Ash's breath fogged the cracked mirror as he adjusted the collar of his coat. The borrowed one. The one that reeked of authority he didn't earn and fear he didn't deserve.
He hadn't slept. After what he'd seen in the Vault, sleep wasn't an option. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the orb — pulsing, bleeding — and Dahlia's voice still echoed in his head: "Erase him."
The room around him felt wrong. Walls shifted at the edges of his vision. Nyx's words haunted him: "Your reflection moved before you did."
The mirror didn't answer.
But it didn't deny it either.
---
Downstairs, Rei stood in the safehouse's lower war-room, tense, blood on her gloves.
Ash stepped into the room—and stopped.
A body lay in the corner.
A young girl, maybe twelve. Skin gray, veins flickering with pale light. Her eyes had been hollowed out, replaced by static.
"A Collapse Echo," Rei said quietly. "Phased through the wall. No warning."
Ash's stomach turned. "Human?"
"She was," said another voice.
Dahlia Knox.
She stepped out from behind a flickering holo-screen. "They come through more often now. Because of you."
Ash clenched his jaw. "I didn't ask for this."
"No one does," Dahlia said, glancing at Rei. "But eventually, we all pay rent to the Rift."
---
They burned the body in the incinerator downstairs. No ceremony. No goodbyes.
Ash couldn't shake the feeling that the girl had looked familiar. Not by face—by weight. Like her presence had once belonged in his world.
Nyx said nothing as they watched the smoke coil into the vents.
But later, when the safehouse lights cut out without warning, Nyx appeared beside him like a ghost.
"They're here."
"Who?"
"Watchers."
---
A blast ripped through the west wall. Ash barely dove aside. Concrete and dust exploded inward.
Three cloaked figures stepped through the ruin—faces hidden behind obsidian masks. Their robes moved without wind. Their presence bent the hallway.
Ash's head throbbed. The air vibrated with a low hum that rattled his bones.
Rei appeared at his side, gun drawn. Nyx whispered, "It's them. The real ones."
Then came the fourth.
A girl stepped through the smoke. Young. Familiar.
"Juno?" Ash asked.
She smiled. "A memory. Not yours. Not anymore."
Rei stiffened. "You're an echo."
The Juno-Echo nodded. "And you've let the fracture grow too wide."
Ash stepped back. "I didn't—"
"You are the instability," the Echo said. "You are the mirror too cracked to reflect."
The Watchers didn't move. But Ash felt their attention.
Like gods who forgot how to blink.
---
Rei shouted, "Fall back!"
They ran. Through trembling corridors. Through walls that flickered between real and not.
In the med-bay, Ash activated the fallback rift gate with the ring. Behind him, Nyx screamed. The gate pulsed.
Ash dove through.
---
The room beyond was a Rift chamber—ancient, buzzing, alive.
A Rift Aberration waited. Tall. Limbs not limbs. A face made of stolen memories.
It stepped toward him.
Ash raised a hand.
The ring pulsed.
The creature bowed.
> "You are the wound. The mirror. The echo."
Ash's eyes widened.
And the Rift responded.
---
Outside, Rei and Nyx crawled from the wreckage. The Watchers were gone.
Nyx whispered, "He's changing."
Rei said nothing.
Because she already knew.
And the Rift had already begun to call him back.
---