As they stood there surrounded by pulsing blue and etched stone...the hallway suddenly plunged into total darkness.
Eva gasped. "What's happening? Jian?"
"I...I don't know, Eva," Jian replied, his voice tense, nearly swallowed by the black.
Then—
CRACK.
A blinding flash split the air, jagged and unnatural lightning, but it didn't fade. It froze, suspended mid-burst, its tendrils crawling across the wall before them. The stone hissed and peeled away, revealing a door.
Not just any door.
The same door.
The one Mael had touched in Eva's house, the one that shouldn't have been there, glowing faintly with that same cold, silver-blue light.
Eva's breath caught as she stepped closer, her silhouette outlined against the strange glow. Jian stood beside her, both their shadows stretching impossibly long in the dark, pierced only by the radiance spilling from the threshold.
"...Should we go through it?" Eva asked, her voice uncertain, small against the hum that now thrummed through the stone.
Jian stared at the door, then at her. His eyes were hard, resolute. "There's no other way."
No sound came from beyond it. No wind. No pulse.Just light.
Together, without another word, they stepped forward, and the instant they crossed the threshold, the door vanished behind them. Like it had never been there at all.
And then—
The lights came back.
But it wasn't the hallway anymore.
They stood somewhere else entirely.
Jian blinked, adjusting to the new space. His breath caught.
The ground beneath them was smooth..mirror-like stone, veined with glowing lines. And ahead of him... the background looked familiar. Terribly familiar.
A tall arch. A flickering light overhead. A faint impression of someone who had once stood there.
"Elara…" he whispered, eyes widening.
"Eva? What the hell is this?"
But there was no answer.
He turned, startled looked to his right where Eva had just been standing beside him.
She was gone.
His heart dropped.
"Eva?"
Silence.
He spun in place, scanning the space, pulse thundering.
"Eva?!" he called, louder this time, his voice echoing unnaturally.
till no reply.
He stumbled forward a few steps, eyes darting left and right. The room around him pulsed faintly, like it was breathing. Shadows twisted at the edges of his vision, bending just out of reach.
"Eva! Where are you?!"
His voice cracked now, panic blooming in his chest.
Only the silence answered.
But just as he was about to call out again, the mirror-like floor rippled beneath his feet.
And then—
A faint voice.Far away. Echoing like it was underwater.
"...Jian…"
His head snapped up.
" Eva? "
But it was hard to tell, because it didn't sound like she was in the same place at all.
Like she was calling from behind something.
Or worse…
Below.
Jian stood frozen, the echo of Eva's voice already fading.
His breaths came sharp, shallow.
Then he looked down at his hands.
And everything stopped.
His hands… weren't wrong exactly.
They looked like his. The same scars, the same faint ink smear from earlier.
But they felt—off.
Detached. Like he was piloting them from a distance.
He flexed his fingers. The motion was sluggish, almost… delayed.
A cold whisper threaded through his thoughts:
This isn't my body.
But it was.
It was him.
And yet..it wasn't.
A rising chill climbed his spine, blooming out across his chest.
His heart was beating, but it didn't feel like it belonged to him anymore.
He pressed his palm to his chest.
Thump. Thump.
Still there. But hollow. Like he was listening to someone else's heartbeat from inside a shell.
His knees nearly buckled.
"Eva…" he murmured, his voice thin.
He reached up and touched his face.
That felt wrong too.
Like wearing a mask made from his own skin.
He dropped to his knees, the floor cold and slick beneath him.
Something was changing. Not just around him, but within him.
And in the echoing silence of that place, he heard a sound that chilled him more than anything else.
A voice..his own voice...whispering behind him.
But he hadn't spoken.
"…You weren't supposed to come here."
-----------------
Elsewhere…
Eva stirred on the cold, uneven ground, breath shallow as she blinked into a blue-tinged darkness.
She sat up slowly, disoriented.
"Jian…?" she called, voice hoarse.
No answer.
Only the deep, humming silence pressing in around her.
She tried to steady herself, but something felt wrong.
Her balance. Her breath. Her body.
She looked down, her hands...Not small, Not childish.
Her fingers were long, graceful, dusted with faint marks like old memories carved into skin. She turned them over, slowly, her chest tightening.
They moved when she moved, but they didn't feel like the hands she'd always known.
They felt… real. But new.
