Kye didn't pull his hand back right away.
The boy's grip was cold—not like ice, but like stone that had forgotten warmth. His silver-glass eyes stared up at Kye with an expression that wasn't fear or warning. It was something harder to name. Something like… dread wrapped in certainty.
"This sword," Kye said slowly, "it's the same as mine."
The boy nodded. "Almost."
Renna crouched beside them, eyes locked on the pod. "Then what's the difference?"
The boy let go of Kye's wrist and stepped back, barefoot on the metal floor. "Yours was made to resist lies," he said. "That one was made to enforce them."
Kye narrowed his eyes.
"A sword that kills truth," the boy added.
---
The pod sat like a closed secret, humming faintly beneath its shell. Its dark surface rippled ever so slightly, as if breathing. The sword inside wasn't shaped like Vireon's Breath—it *was* Vireon's Breath. Same hilt. Same length. Same obsidian edge. But the air around it was different.
Thicker. Meaner.
"Why would Kael make two?" Renna asked.
The boy shook his head. "Kael didn't make either."
Veika stepped back. "Then who did?"
"The memory architects," he answered. "Before the Purge. When they still believed they could control history."
Kye stared at the blade through the glass.
He could feel it pulling.
Not like a lure.
Like recognition.
---
"You said I forgot something," Kye said. "Something under this hatch. Something about you."
The boy tilted his head. "You didn't just forget me. You chose to."
That struck harder than it should have.
Kye stood slowly. "Why would I choose that?"
"You were scared of who I'd become."
The room fell quiet again. Even the pod's hum seemed to shrink under the weight of that sentence.
Veika crossed her arms. "Okay, seriously? You're talking in riddles again. Either he's your clone, twin, soul twin, I don't care—can someone say something normal for once?"
Renna didn't laugh.
Neither did Kye.
The boy gave her a tired glance. "I'm not any of those things," he said. "I'm what was cut out of him. The memories they said were too dangerous."
"You're a part of Kye," Renna said, eyes narrowing.
He nodded once.
> "I'm the part they didn't let survive."
---
Kye stepped closer to the pod again. The sword's edge flickered with faint red lines—memory runes, twisted and reversed, like scribbled edits across time.
He reached toward the lid—
Renna grabbed his arm this time. "Don't."
"I need to know what they hid."
"Maybe there's a reason it was buried," she said. "You don't open a cage without knowing what's inside."
Kye's eyes didn't leave the blade. "That's the problem, isn't it? They never gave us a choice. They decided what to lock away. Who to erase. What we were allowed to remember."
His voice grew tighter. Angrier.
"I'm done letting them choose for me."
He touched the lid.
The runes hissed.
The pod unlocked.
---
The sword didn't move.
But the air did.
It rippled outward like a pressure wave, distorting the edges of the room. The boy staggered back. Renna swore under her breath and drew her dagger.
And Veika froze.
Not in fear.
In shock.
She wasn't looking at the sword.
She was looking at the **mural on the wall**—the one with the two boys back to back.
It had changed.
One of the boys was now missing.
Erased.
Only the one with the **book** remained.
---
"I don't think this is just a weapon," Renna whispered. "It's a key."
Kye looked at her.
"To what?"
"To everything they sealed. All the versions of the past they didn't want us to see."
The boy's voice came again. Quieter this time.
"If you draw it… you won't be able to put it back."
---
Kye stared at the dark hilt.
The pull grew stronger.
His heart pounded—not from fear, but from something else.
A feeling he'd been chasing without knowing.
A piece of himself that had never fully returned.
His fingers touched the grip.
And suddenly—**a scream echoed from inside the blade.**
Loud.
Human.
Agonizing.
The pod cracked.
Not the sword.
The metal around it.
And from within, a second voice—raspy, distorted, but unmistakably **his own**—whispered back:
"I remember what you did to me."