The silence after the storm was the loudest thing Alpha had ever heard.
He lay still in the mirrored chamber, heart still drumming from the dream, or whatever it had been. The ghost of the Echo's voice still echoed in his ears, like an afterimage seared into his soul. His limbs trembled, not from fear, but from the weight of something ancient pressing down on him. Something he had carried without knowing.
Selene stood by the far wall, staring at the ward etched into the glass.
She hadn't spoken again since she bound him.
Alpha's voice was hoarse. "Was that… you? Once?"
Selene didn't move for a long time. Then, slowly, like unraveling thread, she nodded.
"I had an Echo too," she said, her voice a whisper of steel and shadow. "We all do. If you bear a twin-forged blade, the Echo finds you eventually."
Her eyes didn't meet his. They were locked on a spot only she could see, somewhere long ago.
"I was sixteen when mine surfaced. I'd just inherited a blade called Lirael. Not as ancient as Vanitas, but old enough to be bound to a name no one remembered. It started with dreams, like yours. Fractured memories. Feelings that weren't mine. Then… it began to speak."
Alpha listened, breath shallow.
"He wasn't cruel," she continued. "He was me. The part of me that refused to die when I broke. The part I left behind in the snow, when the city fell."
Her fingers curled into fists. "But that's the truth about Echoes. They aren't just shadows. They're who we might've been, if the world had been crueler, or kinder."
Alpha tried to sit up. The mirror-wards pulsed faintly, resisting him like liquid light.
Selene turned toward him now, expression unreadable. "They told me the only way to survive was to kill him. The ritual demands it. One twin lives. One dies. Only one can carry the truth."
He could see the pain flash across her face, too fast for her to hide.
"But I didn't kill him," she said. "Not really. I scattered him, tore pieces of him into the blade. Bound him inside Lirael. It was supposed to silence him."
Alpha's brow furrowed. "Did it?"
A bitter laugh escaped her lips. "For a while. But some truths can't be buried."
She stepped closer, placing her hand against the mirror between them. "I've been… bleeding ever since. Parts of him still surface in me. In thoughts. Dreams. Sometimes I forget which one of us survived."
The words hung in the air between them like frost.
Alpha's pulse thundered in his ears. "Is that what's happening to me?"
Selene's eyes were glassy now. "No. You're not me. But you're close."
She lowered her hand, voice breaking on the edge. "And if you don't find a way to separate yourself from your Echo before it fully takes root, before the next rite begins, you'll lose yourself too."
He met her gaze, fierce and clear. "What if I don't want to kill it?"
Selene didn't answer.
Instead, she whispered, "Then you'd better find another way to live with it."
And this time, she sounded like someone who had tried.
And failed.
[Flashback –The Night the Snow Burned
The mountains of Valcen were silent in the dead of winter.
Even the wind held its breath.
Selene stood at the edge of a cliff, her breath steaming in the frostbitten air, the twin-bladed sword Lirael strapped to her back like a spine she wasn't sure she wanted. Behind her, the torches of the ritual circle flickered, guarded by mages draped in violet robes and bound oaths.
She was seventeen. And terrified.
The others had already gone through the rite. Some emerged… quieter. Others screamed for days and had to be sedated. One simply walked into the snow and never returned.
They called it the Trial of Truth. But it wasn't truth they wanted, it was certainty. Proof that the wielder was real, and not a puppet of their reflection.
Selene turned as the Oracle stepped forward, a man with blind eyes and voice that hummed like wind against steel. "When you step into the circle, your Echo will take form. You will speak. You will choose. If you do not, it will choose for you."
She remembered her mouth being dry. Her knees trembling.
She remembered stepping into the circle anyway.
The air rippled. Mirrors formed out of nothing, glinting in a dome around her, each one reflecting not just her body, but a different version of her.
One sobbing. One screaming. One smiling with blood on her teeth.
And then, he stepped forward.
Not a monster. Not a shadow.
A boy. Her age. Her face.
But sharper. More resolute. A version of herself that had chosen war instead of hesitation. That hadn't begged for mercy when the academy masters turned her into a weapon.
The Echo smiled softly.
"You're afraid of being like me," he said.
Selene didn't speak.
"You think you're better than me. That your kindness makes you worthy." He stepped closer. "But you only got to be kind because I bled first."
The memories that weren't hers flared in her mind: a village burned to prevent a plague from spreading, a friend betrayed to gain entry into the Archives, a blade plunged into a sleeping target's heart, all cold, necessary decisions.
"You call me cruel," he whispered. "But you wouldn't be standing here if I hadn't made those choices."
Selene dropped to her knees. "You're not me."
"I'm the part of you that never got to live," he said. "And I'm tired of dying for your ideals."
That's when she screamed.
She remembered summoning Lirael and swinging. Not to kill, but to silence. To scatter him into fragments and bury those truths somewhere deeper than thought.
The mirrors shattered.
The snow burned blue.
And Selene never looked at her own reflection the same way again.
Alpha sat in silence, staring at her.
Selene's shoulders shook. Not from weakness, but from the weight she had been carrying too long.
"I never saw him again," she whispered. "But I feel him. Sometimes in dreams. Sometimes when I look in the mirror and wonder if the one staring back is still me."
Alpha's voice was low. "Why did you tell me this?"
Selene looked at him.
And for once, her mask cracked.
"Because I don't want you to make the same choice I did."
