Calla's P.O.V.
The mirror hadn't left my thoughts.
Even after Rowen vanished—after the sanctum swallowed its glow and the lake retreated into morning silence—I could still feel its pull. Not the literal kind, not some magical string yanking me back. No, it was quieter than that. A thought echoing just beneath my own. A weight behind the eyes.
The kind of gravity that makes you question every choice you've ever made.
By the time I reached the house, the sun had finished rising, burning off the fog in waves. The morning felt too bright for everything I now carried. I kept glancing at the trees, half-expecting another message carved in bark or etched across the sky. But nothing followed me. Not even the Engine's pulse.
For now.
Mom stood in the kitchen, her hands wrapped around a chipped mug I hadn't seen in years. It was Dad's—the one with faded constellation lines and the little crack down the side. She didn't look at me right away. But I could tell she'd been waiting.
"I know where your father's final logbook is," she said.
No preamble. Just truth, raw and immediate.
"I was trying to protect you."
I let the words land. Let them echo between us. I didn't feel angry, which surprised me. Just… older.
"I don't need protection anymore," I said softly.
She looked up. Her face didn't crumple. It didn't even shift. But something behind her eyes settled, like a storm deciding to rest.
"I know," she said.
---
The logbook was hidden beneath the floorboards in the attic.
Not in a digital vault. Not under some encrypted code. Just tucked into a rusted tin box beside a stack of brittle photographs. Some of them I'd never seen before—Dad with Lila as a toddler, both of them laughing in the lab. One of Ash, somehow even younger, hair wild, eyes burning with a kind of belief I hadn't seen since.
But the logbook was different. It hummed the way the iris device did when it was near the Engine. Subtle. Magnetic. My fingertips tingled before I even touched it.
The leather cover was cracked. Pages were swollen with age and handling. But inside?
Clarity.
Not the answers I expected.
Just… **intentions**.
> *March 3rd*
> The Engine rejected the third tether. Neural strain too high. Memory blending increasing with each failed iteration. Lila is slipping. She won't admit it, but she forgets more each day.
> *March 8th*
> Calla is not a tether. She's… something else. I didn't design her to interface directly with the Engine. I designed her to resist it. But now, I wonder—was resistance ever a possibility?
> *March 10th*
> I don't know if she'll hate me. Maybe she should. But if she ever finds this, I want her to understand: She is not my mistake. She is my **correction**.
I closed the book and sat in the dust.
Correction.
Not a daughter. Not a tether. A second draft of something the world didn't ask for.
I wasn't sure if I wanted to scream or laugh.
Instead, I pocketed the journal and left the attic behind.
---
Ash was waiting by the observatory ruins. He didn't ask how I knew to find him there. He just looked at me, then at the pack I carried slung over one shoulder.
"You saw her," he said.
"Rowen," I nodded.
"You believe her?"
I shrugged. "I believe she doesn't have anything left to lose. That makes people honest."
Ash didn't answer right away. His hands flexed at his sides, like he was resisting the urge to pace.
"I used to think the Engine was the future," he finally said. "A way to fix the fractures, to rebuild the pieces that time tried to erase. But it doesn't fix. It copies. It reflects. And sometimes… it *consumes.*"
He looked at me then, really looked.
"You've felt it, haven't you?"
I nodded. "It's in me. Sleeping. Waiting. Like it recognizes me as part of itself."
His jaw tightened. "That's why you can't go back. Not fully. Not to normal."
"Define normal."
He huffed a quiet laugh. "Touché."
I reached into my pack and pulled out the iris device. It pulsed white-hot again, just like the night of the dream. Its glow wasn't warm or cold—it was aware.
Ash took a step back, his eyes narrowing.
"It knows," he whispered. "It's preparing."
"For what?"
He didn't answer.
Didn't need to.
---
The fractures came faster that week.
Jason forgot his mother's name mid-sentence. Mrs. Talbot found a drawer full of birthday cards addressed to children she never had. Entire street corners shifted positions overnight. Memories bled. Timelines blurred.
The town didn't panic, not fully. It was more like… denial. A dream you didn't want to wake from, even when you knew something was wrong.
The Engine was feeding.
