Varellen was changing.
Mimus could feel it in the air—the weight of it, pressing down on him like the quiet before a storm. He could no longer sense the world as he once had. The ground wasn't just earth now; it was memory. The sky wasn't just empty—it was waiting. Watching.
He hadn't realized how deeply the Tournament had shifted him until now, when the quiet of the new realm pressed in around him. There was a faint, eerie hum in the distance, and he knew it wasn't just the wind. It was the Echo—shifting, unsettled, like something inside him was beginning to awaken that had been sleeping for a long time.
He stood at the entrance of the rift, a doorway torn through the fabric of Varellen itself, a jagged opening where the walls of reality seemed to bleed into each other. The light here was thin and broken, fragmented as though it couldn't find a way to pass through the fractured landscape. Everything about this place was wrong.
He wasn't alone.
Caldrin stood beside him, but her eyes were distant, lost in something he couldn't read. The day before, she had led them through the Echo Market, had watched as Mimus passed through his first trial, but now—now there was something different in her, something she was holding back. She hadn't spoken much since the Warden had fallen, only answering his questions when absolutely necessary. She was pulling away.
And Mimus knew better than to ask why. There were some things that couldn't be asked.
"You know what lies beyond the door, don't you?" Mimus asked, his voice breaking the silence that had settled between them.
Caldrin didn't turn to him. Her eyes remained fixed on the rift, her expression unreadable.
"It's not a what," she said quietly. "It's a who."
He frowned. "Who?"
"You."
The words hung in the air between them, heavy and cold. Mimus blinked, taken aback. Caldrin turned to him, her eyes hard, like the first rain after a drought.
"You've been carrying the wrong things, Mimus. You've been carrying all your pain, all your guilt. All of your memories. But they don't belong to you. Not all of them. And the longer you carry them, the more they change you. They change what you're meant to be. What you could be."
"What are you trying to say?"
"That doorway leads to the last trial. The trial of self. The one that can't be escaped by strength or will. It's the door where you finally see who you are, without the lies you've been telling yourself."
Mimus took a step back. The last trial? Was this what he'd been waiting for? The one thing that would test him beyond his Eidara, beyond his memories? The one thing that would force him to face whatever was buried in the deepest part of himself?
"You're not ready," Caldrin said, as if reading his thoughts.
"I have to be," Mimus replied. "I need to understand what's inside that door. I can't move forward until I do."
Caldrin's eyes softened, but only just. She seemed to think for a moment, as though weighing something heavy.
"You won't be the same after you go through," she said quietly. "No one who enters ever comes back whole."
"I don't need to be whole."
There was a long pause.
And then, without another word, Caldrin stepped aside, her hand hovering near the hilt of her blade.
"Go ahead," she said. "But know this: you cannot turn back."
Mimus didn't hesitate. He knew there would be no turning back. There was no safety in hesitation. No sanctuary in retreat. He stepped forward.
The moment he crossed the threshold, something inside him shifted. Not physically, not in a way that could be seen—but emotionally. It was as if the air around him thickened, wrapped itself around him, squeezing in a way he couldn't describe. His chest tightened as though something inside him was being pressed, something old and buried.
He pushed on.
The rift closed behind him with a low, guttural sound. No light followed. No color. Just darkness.
Then—an explosion of light.
It wasn't the soft, ethereal glow he had become accustomed to in Varellen. No, this light was harsh—sharp—bright like the sun's first rays after a storm. Mimus shielded his eyes, blinking rapidly. When the light subsided, he saw what was in front of him.
A vast, circular space. Endless.
The walls were covered in words—etched into stone, carved into the very fabric of reality itself. He couldn't read them, not all of them. They were symbols and sounds he didn't understand, but the feeling was unmistakable: truth. The air was thick with it, and it was suffocating.
In the center of the room, there stood a figure. A tall man—no, a version of him—wrapped in tattered cloaks, his face hidden in shadow. But even in the dark, there was no mistaking the voice.
"Mimus," it said, "Do you remember me?"
Mimus's heart stilled.
"I should," he said, his voice coming out tight. "But I don't."
The figure stepped forward, and the cloak parted, revealing his face.
It was his own.
Not his reflection. Not some copy. But him. His eyes, his features, his every mark—except older. Worn. Torn by time.
A version of him that never left.
"You left me behind," the figure said softly. "You left everything behind."
"I had to."
The figure tilted its head, its face twisting into something between sorrow and anger. "No. You didn't. You chose to leave. You chose to forget what we were. Who we were. And now you think you can walk away from it all?"
Mimus took a step back. "I didn't forget. I had to survive."
The figure's eyes narrowed. "Survival. That's what you always say. But it's a lie. You're not surviving. You're dying, Mimus. Dying from the inside out, carrying all the pieces of yourself that you refuse to face."
Mimus shook his head, stepping further back. "I'm not like you."
The figure laughed—a sharp, cold sound that echoed in the void. "That's the problem. You're exactly like me."
The air crackled, and the world around them shimmered.
Mimus watched as the walls of the chamber began to shift, to warp. The carved symbols faded and were replaced by flashes of his past. Each one more painful than the last.
His mother's death. His fall in the fire. The screams of those he had failed.
And at the center of it all—the man. The one he had left behind.
"What do you want from me?" Mimus asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
"To remember," the figure said softly. "To accept the truth. The truth of who we were—and who we still are."
The ground trembled beneath Mimus's feet.
Suddenly, everything was too much. The weight of the past, the weight of the Echo—it all pressed down on him at once. He fell to his knees, gasping.
"You must remember," the figure repeated. "The truth will set you free."
Mimus closed his eyes, the memories flooding him all at once. His failures. His choices. His guilt. He could feel the fragments of his soul breaking, like cracks running through glass.
And then—he let go.
The memories that had haunted him, that had defined him, shattered. Like dust. Like ash.
He was free.
For the first time, the Echo quieted.
He opened his eyes.
The figure was gone.
And he was alone.
But he was not broken.
Mimus stood.
The doorway ahead opened.
And he stepped through.
He was no longer just Mimus.
He was whole.