Kael couldn't tell if he was awake anymore.
The world around him—the room, the faces, even his own body—felt like a tangled mess of fractured glass. His vision blurred, reality splintered into pieces, and he could feel himself slipping through cracks that didn't make sense. The Pulse inside him was louder, more insistent, gnawing at his mind.
Everything was shifting. His thoughts. The world. Aria's voice…
"Kael..."
He turned.
She was there—standing at the edge of the broken world. Her figure flickered in and out of focus like a shaky ghost. She reached for him, but her hand passed through his chest, through his body—like he wasn't even real.
Like he was nothing.
He reached for her, his fingers trembling.
"Aria!" he screamed, but his voice wasn't his own. It was someone else's. The boy who had been erased.
The boy who loved her.
---
The Pulse shot through him again, and his body split in two.
One Kael collapsed to the ground in agony, the other standing, watching him with those dark, hollow eyes—the boy whose soul had been shoved into him.
"Why... won't you just let me go?" Kael whispered, his voice cracking.
The other Kael smiled. "You can never escape me. You can never escape who you were."
---
The walls cracked. The air bent.
Kael's room was gone. He wasn't in a room anymore.
He was in the void, drifting.
The ground beneath him was shifting, like he was falling through an endless tunnel. The walls around him melted away, replaced by fractured reflections of himself—his soul splintered, torn into pieces he couldn't even understand.
"Who are you?" he shouted at the shadows.
"Who am I?!"
The Pulse rippled through his body, and suddenly, everything stopped.
Everything went silent.
Except for one voice.
"She remembers me…"
Kael whipped around. It was Aria's voice—but distorted, like it was coming from deep within the ground.
And then, the world shifted again.
He was back at the school, the hallway stretching impossibly long. But this time, the world was dead. The air was thick with decay. The lights flickered, their shadows dancing like twisted monsters around him.
And there, standing at the end of the hallway…
Was Aria.
But she wasn't real.
Her face was burned, distorted, like it had been erased. Her eyes were dark, empty—black voids that sucked in all the light around her.
Kael's heart skipped.
---
"You never escaped me, Kael…"
The voice wasn't hers. It was the other Kael's.
Suddenly, the hallway ripped apart, and the walls closed in on Kael. He was trapped. The Pulse was louder than ever. It twisted around his chest, squeezing until it was unbearable.
Kael screamed.
But then the world stopped again.
---
The walls shattered, and for a moment, Kael could see the sky. A sky full of broken clocks, all ticking backwards. The universe was folding in on itself. Time didn't exist here anymore. Memories didn't exist. There was only pain.
And Aria.
Her distorted, burned face stared at him from the sky.
"I never meant for this to happen, Kael… You were never supposed to remember."
---
Everything froze.
The Pulse faded.
And then, Kael's body was pulled into the darkness.
---
He was back in his room.
But it wasn't his room anymore. His bed was gone. His belongings were gone. The walls were gone. There was only a single mirror, standing in the middle of the room.
Kael approached it. His reflection wasn't his own. It was the other Kael—the boy who had been erased. The boy who wasn't supposed to exist.
He looked into his eyes. His face was different. He was someone else.
And then, the mirror cracked.
---
Kael screamed.
And the world shattered.