The first village he passed through didn't speak.
Not because they feared him.
Because they had no mouths.
No voices.No memories.
Just faces turned inward—like reflections caught in reverse.
They stared as he walked.
Some wept without tears.Some bled without wounds.
Every wall held one thing:
A mirror.
Framed in bone.Glass polished like water.
The boy approached the largest.
He saw himself.
But not his face.
Just his eye.
The one he'd lost.
Spinning in the glass.
Alone.Screaming.
He backed away.
But the glass rippled.
And something stepped through.
Not a person.
A concept.
Cloaked in silence.Armed with answers.
The Mirrorwalker.
The thing that fed on identity.
It spoke in shapes.
The sound of bones clicking into place.
"You are whole," it said."Unacceptable.""Fragment again."
The boy raised the broken blade.
It pulsed once.
Then fell silent.
This was no ordinary god.
This was a vault-echo.
A god born from reflection.From everything people almost became.
The Mirrorwalker moved.
Not fast.
Correctly.
Each step placed where he would dodge.Each attack shaped like his regrets.
The boy was cut before he reacted.
Not on the skin.On the soul.
Names spilled from the wounds.
Every name he'd buried.Every version he'd lost.
He dropped to a knee.
Fingers trembling.
And then—a whisper.
Hers.
"You were never meant to survive.But you did."
The blade lit.Faintly.Only one eye.
Enough.
He rose.
Charged.
But didn't strike the Mirrorwalker.
He struck the mirror.
The largest one.
The one showing his eye.
It shattered.
And behind it—
A hallway.
Of sky.
The Mirrorwalker shrieked.
Its body cracked.
No longer fed by reflection.
It reached for him—but he stepped through.
Into the hallway of heaven.
And behind him—the god of mirrors collapsed.
Not with a bang.
With a sigh.
He walked the hallway for hours.
No ground.No ceiling.
Just horizon.
And at the end—
A door.
Simple.Unmarked.
He opened it.
And saw her.
She sat beside a dead fire.
Hands folded.Eyes quiet.
The girl.
The one he lost in Vault Five.
But not broken.
Not flickering.
Just waiting.
She looked up.
Smiled.
"You're late."
He stepped closer.
"You're dead."
She touched his face.
"Then why are you here?"
Silence.
The hallway vanished.
They stood again on real soil.
Beside the ashes of the mirror god.
But she remained.
Real.Breathing.
A fragment remembered too hard to forget.
He didn't ask how.
Didn't care.
Just said:
"We're not safe yet."
She nodded.
"I know. The next Vault is awake."
He looked east.
The sky trembled.
And far away—
Something with a crown of teeth whispered his name.
To be continued…