The shattered edge of the Capital Riftline rose before them like the exposed bones of the world. Towering structures bent inward, half-dissolved by ancient resonance events. What was once a skyline now stood fractured—architecture leaning toward collapse, as though listening to some whisper they couldn't hear.
The journal pulsed before they stepped forward.
"It is rude not to eat what is given."
Ka'rui blinked. "That's… weirdly polite for a cursed warzone."
Then the ink shifted, darkening. Another message bled into the surface beneath it.
"You are now entering the Royal Capital of the Face-Snatched. Unmasked, you risk mimic integration and irreversible memory theft. Proceed masked. Speak little. Trust nothing."
Scarlet tightened the mask around her face, knuckles white. "That's not a riddle. That's a command."
They entered.
Despite the warnings, the city thrived. Streets bustled with merchants shouting in layered tongues. Children played near levitating carts. Music played somewhere unseen, yet familiar. Lasi walked among the crowd, her mask secure, body alert.
But something was wrong.
The people didn't blink often enough. Or they blinked too much.
The street food smelled too perfect.
And every conversation ended with the exact same phrase:
"You look just like someone I used to know."
Ka'rui slipped off to chat with a vendor selling bone-carved trinkets. Scarlet trailed her, eager to map the social patterns. They lingered in the shadow of a mask vendor's stall—fascinated.
Lasi and Salven remained near the edge, studying a cracked monument engraved with half-erased sigils.
Then came the stumble. Scarlet first, hand on the stall. A polite smile, then her knees buckled.
Ka'rui followed—laughing a little too loudly before she collapsed forward, knocking over a stand of polished shells.
The journal screamed.
"DO NOT EAT THE FOOD OR DRINK. OR YOUR FACE WILL DISAPPEAR AND NEVER BE SEEN AGAIN. ABANDONED."
Salven reacted first, breaking through the crowd with a wave of sharp wind that scattered several mimics. He scooped Scarlet into his arms and shouted for Lasi—
But Ka'rui was gone.
In her place, only a trail of golden petals and a cracked face mask lay on the ground.
⸻
They ran.
Through back alleys, past silent statues. Through memory-stained streets that whispered their names. Lasi's head throbbed with heat and panic.
"Ka'rui—"
Too late.
They couldn't find her. The mimics blocked the exits. Every building felt like it had moved. Every face wore someone else's smile.
They got out barely intact, Scarlet half-conscious, Salven carrying her weight.
By the time they made it to the outer ruins, Lasi dropped to her knees in the dust.
⸻
That night, the city glowed behind them—an imitation moon with a hundred thousand eyes. And they had failed to stop it from taking someone.
Scarlet finally woke.
She didn't ask where Ka'rui was. She knew.
Tears streamed down her face before her lips even moved.
"She's gone."
Salven didn't speak. He was still looking at his hand—still remembering how close he'd been. He gritted his teeth, rage beneath the grief.
"I had her," he said. "I was—ten seconds too late."
"No," Lasi whispered. "We were all late."
⸻
Later, Lasi scouted ahead through the broken marble passageways, a dull ringing in her skull. The terrain here was carved with unnatural scars—like something had dragged nails through the city's memory.
Then—
Suddenly.
A memory hit her, sharp and certain.
Salven. Her. Younger. Training side by side beneath a dusk-lit canopy. His palm correcting her grip. His voice in her ear, steady. Familiar. Back when names meant something, before the world split them into versions of themselves they didn't recognize anymore.
She gasped, clutching the journal.
It pulsed.
Another phrase unlocked, ink blooming over the page like blood through gauze.
"Yai'n kai thalor."
("I regret the halves I could not protect.")
⸻
And then—
The hallucination. The vision. The truth.
Ka'rui stood in a vaulted corridor of bone and mirrorglass. Faces lined the walls. Some were still twitching.
Ka'rui's hands moved with precision—joy, even—as she peeled a wet mask from a basin and held it up like a relic.
It was Lasi's face.
Still warm. Still breathing.
Ka'rui smiled. Ecstatic.
She peeled off her own skin like a second shirt—no pain, only grace. Underneath: a different face. Then another. And another.
Behind her: thousands of expressions hung in suspended animation—grief, ecstasy, dread. All real. All stolen.
She smoothed Lasi's face over her own like a child dressing up.
"Now we match."
And then, as her voice shifted—
"You shouldn't have eaten the food."
Lasi tried to scream but no sound came. Her limbs wouldn't move. Her mind felt peeled.
"You were late. You forgot who you were. You gave her your reflection."
She gasped—snapping back into her body.
She was kneeling in the sand again. Breathing hard.
Salven was standing at the edge of the riftline collapse behind her, silent.
Scarlet sat beneath a shattered archway, silent tears running down her cheeks.
Lasi pressed her palm to the journal's surface. Her voice returned like a spark.
"I found her."
But it might already be too late.
⸻
They found the abandoned house an hour later.
A trail of blood led up cracked steps and through the open threshold like a dragged signature across time.
Inside, silence.
Dust curled in sunbeams. Something hummed.
Scarlet stepped on something wet. She looked down.
A severed arm. Ka'rui's.
The charm bracelet confirmed it.
She screamed—hand flying to her mouth.
Salven turned away, chest heaving, fists clenched to stop from collapsing.
Lasi stared.
She walked forward.
Kneeling, she reached out and touched the cold limb.
Held it.
She didn't cry. Not right away.
Scarlet dropped beside her, sobbing freely now.
"They took her—she was smiling, Lasi—she was smiling in that vision—"
Lasi finally breathed, voice cracking.
"They still have her."
Salven approached slowly, wiping his face with the back of his hand. "Her body…"
"We're going to get it," Lasi said, suddenly sharp.
Her blade—the void slicer—began to hum.
Then pulse.
It vibrated against her back until it jumped into her hand.
A burst of pressure rippled outward.
Scarlet gasped. The walls shook. Dust flew.
Lasi didn't flinch. Her hair lifted in the force. Her breath stilled. Eyes locked forward.
"We go," she said.
"Even if it's too late."
"Even if we can't save her soul."
"Even if she's already becoming… something else."
Salven nodded. Not in agreement—just in purpose.
Scarlet stood, wiping her face.
The blade pulsed again.
And Lasi walked.
She followed the blood trail, deeper into the mimic-infested depths.
Scarlet and Salven followed behind her.
They had no plan.
Only one hope: that some part of Ka'rui still remained.
And that they might reach it—before the last memory of her dissolved forever.
Some reflections do not return
At dusk, Lasi stood alone atop a cliffside relay tower, the terrain below flickering with fold scars.
She saw it then:
A spire. A helix tower of mirrored glass.
The Pulitilian Royal Vault.
Where rare masks were displayed like trophies.
And where Ka'rui had been taken.