The world had barely solidified beneath their feet when Hana felt her knees weaken.
They were back.
The sky stretched above them blue and endless, dotted with clouds like brushstrokes of freedom. A breeze stirred her hair. They stood on the rooftop of an abandoned observatory, a place she didn't recognize. Still, it felt… real. Tangible. Present.
But Lucien didn't move.
He stood at the edge, staring into the horizon, eyes locked onto a point only he could see. The wind tugged at his coat, and his hand was still glowing faintly from absorbing the First his forgotten fragment. His other hand clenched involuntarily, as if suppressing a tremor.
"Lucien," Hana whispered, stepping closer. "You did the right thing."
He didn't answer right away.
Then he turned to her. "There was someone else in the rift. Watching us."
Hana froze. "You saw him too."
Lucien nodded. "He had my face."
Flashback – The Blood City, Year 1872
In one of Lucien's previous lives, he had lived in the city of Rahvain, known to few as the Blood City.
He had been a warlord in that cycle. Not the kind of man who fell in love. Not someone soft enough to hold a future in his arms. That Lucien had built his empire on betrayal and had burned his name into the pages of time.
But even monsters have shadows.
He had encountered someone, then a man dressed in identical armor, with his face, voice, and movements. A mirror. Not a twin. A reflection.
That reflection had only said one thing before vanishing:
"One of us was never supposed to exist."
Lucien never saw him again.
Until now.
Present – Seoul, Rooftop Observatory
"I thought I imagined him," Lucien murmured. "Back then. In Rahvain. But he's real. He's been watching every timeline, waiting."
"For what?" Hana asked.
Lucien looked at her with grim certainty. "For us to become whole again."
Hana crossed her arms, stepping to the railing. "You think he's another version of you?"
"Not exactly. He's everything I could've become if I made the wrong choice in every lifetime. He's me without guilt. Without love. Without you."
"A corrupted reincarnation?"
Lucien nodded once. "A version that evolved in the cracks between timelines."
Hana's breath caught.
"Then he's dangerous."
Lucien's jaw tightened. "He's beyond dangerous. He's me, without anything left to lose."
Elsewhere – In the Labyrinth of Echoes
The man stood before a fractured glass wall suspended in eternal dusk.
The Labyrinth of Echoes was a place only those between lives could access. And he he had never lived a full one.
His fingers brushed against the wall. The surface rippled with images of Lucien and Hana, walking through every reincarnated world they'd touched. Rome. Gyeongju. Saigon. Amsterdam. Rebirths upon rebirths.
He tilted his head as he watched Lucien cradle Hana's face on that rooftop, whispering something tender the wall didn't allow him to hear.
"I loved her first," he murmured.
His voice cracked with something unnamable. Then his face twisted into a smile that could split kingdoms.
"Time to remind them who I am."
Back to Hana – The Vision
Later that night, Hana stood on the balcony of the temporary safehouse. The observatory had collapsed within hours of their return. Lucien had said it was the rift's side effect a way to erase anomalies from the waking world.
But her thoughts weren't on architecture. They were on him. The reflection.
Whoever he was… he'd looked straight at her when the rift closed.
And he'd smiled.
Suddenly, her vision blurred. The world around her dimmed, and she stumbled back, pressing her palm to the wall.
And then she was no longer in Seoul.
The Realm of Dust
A new vision.
She stood in a desert, where sand rained upward and the sun hung frozen in eclipse. A vast, empty expanse stretched out in every direction, broken only by one towering structure.
A throne.
Upon it sat he. The Mirror.
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, smile lazy but sharp.
"So we finally meet properly, Hana."
She tried to mov,e but her feet wouldn't budge. Her voice caught in her throat.
He stood and approached. With every step, the sand beneath his feet crystallized into black glass.
"You know, in one of the timelines, you did choose me," he whispered. "But Lucien erased that cycle before it could finish."
Hana's eyes widened.
"Liar."
The Mirror only chuckled. "Am I? Did he tell you everything? About what he promised me before the first cycle broke? About the deal he made to keep you?"
Her heart thudded.
"What deal?"
He stopped just in front of her. Inches away. His voice dropped into something almost sorrowful.
"He promised he'd never remember me."
Then, he touched her forehead.
Back to Reality – The Awakening
Hana jolted upright in bed, gasping.
Lucien was already there beside her, hand on her back, eyes stormy with concern.
"You saw him."
She nodded, trembling. "He said you made a deal. In the first cycle."
Lucien's silence confirmed it.
Hana sat up, staring into his eyes. "What did you promise?"
Lucien looked down. His voice was a thread.
"I promised to forget him. So that you and I could begin again."
"But why?"
"Because I created him."
Lucien's Revelation
"I was meant to die in the first cycle," Lucien admitted. "But I didn't. I split myself tore the darkness out of my soul and gave it form, hoping it would die with the old world."
"It didn't," Hana whispered.
"No. It survived. It learned. It watched. And now it wants everything I have."
Hana stood, pacing. "So what does he want? You? Me? Our future?"
Lucien's eyes met hers. "He wants to rewrite it. He wants to make you love him the version of me that never let go."
The Mirror Moves
In the city of Incheon, inside an underground chamber hidden beneath an old Buddhist temple, the Mirror emerged from a circle of light etched in salt and ash.
His eyes burned gold.
A girl in her twenties looked up from a chained ritual, her voice shaking. "Who… are you?"
He smiled, knelt beside her, and gently touched her cheek.
"I'm the one who remembers everything."
He turned toward the chamber wall where names were etched in hundreds of scripts.
He raised his hand and wrote a new name beneath Hana's.
His own.