They descended for hours.
The tunnel curved and twisted, lit only by Elior's flickering glyph and Mira's makeshift torch. The deeper they went, the more the city above felt like a dream someone else had.
Echoes of the Past
The walls changed.
Metal gave way to ancient stone, and stone gave way to… something else.
Translucent panels lined the corridors, some still faintly glowing. Inside them floated figures—preserved in some half-living stasis. Not dead.
Not alive.
Just frozen.
Elior stared.
"Are these…?"
"Subjects from the first Aeon wave," Mira said. "From before Veiled figured out memory wipes weren't enough."
"Why are they here?"
"Because they didn't work. And Veiled doesn't waste resources.
They bury their failures. Literally."
The Whisper Vault
They arrived at a circular chamber—half cathedral, half server room. Towers of crystal-memory cores spun silently in the dark.
A man stood in the center.
Thin. Cloaked in patchwork armor. His eyes glowed faintly blue.
"Took you long enough."
Mira stepped forward.
"Elior, meet Haleth. Rogue codemancer. Exiled Veiled architect."
Haleth didn't speak to Mira.
He stared straight at Elior.
"You're glitching."
"I absorbed my copy."
"Foolish. But… fascinating."
He gestured to the glyphlight crackling on Elior's wrist.
"It's not just rewriting you. It's… editing your memory index.
You're starting to forget who you were."
Elior blinked.
For a second, he couldn't remember the name of his first mentor.
He gritted his teeth.
"Can you stop it?"
Haleth smirked.
"Not stop. But maybe… redirect."
Mira's Confession
As Haleth prepped the stabilization chamber, Mira stood apart.
Watching one of the stasis tanks.
Inside floated a girl. Young. Blonde. Eyes closed.
Elior approached.
"Someone you knew?"
Mira didn't answer.
Then:
"She was my sister.
Volunteered for Aeon Project before me.
They said she was gifted… but her glyph turned against her."
Elior looked at her.
"You didn't come down here just to save me."
Mira nodded.
"I came to find her.
And to make Veiled pay for what they did to both of us."
The Merge Begins
Haleth powered up the stabilizer—an arcane mix of tech and raw glyphlight. Elior stepped in, grimacing as lines of code crawled up his skin.
"This will hurt."
"I'm used to it."
"No.
This will hurt you, not your body."
Memory Fracture
As the glyphweb wrapped around him, Elior fell into a trance.
He saw flashes—
The face of his mother… rewritten as a Veiled handler.
A childhood memory, where he saved a boy from drowning… only now, the boy never existed.
Mira, meeting him for the first time—but her name wasn't Mira. It was C-04.
And in the center of it all:
The Mirror.
His copy.
Smiling.
"You think memory makes identity.
But what happens when you remember everything…
And still don't know who you are?"
Elior Awakens
He screamed.
And then—
Silence.
Elior rose from the chamber, glyphlight now deep blue instead of gold.
His eyes shimmered faintly.
"I remember it all.
Every version of me."
Mira looked at him, half in awe, half in fear.
Haleth whispered:
"You've become the anomaly."
"No," Elior said. "I've become the mirrorbreaker."