The path ahead was light.
Not stone. Not air. Just light — gold and faintly pulsing, like breath.
Kael stepped lightly onto it, expecting to fall through. Instead, it held.
Echo moved beside him, her paws leaving no imprint, but each step she took shimmered briefly, as if the path acknowledged her presence.
Nathaniel remained at the hilltop, watching from the Folded Field. His voice came faintly through the stillness.
"This part's yours."
Kael nodded once, then turned toward the line of light that stretched toward the horizon — a horizon that shimmered, unfinished.
He walked.
And the world responded.
With each step, fragments appeared at the path's edges.
Not memories.
Not dreams.
Moments.
Moments that hadn't happened. Possibilities flickering into view like bubbles breaking the surface of thought:
A girl with lavender hair standing beside him, smiling like they've known each other for years.
A battlefield wrapped in stormclouds, Echo facing something huge and shapeless, her body cracked with glowing marks.
Himself, much older, writing by candlelight, whispering a name into the dark.
Each vanished as he passed.
Echo whispered, "They're not yours."
"They feel like they could be," Kael replied.
"They will be," she corrected, "if you choose them."
The air grew colder.
The path narrowed.
And then the voice returned.
Not Galen's.
Not his own.
Not even Amaranth's echo.
This was new.
Tentative.
Unformed.
"You're real," it whispered.
Kael stopped walking.
The path pulsed once beneath him.
"You made it this far."
"So… can I be you now?"
Echo stepped in front of him immediately, growling low.
Kael raised a hand. "No."
The voice trembled.
"Why not?"
"You're tired. You're fractured. I can carry it."
Kael's eyes narrowed. "What are you?"
The air shimmered.
And then… a figure took shape.
A person.
Roughly his height. Same outline. But indistinct — like a memory still forming. The features blurred, the voice slipping between tones.
Kael stared.
"You're me."
"No," the figure said softly. "I'm what comes after you. If you let me."
Kael's breath caught.
"I'm the version of you that forgets."
"I'm the version that gets to rest."
He didn't move.
Didn't speak.
Echo stepped forward again. "You're not here to help. You're here to replace."
The figure blinked, slowly.
"What's the difference?"
Kael looked down at the path.
He felt the weight of everything he had carried — Galen's silence, the glyphs, the Tower, Tama, Threshold Prime, Sera's dreams.
He could feel this version tugging at it all.
As if it was offering peace.
At the cost of being Kael.
"I won't let you take this from me," he said quietly.
"You wouldn't be losing anything," the voice said. "You'd be free."
"You've carried so much."
Kael's hand clenched.
Echo's body glowed, faint lines of gold flickering across her fur.
The path beneath them pulsed.
And Kael said, voice steady now:
"You don't get to wear me."
"You don't get to become me."
"Because I've earned every step."
The figure faltered.
Its form flickered, splitting momentarily between Kael's outline and a dozen others — a child, a stranger, a faceless figure kneeling beneath a monolith.
Then it whispered:
"Then give me a name."
Kael blinked.
"What?"
"I don't want to take yours."
"I want… one of my own."
Echo stepped beside him, watching the figure with unreadable eyes.
"He's not a lie," she said.
"No," Kael said softly. "He's the part of me that wants to let go."
He stepped closer to the figure.
"You can't walk this path."
"I know."
"But you can walk beside it," Kael said.
"As what?"
Kael exhaled.
Then spoke the name:
"Ashen."
The figure blinked slowly.
Its form began to solidify — not into Kael, but something new. A person not yet whole, but distinct.
Ashen.
Not an echo.
Not a replacement.
A reminder.
"Thank you," it whispered.
"I'll remember for you."
Kael nodded.
And the figure stepped off the path.
And vanished — not into dust, but into possibility.
The path opened wider.
And in the distance, a structure emerged from the golden light — not a temple, not a ruin.
Just a single door.
No walls.
No frame.
But the same one from Sera's drawings.
Open now.
Waiting.
Kael turned to Echo.
She didn't speak.
He didn't need her to.
Together, they stepped toward it.
And through.