I'd been wandering for hours.
At least, it felt like hours.
The Hollow Exchange didn't have clocks, just the slow, humming pulse of unseen music and the soft flicker of chandeliers remembering someone else's dream. Time here wasn't measured. It accumulated.
My legs ached. The backs of my eyes burned. Every corner looked familiar, like I'd passed it already or dreamed it once. The last few hours had bled together, Karu's voice, the fountain, the loop of water falling upward, and now this.
Now me.
Alone. Drifting.
I'd thought I could find something here. A trail. A clue. A name.
Instead, I just kept walking.
One more stall. One more corridor.
One more promise wrapped in silver light and half-truths.
My stomach had turned on me an hour ago, somewhere between the stall selling memory-ink tattoos and the guy who swore his incense was laced with "harvested dreams." I hadn't slept. Not properly. Not since Anya told me to let go. And now, the exhaustion was chewing at the edges of everything.
The lights shimmered too brightly. The shadows bent the wrong way.
I rubbed my eyes and leaned against the wall, cold stone, smooth and too clean for how far down we were. I could still hear music, but it was distant now. Everything felt... distant.
I slid down until I was sitting, back pressed to the wall, knees drawn in.
Was this what Cayos wanted?
To send me down here chasing ghosts in a temple built from temptation?
I pulled out the photo again.
My fingers were too clumsy. I dropped it once. Almost didn't notice.
Anya, laughing. Caught in the light. Frozen in a better moment.
I stared until the image blurred.
Somewhere behind me, footsteps echoed. Then faded. Then echoed again.
Real? Or just this place playing tricks?
I should've turned back.
But I couldn't go home.
Not yet.
Not until I knew.
Not until I found something.
Anything.
—
Then I saw it.
A tent I hadn't seen before.
Purple velvet, hem fraying, lanterns glowing too warm for this deep down.
The sign outside stopped me cold:
For the sleepless, the searching, and the still bleeding.
(She left something behind. Come find it.)
I let out a half-laugh. The kind that cracks on the way out.
Marketing. Like everything else down here.
But I couldn't walk past.
Not when it sounded like it knew me.
Not when part of me, the part I was too tired to lie to, wondered what she'd left behind.
My fingers brushed the tent's edge.
It was too warm. And I stepped inside.
—
Inside felt like a different world completely.
It was dark, and dots of light surrounded me like stars. The music that had constantly been droning in the back had completely vanished, leaving only tinnitus in its place.
The tent was large. Much larger than it looked from the outside.
I looked around, only to realise the entrance was now gone, or shrouded in darkness.
How easy it would've been to give up. To sit down. To rest for just a moment.
But I couldn't.
I needed to find out why Cayos had sent me here.
I took a step forward, trying to walk in a straight line, and stumbled over my own feet.
Then a voice rang out, coming from every direction at once.
Smooth. Soft. Female, maybe. Or something trying to sound like it.
Warm as breath against skin.
"You came looking for her. But you brought only yourself."
I froze.
The stars above me pulsed, swaying like they were underwater. The ground beneath me felt softer now. Carpet? Moss? I couldn't tell.
"Sit."
Not a request.
A faint glow rose around me, revealing a low table carved from petrified wood, dark, rippled, etched with lines I couldn't read. Opposite it, half-shrouded in fabric and shadow, was the figure.
She, or it, sat perfectly still. Face hidden. Fingers long and pale, steepled over a deck of cards that shimmered with faint, shifting runes.
I didn't remember sitting.
But suddenly, I was.
"She left something behind."
I leaned forward, throat dry.
"You mean Anya?"
A pause.
"You named her. Brave. But foolish."
The figure tilted its head. The shadows beneath the hood rearranged, but never resolved.
"She made her choice. You followed. Now the thread tangles."
With a flick of the wrist, the cards cut themselves.
"Do you want to know what she gave up for you?"
I couldn't speak.
My fingers tightened in my lap.
A card flipped itself over between us. No hand touched it.
It landed face up.
A golden ring. Crushed. Blood smudged the edge of the image, but the ring remained whole.
Barely.
I stared. My hand moved to my pocket, to the real one. The foil-wrapped promise folded into memory.
The figure did not look at the card.
"Ask your question."
I swallowed.
"…Can I still save her?"
Silence.
The stars above flickered.
"Ask better."
My jaw clenched.
I wanted to stand. To shout. To tear this place down.
But instead, I whispered:
"…Who was she before?"
The figure smiled. I couldn't see it. But I felt it.
A second card turned.
A girl with a cracked eye, standing at the edge of a mirror.
Inside it: the city burned.
Behind her: a gate that hadn't opened yet.
"Before she was yours," the voice said softly, "she was marked by something older than love."
I froze.
Something in me buckled, not like a blow, but like a thread snapping that I hadn't realized was holding me upright.
Older than love.
Older than me.
I'd told myself she needed saving. That she was fragile. That Reverie had come for her like a thief in the night.
But what if she'd been walking toward it all along?
What if the girl I loved wasn't waiting to be rescued…but leaving behind the part of her I knew?
My grip tightened around the photo in my pocket.
I suddenly hated how happy we looked.
Another card spun.
A staircase carved into a mirror, spiralling downward. At the bottom: a door with no handle. Above it, the sky cracked like old paint.
"There is a way," the voice said.
"But it does not lead back. Only through."
I leaned forward, eyes fixed on the image.
"Through where?"
"You've seen the shard. You've felt the hum. You've stared at the Gate and begged it to make sense."
A pause.
"The Citadel of Mirrors does not choose. It reflects."
"You want to follow her?"
The voice sharpened.
"Then go to the Citadel. Walk into the Gate. Speak your truth."
"And that's it?" I asked.
The third card turned.
A boy with his back to the world, blood dripping from one hand, light in the other.
"No," the voice said softly.
"That's the beginning."
The figure leaned forward, just enough for the light to catch a sliver of their veil. Still no face. Only the glint of something cold where an eye should be.
"Mark yourself," they whispered.
"And you may yet catch up to her shadow."
The table went dark.
The stars blinked out.
The tent dissolved.
And everything fell away.
—
Light.
A thundercrack that split the world.
Above me, the sky tore itself apart.
The Gate was opening.
The obsidian shard suspended in the clouds cracked wide, bleeding light, brilliant, wrong, holy. That impossible brilliance flooded the plaza, pouring across rooftops and glass like liquid dawn.
The sound, deep, thunderous, divine, slammed into my chest and rattled the windows of the car around me.
Birds scattered. Drones swerved. The city froze to watch.
And I woke.
Gasping.
Drenched in sweat, hoodie soaked through, heart hammering like I'd been running. The seatbelt pressed into my chest. My hands were locked around the steering wheel.
I was in my car.
Back in the plaza.
The Gate still thundered above, light flaring across mirrored towers, spilling down the Citadel's flanks like a second sunrise.
I didn't know how I got here.
Didn't know if any of it, the cards, the voice, the promise, had actually happened.
But I remembered the last thing it said:
"Mark yourself. And you may yet catch up to her shadow."
I looked up at the Citadel of Mirrors.
It was waiting.
And this time, I wasn't turning away.