The night after the Mirror Spire pulsed awake, Sid couldn't sleep.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw flames. Not ordinary fire, not even demonflame — but a fire that devoured shape itself. Buildings bent like melting wax, trees crumbled into black snow, and even the stars flickered as if being swallowed one by one.
He woke gasping, his arm searing with pain. The fracture glowed, pulsing like a second heart. Sweat slicked his face, but his breath came out in plumes of frost.
"Sid."
The voice wasn't Nox's or Lucien's. It was deeper, older. It echoed like the inside of a tomb.
He staggered to his feet. The world around him had shifted. His tent was gone, the camp gone. He stood in the middle of a battlefield drenched in ash. Spears jutted from the ground like broken bones. Bodies — or what remained of them — lay scattered in heaps. Some were human, some monstrous, some unrecognizable.
The sky burned a deep, endless red.
Sid stumbled forward, his boots crunching over brittle fragments of armor. Then he froze.
Figures moved in the distance — not living soldiers, but shadows of them, locked in endless combat. Their outlines flickered, replaying the moment of their deaths again and again. A godlike figure swung a sword of light, only to be consumed by a tide of black fire. Another fell to their knees, praying as flame devoured them.
Sid's breath hitched. "This… this isn't real."
"Memory is real," the voice answered.
Sid turned sharply.
A towering figure stood at the far edge of the battlefield, cloaked in fire that bled darkness at its edges. Its face was hidden behind a jagged mask, but Sid didn't need to see the features. His soul recognized it instantly.
Ravh'Zereth.
Sid's legs trembled, but he forced himself to take a step forward. "Why am I here?" he demanded. "Why are you showing me this?"
The flames around Ravh'Zereth pulsed, and the battlefield seemed to lurch, as if dragged closer.
"You carry the fracture," the god-demon said, voice like burning coals ground beneath iron. "Each Seal that breaks pours my essence into you. My memories become yours. My war becomes yours."
Sid clenched his fists. "I don't want your war. I don't want you inside me."
The shadows around them froze mid-combat, their heads turning as one toward Sid. Dozens of eyeless faces stared, their mouths opening in a chorus of dry whispers:
You are him.
He is you.
There is no border.
Sid's heart thundered. "Shut up!" he shouted.
The whispers fell silent. For a heartbeat, there was only the sound of his own ragged breathing.
Then Ravh'Zereth stepped closer. The flames peeled back just enough for Sid to see… his own face staring back at him beneath the mask. Burned. Twisted. A version of himself consumed by the fire.
Sid stumbled backward. "No… that's not me."
Ravh'Zereth's voice rumbled low. "Identity is ash. Memory is flame. When the fire burns long enough, what you were ceases to matter."
Sid's scar throbbed violently, and when he glanced down at his arm, he saw the veins crawling black beneath his skin. His reflection flickered across a shattered blade lying on the ground — except the reflection wasn't him. It was Ravh'Zereth's face, staring back with hollow eyes.
"No," Sid whispered, gripping his head. "I'm not you. I won't become you."
The shadow-soldiers closed in, circling him like vultures.
From somewhere in the haze, Nox's voice pierced through: "Sid! Fight it!"
Sid spun — and for an instant, he saw Nox standing among the shadows, hand outstretched. Then the vision warped, Nox's skin peeling into black flame, his eyes turning void.
Sid shook his head violently. "Get out of my mind!"
His scar erupted in fire, daemonflame spilling into the battlefield. The shadows recoiled. The vision cracked like broken glass.
Ravh'Zereth's final words thundered in his skull:
"Each burn binds you closer to me. Each memory you resist is a chain you forge with your own flame."
The battlefield shattered.
Sid woke on the ground outside the Mirror Spire, his body trembling, his arm smoking as if freshly branded. Lucien and Reinhardt knelt beside him, fear etched into their faces.
"You were screaming," Lucien said quietly. "Like something was… tearing you apart."
Sid swallowed hard, his throat dry. "It was… him. Ravh'Zereth. I saw his memories. And…" His voice cracked. "And I saw myself. As him."
Nox's eyes narrowed, shadows stirring around him. "Then the war for your soul has already begun."
Sid clenched his scarred arm, staring at the smoke that still curled from his skin.
He whispered, barely audible: "I won't let him win."
But in the back of his mind, Ravh'Zereth's laughter lingered — low, patient, and terrifyingly certain.