The chamber was dark, lit only by the flickering hum of warded candlelight. Sigils scrawled across the walls like crawling vines, half-hidden beneath silk drapes and chalk dust. Selene had gone silent after the confession—withdrawn into herself. The air between them buzzed with all the things that had not yet been said.
Alpha couldn't sleep.
He hadn't been able to, not since the scroll. Not since that boy had read aloud the words written in a language that shouldn't have echoed in his bones.
And now…
Now the silence wasn't silent anymore.
He sat on the cold stone, arms wrapped around his knees, staring at the mirror across the room. Selene had covered most of them, but one, one she'd missed, still reflected the room in shards. It didn't show him right. His face in the mirror looked older. Or… younger? Bruised? Smiling when he wasn't.
He blinked.
The reflection didn't.
Alpha flinched back.
The candle near the mirror flared blue for a moment—then went still.
"Scared of me?" The voice was his.
But it wasn't.
It came from behind his ear, coiling through the shadows and pressing gently into the space between thought and speech. He turned slowly, nothing. Just stone. Just the dim glow of runes.
"You should be," it continued. "But not for the reason you think."
Alpha swallowed. "Who are you?"
"Wrong question," the voice said gently, almost pitying. "You mean who were you before me? And the answer is... not much."
Alpha's heart pounded. "You're not real."
A soft laugh, his laugh, darker. "Oh, I'm real enough. Real as those dreams you don't remember living. Real as the decisions you never made but feel guilty for anyway. Real as the pain you've buried so deep you mistake it for someone else's."
The mirror pulsed.
And for a moment, Alpha saw himself, eyes glowing, hand outstretched. But it wasn't a reflection. It was a call.
"You're unraveling," the Echo whispered. "And I'm what's left when the thread snaps."
Alpha stood up shakily. "Why now? Why are you speaking now?"
The mirror figure smiled, gentle, sad. "Because you're ready to listen."
Something cracked inside Alpha. Not loudly. Quietly. Like a door shifting slightly open in the dark.
He saw flashes, not dreams, not memories. But moments. A girl weeping in the snow. A sword humming with a name he'd never learned. A decision made in blood. None of them his.
And all of them felt like home.
"I'm not you," Alpha whispered.
"I'm what you could have been," the Echo said. "And maybe what you have to be."
Then, silence.
The mirror returned to normal. His reflection… was his again. Eyes wide. Chest rising and falling with panic. Sweat trickling down his temple.
From the hallway, Selene's footsteps approached.
"Alpha?" Her voice was cautious. "Did you hear something?"
He turned away from the mirror. He didn't answer at first.
Then, quietly:"I think I spoke to myself."
And behind him, just faintly, just under the breath of wind and flicker of candlelight, the mirror smiled.
They walked by torchlight, deep into the catacombs beneath the sanctuary. The further they descended, the older the air became, heavy with salt, whispers, and the rot of forgotten choices.
Selene held the lantern close to her chest, its glow warming the edge of her jaw but not her expression. She hadn't spoken since they left the chamber. Not about the mirror. Not about the Echo. Only this:
"There's something I can show you. But you won't come back the same."
Alpha followed her anyway.
He could still feel the chill of that voice, the calm weight of something too familiar to be foreign. He needed to understand. If only to keep himself from shattering.
At the end of the tunnel was a door. It wasn't made of stone, but bone-white wood, veined with lines that pulsed softly, as if it were… breathing.
Selene turned to him. Her eyes weren't cold. Just tired. "This rite, it's not from the Codex. It predates the twin-wielders. It comes from them. From the Echos, before they were called that. Before they were bound to mirrors."
Alpha stared at the door. "Why does it feel like it's watching me?"
Selene hesitated. Then said quietly, "Because it is."
She opened it.
Inside was a circular chamber lit by mirrors. Seven of them, each covered in ancient cloth, frayed and stained. The air buzzed like held breath. And at the center, an altar. Simple. Black stone. Etched with a single word Alpha could not read, but felt deep in his ribs.
Ravael.
He didn't know the name. But his bones remembered it.
Selene gestured to the altar. "Lie down. Place both hands on the stone. Say nothing. Think nothing. It will take you."
Alpha hesitated. "And if I get lost?"
"You won't," Selene said, too quickly. Then, more softly, "But if you do… I'll find you."
He lay down. The stone was cold. And when his palms touched it,
Everything vanished.
He was standing in a hallway made of black glass. Endless mirrors lined the walls, but they didn't reflect him. They showed different versions of himself.
One laughing, blood on his hands. One kneeling beside Selene, weeping. One crowned in gold. One dead. One... monstrous.
Then another.
A boy.
Alone. Watching.
Alpha approached the child. "Who are you?"
The boy didn't answer.
He only turned, and behind him, the glass walls shattered.
Memories poured in like water.
Pain that wasn't his. Love he'd never lived. Regrets so heavy they burned.
And in the flood, one image remained.
A sword. Driven into a reflection. And the reflection screamed not in pain, but in recognition.
He saw the face.
His face.
Alpha fell to his knees.
"I don't know who I am," he whispered.
From behind him, the boy spoke for the first time.
"You're both."
He awoke gasping. Selene was beside him, holding his wrists down. His skin was pale. His lips bleeding from where he'd bitten them.
She looked at him, not with fear, but with heartbreak.
"What did you see?" she asked.
Alpha stared up at her, eyes glassy.
"I think I saw… the cost of surviving."
And for the first time, she didn't speak.
She only bowed her head and whispered: "So you understand me now."