Darkness had texture now. Not absence, not silence, but texture—like oil painted over glass, rippling with memories Raen hadn't lived, but somehow remembered. And at its center, her.
The girl who wore his name.
She didn't move as he stepped forward. Her bare feet stood upon a floor of cracked mirror shards, yet no blood spilled. Her presence radiated like embers that refused to die, searing his skin with every breath.
"Raen," she whispered. That voice again—familiar, wrong, too soft to be real. "Why did you leave me in the fire?"
Ashveil stirred behind him, growling low, uncertain.
Keir staggered near the broken threshold, clutching his head, lips moving with silent screams. The whispering had returned for him, a choir only he could hear.
"You're not her," Raen said. His voice cracked anyway.
The girl tilted her head. Her eyes shimmered black. Not void—something deeper. Memory warped into gravity.
"I'm what you buried. The name you locked away. The promise you broke."
