The silence between them was not empty.
It was dense.
Alpha stared at Selene as the last embers of the vision flickered behind his eyes. The mirrored prophecy. The boy's blood. The flame. The city in ruins.
And her—already burned, already knowing.
Selene stepped into the plaza, her boots crunching on stone that should have echoed, but didn't. The sound was muffled, swallowed by the unnatural air of Elaris.
"You saw your failure," she said.
Not a question.
A confirmation.
Alpha's fingers tensed on Vanitas' hilt. "What do you know about this sword?"
Selene stopped at the edge of the pedestal. Her eyes flicked to the place where the mirror had vanished. Then to the statues that no longer stood.
"This city was once called the Cradle of Wills," she said softly. "Long ago. Before it was Elaris. Before the swords chose bearers."
Alpha's brow furrowed. "Swords?"
She nodded. "Vanitas is not the only one. It never was."
The wind stirred. Cold, dry, too deliberate.
"Thirteen blades," Selene continued. "Forged in the Age of Fracture. Each one bound not to the hand that wields it—but the will behind it. And each one cursed."
Alpha felt Vanitas tremble once more in his grip. Not in warning.
In recognition.
"Cursed how?"
Selene looked at the boy before answering.
"When one bonds with a soul, it reflects not only their strength—but their flaws. Their fears. Their failures. The swords feed on them. Not to destroy you. But to test you."
She met Alpha's gaze.
"Fail, and the blade consumes you."
The Warden of Vanitas
"I was the last bearer of Vanitas."
The words dropped like stones.
Alpha blinked.
Selene didn't flinch. Her expression didn't waver. But something in her eyes darkened—like a veil being pulled aside just enough to glimpse what lay beneath.
"I wielded it during the Siege of Solmire," she said. "We turned an entire army to ash. But the cost…"
She touched her side, where a ragged scar peeked from under her armor. "It doesn't kill your enemies. Not really. It reflects them through you. Every time I cut down a soldier, I carried them. Their rage. Their regret. Their madness."
The boy stepped behind Alpha, uneasy.
Selene continued.
"Eventually, it stopped being my sword. I started dreaming of its previous wielders. Started hearing voices I couldn't name. Laughing. Crying. Begging."
She looked to Alpha, gaze sharp.
"Do you dream, Alpha?"
He didn't answer.
Because he did.
Of a burning house. Of a boy's corpse. Of a city screaming without sound.
"You're early," Selene said. "Most don't hear Vanitas until the blade has tested them three times. You've barely crossed its first threshold. Yet it's already showing you things."
Alpha stared at the sword.
Its surface no longer looked dull metal.
He could almost see his reflection now. Faint. Skewed.
Wrong.
What Lies Beneath
"The first test was memory," Selene said, circling the pedestal like a prowling predator. "The mirror showed you something from your past. Something you're afraid of repeating."
"It wasn't my past," Alpha muttered. "It hasn't happened."
She paused.
"Hasn't happened yet."
Alpha tensed.
"The swords see through time in fragments," she explained. "Past. Future. Possibility. They blur the lines. What you saw might have been a warning. Or a promise."
"Why show it to me?"
"Because Vanitas doesn't care if you're ready," she said. "Only if you're true. It doesn't want a hero. It wants a reflection."
Alpha felt the boy's hand gripping his coat.
He realized, suddenly, how cold his own skin had become.
The Lost Bearers
Selene moved to one of the plaza's walls and pressed her gloved hand to it.
A seam cracked open.
Not a door. A memory.
Faint lights shimmered behind her—twelve spectral figures stepped from the stone. Hooded. Armed. Their blades pulsed with different hues.
Red. Blue. Gold. Pale green. Shadow black.
Only one glowed silver-blue like Vanitas.
"These were the original bearers," she whispered. "The Chosen Thirteen."
"Where are they now?" the boy asked, voice small.
Selene didn't answer.
She simply looked at Alpha.
He understood.
Gone.
Consumed. Forgotten. Lost to the swords they thought they controlled.
"They weren't all warriors," she added. "Some were philosophers. Poets. A blind woman. A child."
"A child?"
She nodded. "Nine years old. He bore the blade called Lumen. The sword of insight. He knew things even the elders didn't. Until the sword showed him a truth too large to carry."
"What happened to him?"
"He set his own village on fire," Selene said. "And vanished into the sea."
The Second Trial
Alpha turned away.
"I don't care about the others. Or their failures."
Selene's voice sharpened. "You should."
He faced her.
"If this sword wants to test me, fine. Let it. But it doesn't get to own me."
For the first time, Selene smiled.
It was not kind.
"You'll need that arrogance," she said. "The second trial waits beyond the outer wall. It will not show you memory."
She stepped back into the shadows of the broken city.
"It will show you the truth. And not everyone survives knowing who they really are."
She vanished.
This time, Alpha didn't chase her.
He turned to the boy.
"We're leaving. At first light."
The boy didn't speak.
But he nodded.
That Night
Alpha sat alone with Vanitas across his knees.
