The Void had quieted, but it was not peace.
Caelum wandered through a shifting expanse of obsidian plains and fractured constellations—each star a frozen heartbeat, each breath a century of silence. His body bore the weight of divine battle: fingers scorched by light, veins running with broken memory. Yet his steps were steady. The Hollow Bloom trembled behind him like a flower refusing to close.
At the end of this long dusk lay something new—a structure unlike the ancient relics of the Void. A palace, not built but remembered. Tall, angular, formed of glass and bone, wrapped in shifting runes. The Palace of the Waiting Mirrors. A myth, even in the Void.
He approached the towering doors, and they opened soundlessly.
Inside were no thrones, no gods. Only mirrors. Thousands of them, stacked like archives, endless reflections waiting for the one soul who would dare look.
He stepped inside.
The silence deepened. Not oppressive—but listening.
Each mirror shimmered with potential, but one at the center hummed with a pull he couldn't deny. It was older than the Hollow Bloom, older than sorrow. As he stood before it, the mirror didn't reflect his body—but a version of him.
Caelum blinked.
The man in the mirror had no bandage. His eyes were open, silver and stormlit. His robes were stained with ash, and behind him stood no field of stars—but a ruined world. Earth. Burned, cracked, and hollowed.
"Who are you?" Caelum whispered.
The figure answered in perfect voice: "I am what you become if you do not return."
A cold wind swept through the chamber. The mirrors rippled. Reflections of Earth, of Reya, of gods fallen and rising again. Time was bleeding into the Hollow Bloom.
The mirror self raised a hand, and the chamber darkened. The battle began.
Blades forged from future memory clashed with swords made of grief. Caelum danced through fractured time, parrying regrets, dodging might-have-beens. Each strike the mirror self made echoed with voices: cries of the dead, warnings of the living.
But Caelum didn't fight to win.
He fought to understand.
Mid-duel, he shouted, "What am I missing?"
The mirror self faltered, eyes dimming. A voice whispered from nowhere—and everywhere:
"You are still walking forward, but the path behind remains unlit."
A surge of images overtook him—memories he'd sealed too tightly. The old man beneath the burning tree. A silver cube inside a shattered ruin. A name: Flux Hypercube.
It passed like lightning, and then it was gone.
Caelum dropped his blade. The mirror self paused.
"I don't want to forget anymore," he said.
The mirror shattered, light flooding the chamber.
A thousand mirrors cracked in response, revealing hidden passageways, echoing screams and lullabies. Caelum stepped forward, alone, bleeding magic and memory, yet somehow lighter.
From behind the wall of broken glass, a new horizon unveiled itself: a vast cathedral of stars, and a throne made of nothing.
He stepped through.
And behind him, in the shadows, something stirred. Watching.
Waiting.