The morning light in Erehwon was sharp and golden, spilling across the horizon in a way that didn't just illuminate the world—it revealed it. Colors richer than anything in reality. Shadows that felt like memories. Wind that whispered secrets through the trees.
Ike still hadn't logged out.
He didn't want to.
[Dreamstate Stability: 82% - Mild Drift Detected]
He pushed the alert into the corner of his vision. It blinked, a slow metronome counting down something he didn't want to name.
Calyx led him to a different part of the Vale now—far from the Hollow Grove, toward the edges of what the other players still thought of as safe. There were fewer tutorials here. Fewer scripted events. More... noise beneath the surface.
Calyx didn't speak much, but when he did, it was always with weight.
"You think the Grove rattled you? Wait 'til you hear what's screaming beneath the field of masks."
"What's the field of masks?" Ike asked.
"A place where the war never ended."
CHAPTER FOUR: Shard of Self
They moved under cover of fog.
The titans had withdrawn. The field of masks fell still again, as if nothing had stirred at all. But something had—in Ike.
The mirror shard pulsed at his side, now fused with his inventory like a scar he couldn't unequip. It no longer appeared in his item list. But it was there, always humming, always cold.
[Dreamstate Stability: 76% - Monitoring...]
Syla walked ahead, blades sheathed but hands never far. She'd stopped asking who he was. Now she was just watching.
They followed a fading trail toward the mountain line that framed the eastern edge of Erehwon—an area the official map called The Grey Divide, though few players ever reached it.
"This world has seams," Syla muttered, brushing her fingers against the air. "Places where the dream-stitch comes loose. You've seen it now, haven't you?"
Ike nodded slowly. "I saw myself in there. But not me. A version that didn't make it out."
"That's the price," she said. "Every time we dive, we leave something behind. And sometimes… it crawls back."
They made camp in the ribs of a fallen stone colossus. Syla slept with her back to the wall. Ike didn't sleep.
The longer he stayed synced, the more the lines blurred. Not just between dreams and reality—but between past and present. Between pain and purpose.
He ran his fingers over the cracked shard. It pulsed again.
And suddenly, he wasn't in the camp anymore.
A memory.
His bedroom. Lights off. Screens glowing.
Ike—real Ike—sitting in silence. No game sound. Just the hum of power.
His mother's voice, distant:
"Just come out. Please. We'll eat together. You can pick the movie."
He never answered. He just sank deeper into himself. Into games. Into elsewhere.
Then a click.
And he was back. In Erehwon. Breathing hard.
[Memory Echo Encountered: Isolation Thread] [Synchronization Deepening... 74%]
Syla hadn't moved. But her eyes were open.
"You went under," she said.
He nodded.
"Did it hurt?"
A pause.
"No," Ike whispered. "It felt true."
At dawn, they reached the edge of the Grey Divide.
A place where mountains floated sideways. Where gravity bent inward. Where the world code itself seemed unsure.
Calyx was waiting.
Leaning against a floating stone, flipping a coin made of shadow.
"Took you long enough," he said. "The next part's locked. Needs all three."
"Three?" Ike asked.
A third figure stepped forward.
Not Syla. Not Calyx. Someone new.
Their face was familiar.
Too familiar.
"What the hell—"
The figure smiled with Ike's own mouth. Spoke with his voice.
"You left me behind."
[Anomaly Fusion Triggered: Shard of Self vs. Echo Remnant]
The sky cracked open.
And Ike drew his blade—not to kill, but to remember.
He wasn't done facing himself.
Not yet.
They reached it at sunset.
A shallow valley strewn with helmets, shattered banners, and rusted weapons. Half-buried in the earth were hundreds—maybe thousands—of old war masks. Their eyes stared skyward. Some cracked. Some burned. Some still wet with spectral tears.
The wind here didn't blow. It sighed.
[New Area Discovered: The Silent Reaping Grounds]
[Optional Quest Available: Echoes of the Dead Host]
But that wasn't what pulled Ike forward.
It was the girl.
She knelt at the center of the field, surrounded by ghostly forms—soldiers made of flickering light and static, locked in silent battle. She wore a full-face mask, sleek and jagged like obsidian, and her armor was etched with feathers and vines.
When she stood, the ghosts paused.
She looked directly at Ike.
"You're bleeding too loudly," she said.
Calyx stepped back. "Careful. This one's not an NPC."
Ike tensed. "You mean she's a player?"
"Worse," Calyx muttered. "She's Awake."
Her name was Syla. Or that's what the game called her.
She didn't remember her real name. Or claimed not to.
She'd been in Erehwon for weeks. Maybe months. Time blurred in deep sync.
"I stopped checking," she told Ike, while they sat around a ghostlight campfire that didn't burn.
Syla was sharp, precise. Like someone who had been shattered once and chose which pieces to glue back. She didn't trust Calyx. Barely tolerated him. But she studied Ike with interest.
"You saw the mirror tree?"
He nodded.
"And it let you leave?"
A beat.
He nodded again.
She laughed—not cruelly. Just... surprised.
"You're not supposed to come back from that."
They spent the night in the valley.
The ghosts never slept. The war replayed in silence over and over, looping on invisible triggers. Ike watched a spectral soldier kneel to cradle his own shadow before vanishing.
[Dreamstate Stability: 78% - Moderate Drift Detected]
[Subconscious Assimilation Level Rising]
When he blinked, he saw the broken mirror icon now burned into the edge of his vision. Not just part of the HUD—part of him.
Syla touched the shard he carried, gently.
"This thing?" she said. "It's not a quest item. It's a wound."
"Then why do I still have it?"
"Because part of you wants to bleed."
At dawn, the war changed.
The masks began to sing.
A low, harmonic drone, like monks trapped in time. The ground cracked, and from beneath the field, skeletal giants emerged—war titans of bone and sorrow, armor etched in grief.
[WORLD EVENT TRIGGERED: The Reaping Begins]
Syla was already on her feet, blades drawn.
Calyx vanished in a flicker.
Ike stood slowly, heart pounding.
He didn't know what he was doing. Didn't know how to fight titans. But something inside him moved—something that hadn't moved in years.
Get up.
Move.
You are not powerless here.
The shard in his hand flared.
And when he lifted it toward the first approaching titan, it answered.
Not with damage.
But with memory.
The titan staggered, clutching its helm.
And Ike remembered his father.
The silence between them. The way the man used to knock on Ike's bedroom door and hesitate before saying anything. The look in his eyes when he asked Ike to come to dinner. To live. To try.
The titan collapsed into dust.
Syla looked at him with something like awe. Or fear.
"What are you?"
Ike didn't answer.
Because for the first time in years...
He didn't feel like nobody.