn, eyes wide—not with fury, but with a familiar terror.
"Stop reading," she said.
The scroll fell shut.
Alpha staggered back, gripping Vanitas out of instinct—but the blade didn't respond. No pulse. No cold. Just… silence.
And then…
Glass cracked.
But there was no mirror.
Alpha looked to the wall. There, in the smooth stone, was a reflection. His reflection.
Except it wasn't.
He didn't blink when Alpha did.
Didn't breathe when Alpha did.
But he stared.
And in his eyes, there was pain. A pain that knew Alpha. That remembered what he had not lived.
"You never made the trade," the Echo whispered. "You never chose the child."
Alpha's jaw clenched. "What are you talking about?"
The reflection smiled. But it wasn't cruel. It wasn't twisted.
It was… tired.
"In another loop… I did. I left him behind. Took the power. Killed Selene. Became what the sword wanted."
Alpha stepped back, pulse thudding.
Selene moved between them, her hands raised, speaking quietly, but Alpha couldn't hear her.
"You don't remember what I do. But I remember you. I watched you die screaming in the marsh of mirrors. I watched you drown in flame. I watched you walk away from everything that made you human."
"I am what's left of your other choices."
Alpha couldn't move.
His hands shook. His breath was shallow. A thought cut through him, jagged and alien:
What if he was the original?
What if I'm the Echo?
Selene finally reached him, pressing two fingers to his temple. A wave of heat rippled through his mind like cleansing fire, and the reflection flickered'-
but it didn't vanish.
"You can lock me away," the Echo said softly."But I'll keep bleeding through. Because we're not done yet."
"You still have to choose."
The stone went still again. Alpha collapsed to his knees, gasping. The chamber dimmed. The scroll was gone. Burned-or hidden-he couldn't tell.
The boy stood frozen at the far wall, silent. Watching.
Selene turned, kneeling beside Alpha, her voice low.
"Now you see why I locked mine away."
He looked up.
She didn't look proud.
She looked broken.
The chamber was cold, colder than it had any right to be.
Even the stone seemed to breathe with a hush that wasn't natural, as if the walls themselves listened. Tiny runes glowed faintly around the perimeter, their light pulsing with a rhythmic cadence. A mirror stood at the center, not hung or mounted, but embedded into the floor itself, like a portal flattened by time and sealed with purpose.
Alpha sat in the middle of it all, knees drawn up, breath unsteady. The scroll had long since unfurled in his hands, silent now, its contents burned into the hollow of his mind like ash seared into flesh.
He hadn't read it.
The boy had.
Selene stood against the far wall, arms crossed, watching him like a storm cloud waiting for thunder.
"I told you not to touch it," she muttered. "He wasn't ready."
Alpha didn't respond. He didn't look at her. He stared into the mirror on the floor—not at his reflection, but at the shadow sitting beside it.
It looked like him.
But it wasn't.
The boy cowered in the corner, guilt writ across his small face. "I didn't mean to," he whispered. "I thought it was just a story…"
Alpha turned to him slowly, not cruel, but not kind either. "It's not your fault," he said, though the words felt foreign in his mouth. "It was never just a story."
Selene knelt beside the mirror, fingers brushing its edge like one might touch the lip of a wound. "He's slipping."
"No," Alpha said. "I'm seeing. "The reflection stood now. Not perfectly synced. It walked when Alpha didn't. It blinked when he stared. And when it smiled, there was something ancient behind its teeth.
"You remember it now, don't you?" the Echo said.
Its voice wasn't his. It wasn't hers. It was familiar.
"Who are you?" Alpha asked aloud, but Selene knew the question wasn't for her.
The Echo tilted its head. "The version of you who survived differently."
He staggered to his feet, breath catching. "No. You're not real."
"Neither are you."
Selene rushed forward, hand raised, but Alpha recoiled from her touch, eyes wild, haunted.
"Don't," he hissed. "I can't… I don't know what's mine anymore."
She hesitated, heart twisting. "Then listen to me, Alpha. Listen before you lose yourself completely."
