The ritual chamber was wrong.
It was too quiet, too still — as if the room was holding its breath.
Kael stood on one side of a glowing circle. Lira on the other. Between them floated a sphere of glass containing swirling ink, flickers of memory dancing like flame. Dozens of runes hovered around the edges, all bound to a glowing heartstone below their feet.
"This isn't a compatibility test," Kael murmured.
Lira nodded. "It's a mirror."
---
Above them, masked observers whispered behind mirrored walls.
"Subject D-1 is unstable but reactive. Subject D-9 possesses mirrored residue. We initiate resonance pulse at second echo."
"Begin memory fusion. Let the Core judge."
---
The runes ignited.
The glass sphere shattered.
And everything changed.
---
Kael wasn't in the lab anymore.
He was standing beneath a starlit canopy in a different time, his hands covered in dust and blood, facing a girl with silver-threaded hair and tears in her eyes.
Lira.
But not Lira.
Another life.
Another name.
"You always choose the flame," she whispered, voice breaking. "Even when it burns us both."
"I had to," he said. "The world needed forgetting."
Her hand cupped his face — trembling. "Then promise me something, Kael."
He swallowed. "Anything."
"If we ever meet again... remember me before you choose."
---
Kael gasped, dragged back to the present.
His knees buckled.
Across the chamber, Lira had collapsed, sobbing quietly into her arm.
They both remembered now.
Not everything — but enough.
This wasn't their first meeting.
They had stood on opposite sides of a choice that tore a world apart.
And now, somehow, they were being drawn back together for a second chance... or the same mistake.
---
Above, the technicians spoke in hushed tones.
"Resonance spike. Off the charts. Soul-thread binding detected."
"Do we terminate?"
"No. Observe. This is... unprecedented."
---
In the chamber, Kael crawled toward Lira, unchained by some unseen force. The energy between them still hummed — not pain, not flame, but remembrance.
"I know you now," she whispered.
"And I failed you," he said.
She reached for his hand.
"Then don't fail this time."
---
The sphere reignited in the air above them, showing flashes of a battle neither remembered clearly — cities in ruin, stars falling, Echoes unbound. A voice echoed from the glass:
"Two souls, once torn. Bound again. One will remember. One will choose."
Then it shattered again.
---
The light died.
The ritual ended.
Kael and Lira collapsed into silence.
But inside Kael's mind, the Core pulsed.
And something ancient whispered:
"The key is awakening. Prepare the gate."