The door closed behind them with a sound like the exhalation of a god—final and indifferent. The air inside the Nexus Tower was colder than the Hollow World outside, heavy with dust that smelled of centuries and regret. The walls were smooth, black, and pulsed faintly with blue veins—like something organic slumbered beneath the stone.
Mary adjusted the Codex against her back as she took the first step up the wide spiral staircase. It wound around the interior of the tower with no handrails and no visible supports, as if levitating from sheer will. Lela followed beside her, sword drawn, and Loosie brought up the rear, her fingers twitching over the trigger of her pistol.
"This place isn't built for mortals," Loosie muttered, squinting at the swirling architecture above. "Everything's too tall. Too quiet."
"It was built for what came before mortals," Mary said. "This tower wasn't just a structure. It was a memory engine."
Lela frowned. "A what now?"
"It collects thought—experience, intention, regret. Every step we take upward will force us through someone else's life. Someone who died to birth the Herald."
As if to prove her point, the first landing they reached shimmered and vanished beneath their feet.
Suddenly, they stood in a memory.
They were no longer inside the tower. Around them stretched a sunlit courtyard lined with marble columns and statues with no faces. Children laughed in the distance. A breeze ruffled the gold leaves of alien trees. At the center stood a woman in crimson robes, her hands raised toward a floating orb of silver fire.
Then everything stopped.
The orb cracked open. Darkness poured from it like blood. The woman screamed—and the world dissolved in an explosion of black ash.
Mary blinked. They were back on the staircase.
"Okay," Loosie said, panting. "What the actual hell was that?"
"First summoner," Mary said softly. "Her name was Ilareth. She thought she was creating a sun for the Hollow World. Instead, she created a door."
As they climbed, more memories overtook them.
—A masked man on a throne of bones shouting at an army made of mirrors.
—A child with no eyes whispering secrets into a pool of blood.
—A council of nine sacrificing their reflections to a crystal that pulsed like a heart.
—And a voice, always a voice: "You are the reflection. You are the lock. You are the key."
Each vision burned across their senses and left behind echoes—flickers at the edges of their vision, whispers that crawled up their spines. Lela's hand trembled once, just once, before she crushed the fear down with a warrior's snarl.
"How many floors?" she asked, voice ragged.
"Nine," Mary answered. "We've reached the sixth."
They paused on the seventh floor landing. Here, the vision didn't come to them—it waited.
At the center of the chamber stood a man dressed in black and gold armor, his back to them. He stood before a pool of mercury, staring into it like a mirror. Shadows pooled around his feet, writhing with serpentine grace. The moment Mary stepped forward, the man spoke.
"I thought you'd come, eventually."
His voice was smooth, cultured—achingly familiar.
He turned.
Mary froze.
It was him.
The Herald.
Or rather, what the Herald had been.
The man before her had once been human. His face was angular, his eyes silver, his mouth marked by a scar that Mary remembered from dreams not her own. He smiled, and the tower groaned.
"This is a preserved echo," Mary whispered to Lela and Loosie. "A memory of his first life."
The Herald stepped forward, one hand extended.
"You've carried my name far, little Mary. Farther than I ever did. But do you understand what it means?"
"I understand enough," she said coldly. "You sacrificed your humanity to become a god."
"I refined it," he said. "I burned away the weak parts. Love. Doubt. Pain. You're still carrying all of it."
He looked past her at Lela and Loosie.
"They'll die. All of them. Because you're too afraid to do what I did."
Mary stepped closer. "And what was that?"
"I let go," he whispered. "Of the world. Of guilt. Of time."
Mary didn't flinch. "Then why are you still clinging to this echo?"
The Herald's smile faded.
"Because… part of me remembers what it was like to want."
He raised a hand—and the pool erupted into flame. The room shook. The echo's shadows coalesced into wings, horns, and claws, and it attacked.
The battle was unlike any they'd faced. The echo was not bound by physics. It bled light and struck with thoughts. Lela deflected a blow that should've shattered stone. Loosie fired bullets inscribed with anti-sigil runes, disrupting the Herald's memory briefly.
Mary stood her ground, calling on the Codex.
"I name you: Vaerel of the Ninth Circle. Memory of the Flame That Betrayed," she said, voice echoing with power not entirely her own. "You are no longer needed."
The Codex flared, and the echo screamed—not in pain, but in rage at being unwritten.
Mary walked through the fire, pressed her hand to the echo's heart—and pulled.
The light collapsed inward. The echo dissolved like ink in water.
The room returned to silence.
They didn't speak for a while as they resumed the climb. On the ninth and final landing, the stairs ended at a crystal door marked with a single glyph: Truth.
Mary hesitated. She looked at Lela and Loosie.
"This is it. The Mirror is beyond."
Lela wiped blood from her cheek. "We've come this far."
Loosie nodded. "Let's end this."
Mary reached for the handle—and the door opened on its own.
Inside was a vast, circular chamber, its walls covered in ancient glass. At its center stood a single mirror—tall, black, cracked down the center.
The Mirror of Unmaking.
It did not reflect them.
It reflected what waited.
And it was waking.