The shadows under Alpha's eyes had deepened.
He hadn't slept. Not really. He'd closed his eyes, but the dream hadn't ended. It followed him now. In the flicker of torchlight. In the boy's voice when he spoke. In the way Vanitas seemed colder in his palm.
He found Selene waiting by the camp's edge, standing as if she'd been awake longer than him. As always, unreadable.
But something had changed in her, too.
"You're seeing it now," she said softly.
Alpha didn't ask what she meant. He knew.
She turned away, motioning for him to follow.
They walked in silence for a long while, down a path that wound like a scar through the trees. The morning mist clung to their ankles.
Eventually, they reached a stone structure, half-collapsed and overgrown. Ivy curled around the entrance like a warning. The symbol above the archway had been carved out, violently, as if someone had tried to erase it from history.
"This was a monastery," Selene said. "Before it was buried. Before the monks lost their minds."
She pushed the heavy doors inward. They creaked open with a groan like breath returning to lungs long sealed shut.
The air inside was thick with silence.
They descended stone steps lit only by slits in the ruined walls. At the bottom was a library, not large, but dense. Scrolls and blackened pages lay in stacks. Some shelves had collapsed, their contents rotting on the floor.
In the center sat a single lectern. Upon it, a book.
Bound in what looked like cracked, darkened skin.
Selene approached it slowly.
"This is what's left of the Mirror Doctrine."
Alpha raised an eyebrow. "You said the Echo was a fragment of the self."
"That's the lie they tell novices," Selene muttered. "The truth is worse."
She touched the book.
It opened with a whisper.
"Twin-wielders were never meant to exist. It was a punishment. A containment protocol."
Alpha stepped forward.
The pages were filled with ink that shimmered faintly, as if it moved when he wasn't looking. Drawings of two figures bound by mirrored chains. Text in a language he could half-understand.
"The Echo isn't your reflection," Selene said quietly. "It's your remainder."
"Remainder?"
"The part you discarded to become who you are. Everything you chose not to be. Everything you buried. And it remembers."
The page turned on its own.
An illustration of two warriors, each holding a sword. One bled from the mouth. The other wept from the eyes.
Beneath them, words burned into the paper: Only the truest self may remain. The other must fade.
Alpha stared at the ink, and it pulsed, once, like a heartbeat.
Then he heard it.
You should've listened sooner.
He jerked back.
"Did you hear that?" he asked.
Selene didn't move. "Hear what?"
But her eyes narrowed, focused on him, not the book.
"Alpha… what did it say?"
He turned away.
"It's fine. Just tired."
But the voice was still there. In the back of his skull. Like breath on the nape of his neck.
Later, by the fire, the boy asked if he was okay.
Alpha smiled too easily. Said all the right words.
But when the boy fell asleep again, Alpha's hands began to move on their own, tracing words into the dirt.
"We are one."" I remember better than you." "Let me take the weight."
He didn't know what the words meant.
He didn't remember writing them.
And Vanitas… felt heavier than ever.
It was the way he whispered to the fire. That's what made Selene stop.
Not the words, because they weren't words anymore. Just fragments. Repetitions. Echoes.
"I remember it too. You just won't let me say it." "It wasn't my fault. I made the choice. You made me choose"
She stepped closer, soft on her feet. Her instincts screamed to stay hidden, to observe, but her gut twisted as she saw his eyes.
Not Alpha's usual steady gaze. These eyes were mirrored, as if another version of him stood just behind the skin, looking out.
His fingers traced lines into the dirt again. That same phrase.
"Let me take the weight."
"Alpha," she said gently.
He didn't respond.
Selene moved fast, slipping in, grabbing his wrists, not roughly, but firmly. The touch jolted him. His breath caught in his throat.
His eyes snapped into focus. He looked at her like she was a stranger.
"You weren't supposed to be here," he whispered.
"I am here," Selene replied, "and you are not alone."
"But he said, he said you did this. That you chose the sword. That you watched yours die."
Selene's grip faltered. Just slightly. The fire crackled between them.
She let go.
For a moment, she looked as if she'd turn and walk away. But instead, she sat. Folded her legs beneath her. Rested her hands on her knees like she was about to pray.
"It's time you knew," she said quietly.
"Knew what?"
"Why I fear the sword you hold."" Why the Echo knows my name."
She stared into the flames.
"My name wasn't always Selene. Once, it was Ilya. A student of the Third Vault. Trained in rites and illusions. I was brilliant, they said. But reckless. Curious."
"I was chosen to bear a twin-soul blade at twenty. I thought it was an honor. But no one told me what it cost."
Her voice grew distant.
"They said I had to face the Mirror Path. That it would reflect who I truly was. A test."
"But the Echo that emerged wasn't a reflection. It wasn't a hallucination. It was me. The me I almost became, the one who broke the rules, who craved power, who would trade anything for control."
She looked up at Alpha.
"We fought for seven days in that mirrored sanctum. She knew everything I knew. She was me. I loved her. I hated her. We bled each other raw."
"And then, on the eighth day, I killed her."
Her voice cracked. Not loudly. Just enough.
"I remember how she looked. Not afraid. Just… tired. And she said, just before the blade sank into her chest, 'We could've been whole.'"
Alpha felt his throat tighten.
Selene pressed her hand against her own chest, as if trying to calm the storm beneath it.
"I was hailed as a survivor. A success. A Wielder. But something changed. I began forgetting pieces of myself. What I used to love. Who I was before."
"The more I remembered her, the less I remembered me. And so I left. Because I couldn't tell if the one who walked away… was the right one."
Silence.
Alpha didn't know what to say. He felt like something inside him was cracking open, echoing her pain in a place he hadn't yet dared to name.
"So when I saw you," Selene said, "when I saw Vanitas in your hands, I knew it had begun again."
"You think I'll kill my Echo."
Selene looked at him.
"I think you'll be given the choice. And I pray you find a better answer than I did."
That night, Alpha dreamed again.
But this time, he didn't just see the Echo.
He became it. He saw himself through another's eyes, eyes that watched him grow up. Eyes that envied him. Eyes that loved him and waited.
And at the end of the dream, he was standing in the same mirrored sanctum Selene once described.
Only this time, the other figure smiled and said:
"We could still be whole."
And Alpha woke up…
with a cut on his palm.