Kael moves through the in-between like a man walking through memory.
The world shifts with every step—buildings grow from the mist, then collapse into sand; voices whisper half-truths from shadows that look like people he once knew. Time here doesn't move forward. It coils, doubles back, and sometimes stands still.
But the ember in his hand keeps burning. It reacts to Lyra's presence—growing warmer, brighter, whenever he draws near a place where she's left her mark.
He finds her first echo in a field of glass flowers.
She sits on a stone, head bowed, her silver hair drifting like smoke.
"Lyra?"
The figure looks up—and it is her. But wrong.
Her eyes are empty, her voice brittle. "He never came. I waited. I waited until the sky broke. And then I forgot what I was waiting for."
Kael steps closer, slowly. "I'm here now."
She tilts her head. "No. You're just another lie this place made."
She stands. A blade of jagged memory forms in her hand.
Kael doesn't draw a weapon. "Then strike me. But if there's even a part of you left, listen—I found the ember. You sent it. You're not gone."
The echo hesitates.
And then… shatters like glass, becoming thousands of flickering sparks that spiral into the air and vanish.
Kael drops to one knee, panting.
One echo down.
Hundreds remain.
---
He keeps going.
Through a storm of weeping statues. A library where books scream as he touches them. A frozen battlefield where Lyra fights again and again, dying every time.
Each time, he reaches out.
Each time, he pulls a little more of her back.
The ember grows stronger. It hums now, guiding him like a heartbeat. He can feel her—the real her—somewhere ahead. But something else is waiting too. Something darker.
In the heart of the Mirror Wastes, he finds it.
A throne of shattered timelines.
And on it sits the False Lyra—the first shadow he saw when he entered this place, now full-grown. Radiant and hollow. Her body flickers between forms—Lyra as a child, a warrior, a woman aged with sorrow.
"I am what she could have been," the shadow says. "What she feared. What she still fears."
Kael grips the ember. "You're not her."
"I'm all the pain she buried. The doubts. The moments she almost gave up. You want to find her? You'll have to go through me."
Kael steps forward. "Then I'll walk through fire. Again. And again. As many times as it takes."
---
They clash.
Not with weapons—but with memories.
She forces him to relive the moment Lyra died, again and again. Twists it. Shows him versions where he didn't reach for her. Where he let go.
But he never wavers.
Because love, real love, doesn't shatter under doubt.
At last, the False Lyra crumbles—screaming not in rage, but relief.
And then he hears her.
The real Lyra.
> "Kael?"
He turns.
And there she stands—whole, radiant, flickering between fading light and form.
"I knew you'd find me," she whispers, stepping forward. "I just didn't know if I'd still be me when you did."
Kael reaches out. The ember leaps from his hand to hers.
And in that moment—
They ignite.
---