"There was a girl," she said softly, drawing his gaze. "She had an Echo too. And she thought she could tame it. Control it. She was wrong."
Alpha blinked. The reflection blinked a moment later.
"I was that girl."
The chamber darkened, the runes dimming. Her voice was barely above a whisper now, and yet it felt louder than the storm in Alpha's head.
"I didn't kill my Echo."
A pause.
"I became her."
Alpha flinched. The boy gasped.
Selene closed her eyes. "The ritual was meant to separate us. Twin-wielders, born in balance, cursed in reflection. One must kill the other to stay whole. To stay real."
"But I couldn't," she breathed. "We were too alike. I hesitated. And in that moment, the Echo didn't die. She merged. Half of her. Half of me. A broken whole."
She looked up at Alpha, not hiding her pain.
"I've lived like this ever since. A ghost within my own bones."
The mirror shimmered. Alpha's own reflection no longer smiled. It wept.
"You're not unraveling," it said. "You're remembering."
He clutched his head. Visions flashed, memories he didn't recall living.
A battlefield. A woman's scream. A ruined tower. A choice.
"I've never been there," he choked out.
"Haven't you?"
Selene grabbed his arm. "Alpha, you have to anchor yourself. Your Echo's feeding. The more you doubt, the stronger it gets."
"But what if I'm not real?" he asked, voice cracking. "What if I'm just… the part that won?"
"No," she said firmly. "You are the part that's still fighting. That's all we can ever be."
The reflection stepped closer to the glass.
Alpha stepped back.
"You will have to choose," Selene whispered. "Eventually. One of you won't survive."
Alpha turned to her, tears in his eyes, not of fear, but exhaustion. "And if I choose wrong?"
"Then you become like me," she said, her voice breaking. "And trust me, there's no mercy in that."
The chamber pulsed with a low hum. The mirror cracked, just once. A spiderweb of light.
The Echo didn't vanish.
It smiled again.
And this time, so did Alpha.
But it wasn't victory.
It was understanding.
The world shimmered, weightless.
Alpha stood in the middle of a field that should not exist, grass silvered by starlight, trees half-formed, like sketches drawn by an uncertain hand. The sky above pulsed between colors that had no names. Everything was too quiet. Not the silence of solitude, but the silence that came after sound had been ripped away.
He was dreaming. Or something like it.
But he could feel the dirt beneath his feet. The cold wind. The ache in his chest.
Ahead, a figure stood facing away from him, tall and cloaked in shadow. Not Selene. Not the boy.
Him.
The Echo.
Alpha tried to speak, but no sound came. The figure turned its head slightly, just enough to catch the edge of its face in the strange light.
It was his face. But younger. Sharper. Or maybe older. Worn by grief he hadn't yet lived through.
And its eyes…
They were filled with memories.
The world around them twisted, like pages fluttering in reverse. The field dissolved into a war-torn village. Screams echoed through the ruins, familiar, but unplaceable. Alpha spun, searching, but he was alone again.
Except… he wasn't.
A child darted past him. Dark skin. A red scarf tied tight around his neck.
Alpha's breath caught. He knew that scarf. He had worn it once, hadn't he?
Or had he?
More images came, flashes.
A girl laughing under a tree.
A sword falling in slow motion.
Hands drenched in blood that smelled like betrayal.
These weren't his memories. And yet, they felt like his. Deep, buried, aching.
He stumbled through each vision, caught in their wake. Until he stood before a mirror.
His reflection stared back, but the eyes were wrong again. They gleamed with something ancient. Something hungry.
Then it spoke.
"I remember what you've forgotten."
Alpha pressed his hands to the glass. "What are you?"
The Echo tilted its head. "What you had to become, to survive."
The mirror cracked.
One fracture.
Then two.
Then the whole world splintered.
And Alpha awoke, gasping, his wrists bound with runes, his body restrained inside a chamber lined with mirrors. Selene stood at the edge of the circle, trembling.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "It was the only way to stop you."
Alpha blinked, vision blurring, the fragments of dreams still clinging to him like frost.
"Tell me," he rasped. "What happened to me?"
Selene looked away.
"Not to you," she said softly. "To us."