The man standing in the Spire's shadow wasn't Keiran.
But he was close enough to make Ashling's breath falter.
The slope of the jaw. The faint scar at the brow. Even the way his eyes carried weight, like every glance was a verdict.
Only one detail was wrong.
His irises weren't the deep grey she remembered.
They were mirrored—cold, shifting, reflecting her own face back at her.
Lys's hand went to his blade. "That's not him."
The Redactor smiled faintly. "Closer than you think."
Nyrelle's voice was low. "They've made an echo-form out of him. Not a copy. A replacement."
"Not a replacement," the Redactor said. "A correction."
Ashling's fingers tightened over the memory-core. "And what exactly are you correcting?"
He stepped closer. His voice had Keiran's timbre but none of his warmth.
"The parts of him that resisted erasure. The flaws that clung to your mind when they should have dissolved. I am Keiran… without error."
The Spire's gates behind him began to shift, their interlocked circles rotating. The stone around them groaned, as if waking.
The Redactor raised a hand toward Ashling—not in threat, but as if offering something invisible.
"Give me the anchor," he said, "and I will finish what was started. You will not lose him… you will only lose the weight of him."
Keiran's voice stirred inside her, jagged and urgent:
"That is not me. That is the void wearing my skin."
The mirrored eyes flicked toward Nyrelle. "You know what the Convergence will bring if she keeps that thing inside her. Entire threads collapsing. Names twisting into wrong shapes. Is sentiment worth the end of continuity?"
Nyrelle didn't answer. Her gaze was locked on the gates, where thin beams of light were leaking out like blood from a wound.
The air shifted again. Ashling felt it—a ripple in her own thoughts, as if someone had opened a door inside her memory and begun walking through.
The Redactor's mirrored eyes brightened. "I could fix you, too."
Lys stepped between them. "Touch her, and I'll—"
He didn't finish. The Redactor's hand twitched, and Lys froze mid-step, body locking as if he'd been pinned in a photograph.
Ashling moved.
The anchor's pulse slammed into her chest like a second heartbeat exploding outward. The ground under her feet flared with twin circles—the moons—and the ripple in her mind broke.
Lys stumbled free, gasping.
The Redactor's expression didn't change, but his mirrored eyes clouded, as though something inside was fogging over.
"Interesting," he said. "It's waking faster than we expected."
Ashling stepped forward. "You're not taking him. Not here. Not ever."
The Redactor's mirrored irises caught the light from the Spire—
And for an instant, the reflection was gone.
In its place, real eyes. Grey. And full of pain.
Keiran's voice—faint, but his—broke through:
"End me before they pull me back under."
Then the mirror returned, snapping over the grey like a slammed door.
The Spire's gates split open with a thunderclap, spilling light across the riverbank. From deep inside, a wind rose—not air, but the sensation of pages turning at impossible speed.
The Redactor stepped aside. "If you want what's left of him… come take it. But remember—"
His mirrored gaze locked on Ashling.
"Every step forward writes over something else."
Then he vanished into the light.
Ashling stood frozen for a heartbeat, the anchor thrumming in her chest, Keiran's plea still raw in her mind.
The Convergence wasn't just pulling him back together.
It was pulling other versions of him into play.
Lys looked at her. "What's the plan?"
Ashling's eyes went to the open gates. "We go in. We get the real one back. And we burn whatever's rewriting him."
Nyrelle gave a tight nod. "Then we'd better hurry. The Spire doesn't keep its doors open for long."
They stepped into the light.
And the Spire remembered them.