The Third Ring had no key.
Because it was never meant to open.
Yet now, as the glyphs pulsed and reality folded at the edges, Elior stepped through it—not as an intruder, but as if summoned.
Mira didn't follow.
Not this time.
Beyond the Veil
It wasn't a room.
Not exactly.
The space behind the Ring pulsed like a living lung—walls breathing, shadows shifting, light bending at impossible angles.
Kade stood in the center.
Not smiling anymore.
"You're late."
Elior looked around. The glyphs here… they weren't static. They watched.
"Where is this?"
"Where they built the Rings. Before Veiled took it.
Before the silence. Before they started lying."
He touched the wall. It rippled.
A panel opened.
Inside—a capsule.
And in it, a body.
Elior's breath caught.
It was him.
Sleeping.
Younger. Paler. With a brand on his chest that matched the glyph from his first vision.
Memory Implant
Kade didn't flinch.
"You're not the original. None of us are.
We're echoes. Test runs.
But you… you're the only one who woke up."
Elior stared at his own face behind glass.
"Why show me this now?"
"Because the glyphs chose you. Not me. Not them.
And now they're awake, you need to decide—are you going to keep playing their game?"
The Awakening
Suddenly—the capsule cracked.
Steam hissed. Alarms lit the hidden chamber.
The sleeping Elior's eyes opened.
Except they weren't eyes.
They were glyphlight.
And the glyph on his chest burned brighter than any Ring ever seen.
"That's not you," Kade said, backing away. "That's what they built to replace you if you failed."
The capsule burst open.
The glyph copy stood. Silent. Focused.
And it was looking directly at Elior.
Then it spoke.
"Identity fragment confirmed.
Reintegration required.
Stand still."
Kade grabbed Elior's shoulder.
"RUN."
The Pursuit
The chamber exploded into light.
Walls melted into symbols. Floors shattered under shifting memory echoes.
Elior ran. Through collapsing code, through visions not his own.
He saw—
—Juno injecting him with blacklight serum.
—Mira crying outside a lab door.
—A child, burned in a glyph accident.
—A voice whispering: "He's not stable. But he's close."
Kade dragged him into a maintenance shaft.
Behind them, the Glyph Copy advanced.
Its steps didn't echo. Its voice did.
"You are incomplete. I am you, finished."
Out
They barely made it out before the tunnel collapsed.
Elior collapsed outside the vault, coughing.
No guards.
No Mira.
Just distant sirens and flickering glyphs in the sky.
Kade knelt beside him.
"You've got maybe a day before it finds you again."
Elior wiped blood from his mouth.
"Why didn't you destroy it?"
"Because you have to. Or accept it.
That's the deal, Elior. It's either him… or you."