The void stretched out, a vast ocean of nothingness.
Eila scrambled backward. The blood-soaked Vanguard chestplate was gone. The sickening stench of rotting lilies and old iron had vanished. His lap was empty. He was draped only in the chilling weightlessness of pristine white robes.
He staggered to his feet, his lungs burning as he desperately tried to pull air from the dead space.
"Who..." Eila choked out, his throat still hoarse from the crying. "What are you?"
The older man stared at him silently. Without a word, he turned his back and began walking into the absolute dark.
"Let us walk," he said calmly.
Eila hesitated. There was nothing but blackness in every direction, but the crushing gravity of the man left him no choice. He followed.
Instantly, the dark shattered.
The sudden clamor of a bustling crowd hit Eila like a physical blow. The void was gone, replaced by the glare of sunlit cobblestones in the Aethelgard main market. The air smelled of hot fresh bread and damp earth, the exact scents of his childhood, back when he used to walk these stalls with his parents.
"Oh—" Eila flinched, throwing his arms up to dodge a merchant's incoming wooden cart.
The heavy wood passed right through his chest without a sliver of friction.
"They cannot see us," the older figure said, walking calmly ahead through the crowd. "We do not exist here. Come."
The market cobblestones dissolved under Eila's boots.
Suddenly, the shouts of stalls and bustling of the crowd was gone, replaced by the serene and golden sway of endless wheat fields. The dry stalks brushed against his pristine white robes. A distant scent of lavender soap teased the edge of his mind, a memory of walking here with someone he loved.
He tried to picture her face, but a jagged spike of static tore through his skull. The Paradox Debt swallowed the image whole.
A few paces ahead, the older man paused, glancing back over his shoulder.
"These fragments took centuries to find," the man said, his voice entirely devoid of the warmth the sun provided. "But without any evidence... can you truly be sure they ever happened?"
Before Eila could grit his teeth against the headache, the golden wheat snapped into the sterile grey of a courtyard.
The smell of polished leather and old sweat hit his nostrils. Towering over him stood a massive man draped in the heavy blood-red and black-trimmed armor and A silver helm of the Vanguard Knights. The old soldier offered a kind and weathered smile, extending a splintered wooden toy sword.
"You should take it," the older figure's voice echoed. He was leaning against a tree at some distance.
Eila reached out to grasp the hilt. He froze. The hands that extended from the white sleeves weren't his. They were tiny, uncalloused, and trembling. The hands of a child.
The courtyard shattered like glass.
The color sucked out from the world. Eila stumbled, his boots hitting a hauntingly white floor that stretched into an infinite horizon. Parked in perfect, mathematical rows were thousands of horse-drawn carriages, completely stripped of texture or color. Standing perfectly still beside them were the coachmen. They were strange figures draped in identical white hats and coats.
Eila's breath hitched. Under the brims of their hats, the coachmen possessed no faces. Just smooth, unbroken expanses of skin where eyes and mouths should have been.
"Call me Atelo," the older man said, standing seamlessly among the faceless horde. He stared at Eila with those terrifying, pitch-black eyes. "How did you arrive at this station, Eila?"
Eila opened his mouth, desperate to retrace his steps; the Ivory Tower, the CINDERS, the agonizing draught, but the Paradox Debt surged. A scream cracked in his mind. The memories were locked behind a wall.
"I..." Eila choked, dropping to his knees on the blinding white floor. "I don't know."
One of the faceless coachmen bowed deeply. Beside him, a massive white horse stepped forward to pull the carriage. Its hooves made absolutely no sound against the floor. Like its master, the beast's head was a smooth expanse of flesh; no eyes, no nostrils, no mouth.
"Sit." Atelo was already waiting inside the pristine interior. "We are going for a ride."
Eila climbed inside, sinking into the textureless white seats. The carriage lunged forward. Through the window, the other endless rows of carriages and standing coachmen began to blur past them.
"It will be a long transit, Eila." Atelo casually flipped open a newspaper. The pages were completely blank. The crisp rustle of the blank paper was the only sound in the cabin. "You should sleep."
