The world reassembled itself wrong.
The group staggered through the portal — or maybe it had been a crack, a rip — and landed, one by one, on a narrow stone causeway.
Above them: darkness.Below them: darkness.Around them: a city stitched from fragments of other cities — Valeight's ruins, Ashreign's statues, towers from places none of them recognized, strung together like a child's broken toy.
The city pulsed faintly, as if breathing.
And not a single door in sight.
Only windows.Only walls.Only endless, looping paths.
"We're not in Ashreign anymore," Mirae said, voice low.
Bastion kicked a piece of rubble. It bounced — once, twice — then floated upward, swallowed by the dark.
"No," Elior murmured. "We're somewhere worse."
Ilyan crouched beside the edge, inspecting the road with a detached kind of curiosity, like a tourist cataloging a mistake.
Cassiel scanned the horizon.There were no lights.No movement.
Just a thousand empty streets, each leading nowhere.
"Stay together," he said.
And they moved.
It didn't take long to realize the city was wrong in more ways than one.
Every street they walked twisted back onto itself.Every alley was a dead end.Every tower leaned at impossible angles.
They tried marking the walls — Mirae cut a jagged line with her dagger — but after three steps, the mark was gone, erased like a forgotten dream.
Even the air seemed... tired.
Like the city didn't just trap them.It was forgetting them.
Bit by bit.
Bastion was the first to notice.
"What's my brother's name?" he blurted suddenly.
The group froze.
Silence.
Mirae frowned. "You don't have a brother."
"I..." Bastion's voice broke. "I do."
Cassiel clenched his fists. His memories still felt intact — but that didn't mean they would stay that way.
They picked up the pace.
Hours — or minutes — or days later, they found the fountain.
A dry, cracked thing in the center of an open plaza, its statue worn faceless by time.
Words had been carved into its base, over and over, layer upon layer, until they formed an incoherent spiral:
"TO STAY IS TO FADE. TO MOVE IS TO BECOME."
No one needed to say it out loud: they had to keep moving. Always moving. If they stopped...
They would vanish.
Not die.Not sleep.
Just... be forgotten.
Lost in the breathing stone.
Mirae tied a thread around each of their wrists — bright red, thin but unbreakable. A trick she'd learned long ago, from a place she no longer remembered but still trusted.
Cassiel took the lead again, silent.
Ilyan walked just behind him, oddly calm.As if the city's strange rules amused him.
Elior whispered prayers under his breath.
Bastion muttered old jokes — sometimes making himself laugh, sometimes not.
Mirae just watched.
Always watching.
They crossed bridges that led to blank walls.They passed windows that showed distorted versions of themselves — older, younger, broken.
They heard voices calling from alleyways — familiar voices, impossible voices.
Bastion nearly broke away once, when he heard a child screaming.Cassiel yanked him back.
"It's not real," he said.
But the way Bastion stared over his shoulder after... he wasn't so sure.
At some point — when they were too tired to be afraid — the city changed again.
Lights appeared.
Faint, flickering.Not torches. Not lamps.
Eyes.
The walls blinked.
Cassiel drew his sword without thinking. Mirae readied her daggers. Elior gripped his amulet so tightly his knuckles turned white.
Only Ilyan looked mildly curious.
The walls shifted, and figures peeled themselves free.
Not human.Not creature.
Something in between.
They were made of scraps — rags and bones and broken memories, stitched into mockeries of people.
Their mouths were wide and grinning, but wrong, always wrong.
They didn't speak.
They sang.
Low, wordless melodies that wormed their way into the group's minds, dragging up every shame, every fear, every longing.
Cassiel nearly dropped his sword when he saw his sister standing among them — the one he hadn't saved, the one he had buried himself under duty and silence.
Mirae flinched at a vision of a child calling her monster.
Elior fell to his knees when he saw the face of his first and greatest sin.
Bastion screamed.
Only Ilyan stayed standing, watching the song-creatures with a kind of detached sorrow.
And then —he smiled.
Not warmly.Not cruelly.
But knowingly.
The song faltered.
The creatures stumbled.
Ilyan took a single step forward — and the creatures recoiled, screeching soundlessly, dissolving into mist.
Cassiel pushed himself to his feet, breathing hard.
"What the hell are you?" he rasped, staring at Ilyan.
Ilyan turned, that smile still haunting his face.
"Nobody important," he said.
And for a moment — just a moment — he looked unbearably sad.
They moved faster after that.
The city wasn't trying to trap them anymore.
It was waiting.
For what, none of them knew.
But it made the hairs on the back of Cassiel's neck stand up.
The final challenge came without warning.
A massive wall of glass rose up before them — seamless, clear, reflecting the stars that no longer hung above.
In the reflection, they weren't themselves.
Cassiel saw a king in chains.
Mirae saw a goddess broken.
Elior saw a martyr weeping blood.
Bastion saw a general marching alone.
Ilyan saw... nothing.
An empty space where he should have been.
The wall shivered.
And spoke.
Not in words, but in memory.
"Abandon your burdens," it whispered.
"Shed who you are."
Cassiel stepped forward.
"No," he said simply.
Mirae threw her dagger at the glass — it bounced off, harmless.
Elior and Bastion followed, fists raised, shouting their defiance.
Ilyan stood last.
He touched the glass, lightly.
It rippled beneath his fingers, and for a second, the city seemed to howl.
Then —with a crack like a splitting mountain —the wall shattered.
And they fell.
Not down.
Forward.
Into light.
Into something else.
Into a city that was not Ashreign, not Valeight, not any place they'd known.
A city waiting.
They hit the ground hard.
Dirt. Real, solid dirt.
Sky above — gray, heavy with rain.
A proper road ahead — winding, real.
And standing at the end of it:
An old man in a tattered coat.
Eyes black as ink.Smile like a wound.
The hidden boss.The heart of the next trial.
Waiting.
Cassiel staggered upright, sword still in hand.
Mirae cursed under her breath.
Elior prayed.Bastion laughed — wild, exhausted.
And Ilyan...
Ilyan simply stared.
As if he recognized the figure.As if he'd been expecting him.
"Welcome," the man said, voice like rusted iron.
"To the beginning of the end."