She touched her arms. Stronger. Leaner. Not a child's limbs.
Her breath quickened. She stood, carefully.
Then...she looked down at her legs. Taller. Shapelier. Her frame was different. Her center of gravity had shifted.
She closed her eyes, hands trembling.
When she opened them again, nothing had changed.
She brought a hand to her face, sharper cheekbones. A more defined jaw. Lips the same, but not quite.
"…Impossible," she whispered."It happened again."
She wasn't in the body of a child anymore.
She was in her real body.
Older, Nineteen.
The age she'd once been… before the Rift.
A deep, cold awareness filled her chest.
Then...she felt it.
A presence.
To her left.
She turned.
A mirror stood there.
Its surface shimmered like breath across frozen glass.
Eva stepped toward it, afraid to look, but more afraid not to.
When she saw her reflection..Her breath caught in her throat.
It was her.
The real her.
Nineteen years old. Fierce eyes, filled with quiet grief and knowing. A subtle scar beneath her chin she hadn't seen in years. Her hair was longer. Her posture stronger.
She reached toward the glass.
The reflection mimicked her, but with the slightest delay. Just enough to feel… off.
Like it was watching her.
"…This is me," she whispered, voice trembling.
Then—
The reflection smiled.
But Eva did not.
She stepped back instinctively.
A whisper curled out from the mirror, low, ancient, and layered with voices:
"She remembers now. The veil thins.".
Eva stood still.
The air was dense around her, electric with memory.
And something in this place...was familiar.
Too familiar.
Then it hit her.
Not like a thought.
Like a flood.
Years ago… or what felt like years…
A room.
White walls that pulsed softly, alive with a mechanical heartbeat.
Tables of steel. Lights too bright. Voices behind glass.
Eva not a child. A woman. Nineteen.
Wiry. Sharp. Furious.
Strapped to a table.
"Subject 04," they called her.
As if her name had never mattered.
That first time...the experiment, they said it would just be "a temporal sync."
But it was a lie.
They wanted compliance. Obedience. Reduction.
Control.
They fractured her form.
Split her essence across time.
Not killed.
Rewritten.
When she woke, small hands, high voice, childlike face, she screamed until her throat bled.
She remembered everything.
But the creater, the being that orchestrated it all.he stood at the edge of her bed and said:
"You'll do better work this way. Innocence sells. Children aren't questioned. And broken minds follow orders."
And she did.
For years.
Her mind, grown. Her body, not.
Used as a tool. A spy. A test subject.
Sent into veiled zones, collapsed realms, memory mines.
Each mission erased something else.
But this place...this hallway...was the first.
This was where she lost herself.
Where the real Eva had been buried.
And now, as she stood here again, she whispered:
"He brought me back to the beginning…"
Her legs shook.
But her heart,
...her real, beating, adult heart was thudding again.
Because the veil was thinning.
She was returning.
A low hum grew louder.
She reached toward the wall, toward the faint imprint of a symbol, three curved lines circling a hollow center.
The mark of the Creator.
And just then—
A flicker.
In the corner of her vision..
Another version of herself. But not just any version.
Her.
But inside Vook's body
Eyes hollow. Mouth stitched shut. Movements unnatural, as if her soul had been stretched too thin across someone else's shape. A shadow of her trapped in a form that wasn't meant for her—watching. Silent. Haunted.
She wasn't speaking, but her eyes were screaming , Desperate to warn her. Pleading.
Eva turned fully, but the figure was already gone.
Only her own reflection remained in the mirror.
And yet, the chill lingered. That version hadn't just been a memory.
It was a fragment A warning.
Eva shivered and sank to the floor, her legs no longer strong enough to hold her upright. The cold from the ground seeped into her bones, but it wasn't what made her tremble.
She wrapped her arms tightly around herself, as if trying to keep from unraveling. Her breaths came in short, shallow bursts. Her eyes wide, unblinking. stared at the space where the shadow had been.
She had seen herself trapped in Vook's body, distorted, silent, erased, and something deep inside her cracked.
A part she had kept buried for years.
Her chest rose and fell, but her voice wouldn't come. Only the sound of her heartbeat thudding like a warning drum in her ears.
I was in there… I was that.
She pulled her knees tighter to her chest, nails digging into her sleeves, rocking gently.
To be continue...