Almost instantly, a crushing weight slammed into Eila's eyelids. His vision swam. Outside the glass, the world violently vortexed. The standing coachmen began to stretch, their limbs elongating upward until only their towering white legs blurred past the window. Exhaustion seized Eila's chest, dragging him down into the dark.
"The new city, huh?"
Eila gasped, his spine snapping upright against the seat.
Atelo was gone. Sitting across from him was a teenage girl with bright blonde hair and piercing blue eyes. She offered a warm, quiet smile.
"W-Where is Atelo?" Eila stammered. He stared at her face, and a violent ache instantly bloomed behind his eyes. He knew her. The blue of her eyes tore at something deep inside his chest, but the Paradox Debt viciously clamped down on his mind, swallowing her name before it could reach his tongue. "Who are you?"
The girl simply kept smiling. Her lips moved, forming words he desperately needed to hear, but the sound was violently muted. The carriage began to spiral. The vertigo returned, infinitely heavier, and the void swallowed him once more.
When Eila's eyes snapped open again, the heavy white silence of the carriage had returned. Atelo was sitting across from him, calmly turning a page of his blank newspaper.
"You slept through the border," the older man stated, not bothering to look up.
Eila dragged his gaze to the window. The infinite white station was gone. They were gliding through a terrifying, pitch-black space filled with thousands of floating glass orbs. Inside each sphere hung reflections; some contained hundreds of pristine mirrors, others thousands, and a few held only shattered glass.
"We will reach our stop soon," Atelo said, his voice entirely devoid of inflection.
The carriage violently lurched. Inertia seized Eila's chest, his insides twisting with the sheer force of the jump, but Atelo and the faceless coachman did not even flinch. Atelo calmly continued skimming the completely blank pages of his newspaper.
Then, absolute stillness.
The carriage, the horse, and the coachman vanished instantly. Eila stumbled, his boots hitting a smooth, boundless expanse of deep, reflective azure. It wasn't a room; it was an infinite, isolating ocean of blue shadow. Directly in front of them stood a single, towering mirror.
"My suspicion was correct." Atelo stepped forward. He dragged his hand against a massive fracture spider-webbing across the glass. "It is broken."
Eila stared at the shattered glass, his throat tightening.
"Tell me, Eila." Atelo vanished, his voice instantly echoing from directly behind Eila's shoulder. "Who do you believe the enemy is?"
"It is..." Eila choked. His mind fought violently, clawing for a name or a face, but the Paradox Debt clamped down, leaving only a hollow ache. "It's a ruler."
"Wrong." Atelo bent down, picking up a shard of silver glass from the blue floor. He pressed the sharp edge into Eila's trembling hands. "It is the hands that built the clock, forcing the ruler to interfere."
An unimaginably sheer, crushing pain hammered down on Eila's skull.
"A broken mirror cannot reflect, Eila." Atelo pointed to the empty gap in the pane. "Fix it."
Eila raised the shard. His hands shook violently as he pressed the glass into the jagged hole where it belonged. It didn't catch. The shard simply slipped through the surface, refusing to bind, dropping uselessly back to the azure floor. It was impossible.
"Mending is always infinitely harder than breaking, Eila." Atelo lowered his hand. His voice fracturing under a quiet grief. "There needs to be a resin."
The pressure inside Eila's skull multiplied tenfold. The Paradox Debt violently rejected the missing logic, driving him to his knees on the azure glass.
"Answer me, Eila." Atelo loomed over him, his voice echoing through the shadow. "What is the resin?"
Eila writhed, his hands clawing at his own temples. The static in his brain reached a blinding pitch, threatening to tear his consciousness entirely apart. And then, through the deafening noise, a single image bled through the dark.
Bright blonde hair. Striking blue eyes. A quiet and desperate voice in the safehouse.
Instantly, the suffocating pressure shattered. Eila dragged in a gasping breath.
"The resin..." Eila whispered, his trembling fingers tightening around the silver shard until blood oozed out. "It's Imara."
Atelo froze. The terrifying, absolute stillness of the older man faltered. He turned his pitch-black eyes toward Eila, a flicker of genuine confusion crossing his weathered face.