The stars above Elaris didn't flicker.
They watched.
Vanitas pulsed again—quiet. Subtle.
He looked down.
And for just a second, in the metal's warped surface…
He saw her face.
Not Selene.
A girl.
He didn't know her name.
But she was screaming.
And her blood was on his hands.
Alpha had walked through forests darker than midnight, stared down monsters with blades for tongues—but this…
This wasn't a battlefield.
This was a confession booth built by a sadist.
The air beyond Elaris' outer wall twisted the world. Sky bled sideways. Stone bent light. Sound echoed backward.
Every step felt like falling.
The boy had begged to follow.
Alpha made him stay.
He didn't want witnesses to whatever this would become.
He didn't want survivors.
The Gate
The Gate to the Trial of Truth wasn't guarded.
No lock. No monster.
Just a mirror.
Fractured.
Its shards hung in the air like frozen glass, orbiting a central frame. Each shard reflected Alpha at a different age.
A boy crying in the rain.A teen covered in bruises.An old man with Vanitas stabbed through his own chest.
Alpha stepped forward—and the shards spoke.
Not in words.
In impulse.
Pain. Shame. Hunger. Fear. Want.
Every moment he'd buried surfaced in a pressure wave that nearly knocked him out of his own skull.
He stumbled forward.
The glass let him pass.
Hall of Self
He stood in a white hallway that stretched forever.
No doors.
No shadows.
Just himself—clones of him lining both sides.
Each version wore different expressions.
Some laughed.
Some sobbed.
One reached out and whispered, "We failed her."
Alpha turned, eyes narrowing. "Who?"
But the clone smiled—and slit its own throat.
The others laughed louder. Echoing. Endless.
"Not real," Alpha muttered, walking faster.
But his reflection followed him across the shining floor.
The faster he walked, the louder the voices became.
The Question
He stopped.
The hallway ended in a chair.
A single wooden chair, facing a stone tablet.
On the tablet: a question burned in fire.
"WHAT ARE YOU WITHOUT THE CURSE?"
Alpha frowned. "I don't know."
The world shuddered.
That was the wrong answer.
The walls cracked.
Blood poured from the ceiling.
His clones melted into puddles of tar and screamed in his voice.
He grabbed Vanitas—
But it wasn't there.
His hand held nothing.
And then he saw her again.
The Girl
She sat at the chair now.
The girl from the vision.
No older than ten. Braided hair. A smile that cut like broken glass.
She looked up at him.
"You let me burn."
Alpha staggered.
"No—I don't know you—"
"Yes, you do," she said, rising.
She pressed her palm to his chest.
"Want to remember?"
The world imploded.
Shatterpoint
Alpha stood in the center of a house on fire.
Not a metaphor.
His house.
The fire smelled like salt and ash and truth.
A child screamed upstairs.
He knew those stairs.
He knew that scream.
He ran—muscle memory dragging him—but the steps warped underfoot, growing longer, thinner, until he couldn't climb.
Then Selene's voice cut through the flames.
"You don't save people, Alpha. You just survive them."
He looked down.
He was holding Vanitas again—but it was heavy.
Too heavy.
The blade was made of bodies now—hands grasping, whispering apologies, asking him to fix it this time.
He dropped it.
And the fire swallowed it whole.
Who Are You?
A voice—his voice—boomed from nowhere.
"You're not Alpha."
"Alpha was the name you stole."
"Before Vanitas. Before Elaris. You were nothing."
Another mirror appeared.
This time, it didn't show him.
It showed everyone else he'd ever failed.
His mother.His mentor.Selene.The boy.
Each one mouthed the same phrase.
"You left us behind."
He screamed—
But no sound came.
The Abyss
He collapsed into darkness.
There was no floor.
No air.
Only a slow drip of water somewhere deep.
His thoughts unraveled.
One by one.
Name.Time.Reason.
He forgot the sword.
He forgot the Trial.
He forgot why he was here.
Just a flicker left. A spark.
A voice. Soft. Fragile.
The girl again.
"Do you want to keep being him?"
Alpha blinked in the dark.
"Who?"
"Him," she said. "The liar. The survivor. The one who lets everyone else die."
He tried to answer.
But he wasn't sure if she meant him… or herself.
Vanitas Answers
Suddenly—pain.
A blade burst through his chest from behind.
Vanitas.
But no one held it.
The sword moved on its own.
It hissed into his ear—not a voice, not words.
Just a feeling.
Truth.
Alpha gasped.
And remembered everything.
The girl.
The fire.
His real name.
The first time he'd seen the sword.
The deal he made with the Riftborn.
The price.
Reawakening
He rose from the stone floor of the trial gate.
Blood in his mouth. Sweat pouring.
The boy stood at the edge.
Eyes wide.
"You were screaming."
Alpha nodded.
He looked down at Vanitas.
The blade looked cleaner. Sharper. Hungrier.
"I saw something," he whispered.
The boy waited.
Alpha didn't explain.
Because the truth wasn't a thing you shared.
Not yet.
He had to earn the right to carry it first.