Kaelen stepped through the door without telling the others.
He didn't have to.
Yreya watched him go with eyes that said she already knew. Bren clenched his jaw but didn't stop him. What could they do? This wasn't something you could fight with a blade or bind with a sigil.
This was Kaelen's alone.
The door led nowhere.
At first.
Just white — not light, not space. A weightless silence that pressed against the mind more than the body. It wasn't emptiness. It was too deliberate for that. More like… the breath before a scream.
Then the color bled in.
Shades of him.
A hundred Kaelens standing in a vast, circular room made of memory. Each one a version — younger, older, twisted, clean, burned, corrupted, hollow.
One stepped forward.
This one wore no cloak. No armor. His eyes were ash-grey. And he was smiling — not kindly.
"You think you've been resisting," he said. "You haven't."
Kaelen didn't respond.
"You think you've been choosing. But every choice was a shard. A cut. And you let each one in."
Kaelen breathed slowly. "Who are you?"
The figure spread his arms.
"I'm what you become if you stop fighting."
The floor cracked under Kaelen's boots — not from weight, but from reality bending.
"Ashra didn't die. She split. Part of her bled into the world. The rest? It waited. It grew roots. Found a vessel that could hold her without breaking."
"You're the vessel."
Kaelen moved forward. "If I'm the vessel, then why give me choices?"
"Because Ashra's not a tyrant," the echo said. "She's a wound. She opens. That's what she does."
Kaelen clenched his fists. "I'm not her."
The echo nodded. "Not yet."
Then everything snapped inward.
Kaelen fell through memories — his, Ashra's, others'.
Fire.
Wind.
A child torn from his family.
A girl who split the sky for love.
A world that begged for peace and was answered with ruin.
He saw Tavrin's last moments. Not fear — hope.
He saw Ashra begging the Veil not to take everything from her. Then surrendering anyway.
He saw a future where his body moved, but his mind wasn't there.
A god, hollow.
A boy, gone.
Then came stillness.
One moment.
One breath.
Kaelen stood in a field of glass again, like the vision before. But this time, he wasn't alone.
Ashra stood across from him, her face clearer, calmer.
"You're not ready," she said.
"I don't care," he answered.
She walked toward him, footsteps silent.
"You'll break."
Kaelen shook his head. "Then I'll break open."
Ashra reached out — not to hurt, not to take.
But to give.
One final shard.
No altar.
No fire.
Just him — and everything he chose to become.
He woke in the temple ruins.
Yreya and Bren beside him, worried. The storm gone. The Choir gone.
And under his skin, six shards pulsed in rhythm.
He didn't glow.
He didn't burn.
He breathed.
For the first time, the Veil didn't whisper.
It listened.