"Imara?" Atelo repeated, the word sounding entirely foreign on his tongue. He searched the memories of his own mind. "I don't... I do not possess that name."
Behind him, the towering mirror hummed. The blank, dead glass violently rippled, the fractured edges beginning to reflect the deep blue of the room. Only the empty center remained.
Eila forced himself to his feet. He stepped past the older anomaly and pressed the silver shard directly into the center of the glass.
It didn't fall. It locked into place with a heavy, deafening crack.
The Paradox Debt violently collapsed, the mind unclenching. Eila was instantly dropped, hitting the floor as a torrential flood of deleted time slammed back into his brain. He clutched his temples as he screamed. The void was deafened by a dozen overlapping voices.
"-fine, you do it.-" "-The blood washes off...-" "-Don't do it, Eila!-"
"If you truly believe there is no good left in this world, then crush my chest right now! Prove to me that you are truly gone!"
Eila pushed himself up from the floor. He wasn't breathing heavily anymore. The suffocating confusion was entirely gone, replaced by the terrifying weight of his own existence. He remembered the CINDERS. He remembered the blood on his sword. He remembered the rolling head. He remembered exactly why he had to wake up.
He turned his head, finally meeting Atelo's void black eyes not as a fractured boy, but as an equal.
"Tell me, Eila," Atelo said, his voice dropping to a terrifyingly quiet whisper as he paced the azure glass. "Now that your eyes are open... who is your enemy?"
"It is Kaelen," Eila replied, his voice forged in absolute iron. "The King of Aethelgard."
Atelo stopped pacing. He looked at Eila, and for the first time, a hollow, devastating smile touched the older man's lips.
"Wrong again."
Atelo turned his back, staring into the newly mended mirror.
"It is the hands, Eila. The unseen who coiled and wound the clock. The hands who built the maze. They drafted a timeline where our despair was the only certainty. I was designed to break, yet I broke the world too. The futility of our existence was supposed to be the punchline of their grand design, it was a cycle so perfect, so inescapable of suffering that I had to burn my entire universe to escape. And I still failed."
Atelo looked back over his shoulder. The crushing gravity of the void seemed to settle entirely on his shoulders as he locked eyes with another of his self.
"My name is Eila Hosenkai," the older man said softly. "I am the iteration that reached the end of the maze. I am the one who watched them slaughter our sister, and in my absolute, blinding grief, I invoked the finality of CONCEPT: DOOM."
Atelo looked down at his own empty, weathered hands.
"I reduced my entire existence to ash and silence, leaving no one alive to share the dark. I am the original draft they abandoned, discarded into the heap of trash."
Atelo turned back to the mended mirror. He pressed his gloved hand against the smooth, flawless glass. The reflection showed the deep blue room, but Atelo cast no reflection at all.
"Listen to me," Atelo said, his voice suddenly sharp. "Eila, Imara is not—"
A violent, invisible hook snagged Eila's ribs.
Before the anomaly could finish the sentence, the deep blue shadow violently collapsed. Eila was instantly yanked backward, ripped through the Apocrypha.
He woke with a violent, ragged gasp.
His spine snapped off the mattress, his lungs greedily pulling in the freezing morning air. The suffocating scent of the void was instantly replaced by the sharp, familiar smell of burnt mugwort and old wood. He felt the heavy, scratchy wool of the safehouse blanket tangled around his waist.
Crash.
A few feet away, a clay basin shattered against the floorboards, spilling warm water across the wood.
Imara stood frozen near the chair. Her hands were still suspended in the air where the basin had been a second before. She stared at him, her chest heaving, her knuckles stark white.
"E-Eila...?" she whispered, her voice fracturing.
The tears spilled over her eyelashes before she could even blink. She didn't hesitate. Imara dropped to her knees beside the cot, burying her face into the heavy wool blankets as she sobbed, her hands desperately gripping Eila's arm just to prove he was real.
Eila looked down at the blonde hair burying itself into his side. The Paradox Debt was silent. His mind was his own.
He was back in the hut, with the only woman who stopped him from becoming Atelo.