Ilia
The door opened soundlessly.
Beyond it: a world suspended in stillness. A single corridor, impossibly long, lined with floating shards of glass — each shard containing a flickering scene.
She stepped through.
The air was soft. Too soft. Like breathing silk.
The first shard showed her — younger — laughing in a garden made of mirrors. Another: speaking in a forgotten tongue to a child with ink-black eyes. Another still: standing on a battlefield, alone, blood on her hands, her name carved into the sky.
Myel.
Not just a version of her. Not metaphor. A full life, lived. Recorded.
She walked slowly, each shard humming faintly as she passed, pulling at her thoughts, her skin, her memory. Some were seductive. Some made her want to scream. All of them were true.
And then, she reached the end.
A final shard — cracked. Flickering.
She touched it.
The world shattered.
She was back in the library. The library — the one that burned. Sevran stood before her, younger now. Kind.
"Myel," he said. "You can still walk away."
"I won't."
"They'll make you a myth. They'll bury what you really did."
"I know."
Sevran lowered his gaze. "Then remember me the way I was."
Ilia — Myel — turned toward the window. Fire licked the edges of the sky. Bells were tolling again.
And then the memory ended.
Vex
He watched as the fissure stabilized — forming a vertical surface like liquid mirror. The seal was becoming a passage.
"She's not trapped," Rien muttered. "She's inside the lock. Inside what she built."
Vex gritted his teeth. "We're going in."
Rien blinked. "I was hoping you'd say that."
They strapped the fallback cords. Left a marker glyph for Tarn. Then Vex stepped forward, placed his palm on the surface —
And was swallowed whole.
Inside: nothing and too much at once. A white corridor. Echoes of people he'd forgotten — or maybe never known. Versions of himself, watching. Judging.
And at the end — her.
She stood alone, hands clenched, her back to them, facing the remnants of a door now sealed again from the other side.
"Ilia!" he called.
She turned slowly. Her eyes were gold and grey and something deeper than either. And when she spoke, her voice layered.
"I remember everything."
Rien stepped forward. "Then tell us how this ends."
Ilia looked back at the door.
And said:
"By opening it."