Rowen had said it offered illusion. And people were choosing it—quietly, instinctively. The world was voting with their wants, not their logic.
It wouldn't be long before the Engine stopped asking for permission.
So we returned to the sanctum.
Ash, Jason, Lila (or what was left of her), and me.
The bramble parted easier this time. The staircase lit itself. And the mirror?
It was waiting.
Rowen wasn't there.
But her presence was.
The air still bent, slightly, as if her weight still pressed against reality.
The mirror shimmered.
"Are we ready for this?" Jason asked quietly.
"No," I said. "But we're here."
Lila touched the edge of the mirror and winced.
"It's showing me something," she whispered.
"What?"
She didn't answer.
Ash stepped forward, examining the glyphs lining the stone.
"These aren't just symbols. They're code. Organic memory compressed into pattern—this whole sanctum is an echo chamber. It reflects what the Engine sees… and what it *predicts.*"
Jason paled. "So it knows what we're going to do?"
"No," I said, stepping up to the mirror. "It knows what we *might* do."
And then I saw it again.
The versions.
—Calla the alone.
—Calla the liar.
—Calla the controller.
—Calla the erased.
A dozen choices, all branching, all possible.
But now, one of them flickered brighter than the rest.
A version of me standing at the heart of the Engine—no longer resisting. No longer steering.
*Becoming* it.
I stumbled back.
Ash caught me.
"What did it show you?"
I shook my head. "Not what. *Who.*"
---
That night, I didn't sleep.
I walked instead—past the hollowed observatory, past the stone circle, into the woods beyond Mirror Lake. The iris burned against my palm.
And then the voice returned.
Not in words.
In rhythm.
The *pulse*.
Faster now. Louder. The Engine wasn't sleeping anymore.
It was waking.
And it was calling me.
---
Rowen met me at the lake again.
Or maybe it was a dream. I couldn't tell anymore.
"Do you understand now?" she asked.
"I think so."
"And what will you choose?"
I hesitated. "What happens if I choose wrong?"
Rowen's expression didn't change.
"There is no wrong. Only reflection."
"That's not comforting."
"It's not supposed to be."
The stars blinked overhead. One fell—then reversed, floating back into the sky.
Time was fracturing again.
"The Engine will open fully soon," Rowen said. "It will ask you to shape what comes next. A world of truth. Or a world of want. But you must not answer it from fear. Or from grief. Or even love."
"Then from what?"
She looked at me—truly looked.
"From choice."
And then she faded again.
This time, I didn't feel alone.
---
The Engine woke two nights later.
Not with a scream—but with a *sigh*.
A ripple in the air that shook glass, rewound clocks, and stilled birds mid-flight.
And at its center, the chamber beneath the observatory cracked open.
The others met me at the edge.
Ash handed me a small silver key.
"What is it?" I asked.
"A safeguard," he said. "Or a suicide switch. Depends on how you use it."
Jason grinned without mirth. "No pressure."
Lila simply stepped forward and hugged me.
"Make sure you come back," she whispered.
I didn't promise.
I couldn't.
---
The chamber was alive.
Pulsing walls. Light that didn't cast shadows. Machinery breathing like lungs.
And the Engine—towering, iris-shaped, endless layers of spinning light and mirrored glass—opened itself like a blooming flower.
The pulse matched my heartbeat.
Or maybe my heartbeat matched *it*.
The iris device in my hand cracked open, fragments floating into the air, fusing with the Engine's core.
And then it spoke.
Not with words.
But with every version of me, speaking at once.
> "Calla. Choose."
---
I closed my eyes
.
The mirror flashed behind my eyelids.
I saw:
—The world at peace, but false.
—The world in chaos, but true.
—My father's voice, whispering apologies he never gave.
—A younger me, watching storms, wondering where he went.
> *You are not the wish that made you.*
Rowen's words.
> *You are what you choose to become.*
I breathed.
Stepped forward.
And I chose.
Not illusion.
Not destruction.
I chose **understanding**.
---
The light folded inward. The pulse softened. The mirrors stilled.
And the Engine—vast, infinite, alive—**listened**.
It did not erase.
It did not rewrite.
It began to remember.
And in doing so…
So did I.