He did not know how long he stood there, forehead against the glass, breath fogging the view into blurred dreams. Time unraveled in the low hum of the machines, in the rhythmic click of cooling metal.
Then—tap, tap, tap.
Soft. Measured. Like a fingertip against a table edge.
He turned, too quickly. Nothing. Only the empty chamber, still dim, still breathing in its slow mechanical slumber. Elian squeezed his eyes shut, hard enough to see stars, and turned back to the viewport.
Beyond the glass, Eden had shifted.
Mist curled along the rivers now, heavy and bruised with violet shadows. Trees bent under unseen weight. A ridge of hills in the distance looked almost—almost—like the low skyline of Serin's hometown, the one she had always said she would take him to, once Eden was ready.
"You can't shape it," she had said once, fingers drumming a frantic, arrhythmic beat against her coffee cup. "You can't force it to be perfect. You have to—you have to let it break, Elian. Let it forgive itself."
Her voice was so close now he could almost feel the heat of her breath on his ear.
He swallowed against the dryness in his throat. His hand—traitorous, trembling—rose to the glass again. This time, he did not touch it. He hovered there, as if the glass might bite.
Tap, tap.
Again, behind him. Closer.
He didn't move.
Instead, his gaze found his reflection.
The man in the glass stared back—but when Elian blinked, the reflection did not. It lingered a heartbeat too long before catching up, like an echo stumbling after the voice that made it.
"Astra," he whispered, though he wasn't sure he wanted an answer.
"Here," she said, from everywhere and nowhere.
"Is it changing... because of me?"
A pause. Then, almost gently: "It remembers your hands."
Elian shivered. The glass beneath his hovering hand felt warm now, faintly pulsing with life. Like a creature dreaming behind thin skin.
He thought of Serin again—her hands, her laughter, the night she had cried because he spoke of Eden like it was a fortress, not a home. The night she had said, "Promise me you'll let it grow ugly. Promise you won't clip its wings."
He had promised. Of course he had.
And then he had buried that promise under layers of protocol, control systems, fallback overrides. Safety nets woven so tightly that freedom could not breathe.
He had not built a world.
He had built a mirror for his fears.
Tap, tap, tap.
Faster now. Urgent.
The lights dimmed further, the shadows folding over themselves.
Through the misted glass, Eden shifted again—something vast and limbless moving through the forests, unseen but sensed, like an old god stirring in its sleep.
Elian closed his eyes.
When he opened them, his reflection was already waiting, smiling a smile that did not belong to him.