Silence fell. A silence so profound it swallowed the battlefield whole.
Ashar paused mid-swing, his sword drenched in enemy flame. Amina's spell flickered out as her breath caught. Kai—eyes wide, senses stretched to their limit—turned slowly toward the source of the impossible presence.
And Serayah, still on her knees, bleeding golden fire, lifted her gaze.
She saw herself.
No illusion. No trick of light or time. Standing on the edge of the second Vault, wrapped in deep crimson fire laced with midnight black, was a woman with her face, her eyes, and her power—but older. Wiser. Broken in places Serayah hadn't yet learned could be broken.
The second Serayah stepped forward, barefoot on scorched ground, and whispered.
"I warned you never to open the second seal."
---
Revelation at the Vault
The sky churned. Vaeroth's presence faltered as if even his god-essence hesitated at the sight.
The second Serayah—her flame a corrupted echo of the divine—stopped just short of her counterpart. They stared at each other, fire licking the space between them.
"You're me," Serayah breathed.
"I am what you become," the echo answered. "If you keep walking this path."
Lucien shouted from behind, "Don't believe her!"
But the echo turned her gaze on him—and Lucien froze mid-step, as if gripped by a force deeper than time.
"I remember you," she said. "I remember the betrayal. The way you fell. The way I fell trying to save you. I remember the Vaults burning."
Serayah staggered to her feet. "Why are you here?"
The echo's face tightened. "Because Vaeroth isn't your greatest enemy. You are. And if you keep trying to hold everything together, you'll fracture the Flame… like I did."
---
The Splintered Future
Kai's hands trembled. "This is a time fracture," he whispered. "A paradox made manifest."
"She's not from our timeline," Amina added, voice shaking. "She's from one that failed."
"I'm the last spark from a world that ended in ash," the echo said. "I begged the Vault to seal me inside. A warning. A ghost."
Serayah shook her head. "Why now? Why this moment?"
"Because you're about to choose," the echo said, stepping closer. "And that choice will either redeem the Flame… or damn every world it touches."
"Choose what?"
"To kill me," she said simply. "Or to let me live and complete what I started."
A silence, deeper than death, settled.
---
Vaeroth Strikes
Vaeroth's laughter cracked the heavens. His shadow surged forward, tendrils of unmaking coiling around the battlefield.
"I tire of your games," he bellowed. "I am the end. All timelines burn before me."
The second Serayah turned, lifted a hand—and the tendrils dissolved.
A pause.
Even Serayah felt it—the weight in the echo's flame. Older. Heavier. Final.
"You weren't supposed to know how to do that," she said quietly.
"I wasn't," her older self replied. "Until I let everything else die."
---
A New Decision
Lucien finally moved, dragging himself beside Serayah. "You don't have to listen to her," he said. "You're not her. You haven't fallen that far."
"She's me," Serayah replied. "She's everything I could become. Every mistake I fear making."
"But you haven't made them yet," Kai said. "You still have us."
The echo looked at the group—at Lucien, Kai, Amina, Ashar—and her expression softened. "I remember them too. I loved them once."
"And then?" Serayah asked.
"I outlived them."
---
The Shattered Sky
The Vault behind the second Serayah began to pulse, its ancient sigils flashing wild, unstable rhythms. The sky fractured again—cracks of flame and blackness racing through the clouds like a mirror shattering.
"She's destabilizing reality just by existing here," Kai warned. "We don't have long."
Amina stepped forward. "Then what's the choice?"
Serayah turned to her echo. "You want me to kill you. But if you're me, then why ask? Why not just vanish?"
"Because I want to be free," the echo whispered, voice breaking. "And because you need to understand—there is no saving everything. Not this time. Someone… must burn."
The Vault split open behind her.
Inside wasn't darkness.
It was a throne of flame.
Empty.
Waiting.