Nima ran. Through flame, through glass, through the smoke-stained starlight. The fire didn't burn her—at least, not in the way she expected. It licked at her soul instead, each flicker peeling back another layer of self, revealing not flesh, not memory, but belief. Beliefs she didn't know she held. Beliefs she didn't want.
She heard Dmitri scream again. Short. Hoarse. A sound already breaking apart by the time it reached her. It came from everywhere—and nowhere. The Bell had twisted space. Time stuttered. And the world had bent around her refusal.
She slipped between frames of reality—between the memory of the ruined square and the nightmare of the sea of fire. There was no stable ground, only echoes, each one bleeding into the next.
And in the center of it all, he was there.
Dmitri knelt beneath a tree made of arms. Its branches reached skyward, writhing, tangled in constellations that no longer made sense. The leaves were burning pages. His hands were chained to the tree's base—no iron, just thought, regret, the chains formed from the guilt he never voiced aloud.
His face was wrong.
Older. Sharper. As if years had passed in moments.
"Nima?" he whispered. "You shouldn't be here."
She stepped forward, staggering from the weight of memory pressing down on her shoulders. "What is this? What did it do to you?"
Dmitri didn't answer.
Instead, the tree began to sing. The same song from the Bell, only quieter, more intimate. Like a lullaby meant for corpses.
She saw then that the arms weren't moving randomly. They were writing in the stars—inscribing circles within circles. Binding Dmitri in some kind of metaphysical pattern. A pattern that would rewrite him. Unmake him. Not kill. Change.
Nima rushed forward. Her katana returned to her grip—not summoned, but offered. A gift, maybe, from whatever part of her still resisted the Bell's will.
She slashed at the tree's roots.
They bled dreams. Forgotten days. Sunlight on water. Laughter.
She screamed, slashing again and again, her own memories draining out of her eyes. Her childhood gone. Her first kiss dissolved. Her mother's voice turned to ash.
But the chains loosened.
Dmitri groaned. "You shouldn't… you can't pull me out. The Song's using me. As an anchor. It's learning through me."
"I don't care!" she shouted, cutting again, until her vision turned black and the stars above cracked.
One more swing—and the tree shattered. The arms fell. The stars went dark.
And Dmitri collapsed into her.
He was cold. And silent.
Then—
"Thank you," he whispered.
And the Bell sang again.
Not a scream. Not a warning.
A welcoming.
It had seen her sacrifice.
And now, it offered her a door.
A spiral opened in the sky above—a staircase of light and void, leading not into the heavens, but into the heart of the Bell itself.
Dmitri's hand gripped hers.
They looked up.
There would be no turning back.
And what awaited them was not redemption.
But understanding.
Nima stood at the edge of the Cradle, the obsidian figure's whisper still unraveling inside her like an incantation she couldn't forget. Every step forward now felt like walking into the mouth of something ancient—something that had long since forgotten the difference between memory and reality.
Dmitri remained silent, his torchlight flickering weakly against the curved stone walls. "This place wasn't built," he said finally. "It was grown."
Nima nodded, eyes fixed on the path ahead. Vines of black crystal crawled along the ceiling like roots searching for warmth. The air buzzed faintly with a song just under hearing, as if the Bell still hummed in defiance of its silence.
But that wasn't what troubled her most.
What haunted her was the echo of herself she had seen—reflected in the dark glass that lined the walls, a mirror not of flesh, but of intention. In every reflection, she was a little more hollow. A little more like it.
They came upon a chamber carved in perfect symmetry, a circle with no seams or tools to suggest it had ever been shaped by hands. At its center stood a statue—not of a god or a beast, but of Nima.
Only it wasn't her now. It was her future—gaunt, crowned in twisted horns of metal and stone, with eyes hollowed into endless pits. Her hands cradled the Bell, not as a burden, but as a prize.
Dmitri stepped back. "That's not—"
"It is," she whispered. "Or it could be."
The room pulsed once, a heartbeat not their own. Then the statue breathed.
The air around them tightened as whispers spilled from the walls, overlapping, indistinct—until one stood out, clear and cruel:
"You were made for this."
Nima closed her eyes and saw not the world, but a tapestry being unraveled, threads of time and choice and memory. She saw herself in dozens of lives: a tyrant, a martyr, a silence, a scream.
She gritted her teeth. "No. I won't be shaped by something dead."
The walls reacted—shifting with the weight of her defiance. Cracks spidered across the statue's face. Dmitri reached for her shoulder, but the moment his hand touched her, the room fell away.
They were somewhere else.
The Cradle had collapsed into a dream of itself—hallways looping back, doorways leading to past conversations, lost places, moments that hadn't happened yet. Nima saw her childhood home. Her father's face. Then, his corpse. Then, nothing at all.
A voice—her voice—echoed from the dark: "The Bell was never meant to be silenced. Only heard by those who could listen without breaking."
She stumbled through a door that wasn't there and found herself back in the chamber—but now she was the statue.
Frozen.
Alone.
Until a single word cracked through the illusion like thunder:
"NIMA!"
Dmitri's voice. Real. Grounded.
She gasped as the world stitched itself back into place. She collapsed to her knees, heart hammering, the vision gone—but not forgotten.
He knelt beside her, breathless. "You were gone. I couldn't reach you."
"I wasn't gone," she said quietly. "I was being replaced."
She looked at the statue again—now shattered—and beneath the ruin, something glowed.
Another shard of the Bell.
But this one sang not with power, but with choice.
She took it, and for a moment, the song was hers alone.
Then came a sound from behind them—boots on stone, slow and deliberate.
Someone else was here.
Watching.