The world shattered around them like glass. Chunks of broken landscapes floated in a void of lightless space, each fragment a memory—alien skies, human cities, battlefields soaked in rain.
"We have to find them," Lyra said, her voice steady despite the chaos. "The real Ceyra. Before this thing consumes everything."
Kaelen scanned the horizon of drifting ruins. "Where do we even start?"
Before Lyra could answer, the false Ceyra—the figure of threads and shifting faces—reappeared atop a floating spire. It raised its arms, and the fragments of reality began to twist together into a labyrinth.
"You'll never find them," it intoned, voice laced with venom. "Because you've never known them."
The labyrinth sealed shut behind walls of shifting energy.
The Labyrinth of Truths
Kaelen slammed his fist against a wall of translucent crystal. "It's alive—changing as we move!"
"Then we move faster," Lyra said. "It's trying to keep us from the center."
They ran, weaving through corridors that morphed with every turn. One moment, Lyra was sprinting past a memory of her childhood home; the next, she stumbled into a corridor lined with hundreds of versions of Kaelen—each one a different choice he could have made.
One sneered at him: "You could have saved your brother. But you chose power instead."
Kaelen's breath hitched, his pace faltering.
Lyra grabbed his arm. "Ignore it! They're not real!"
But the voices followed them, relentless.
"Coward."
"Traitor."
"Murderer."
The Signal
Then, faint and clear amid the noise, came a different sound—a soft, rhythmic pulse, like a beacon.
"Kaelen," Lyra whispered, eyes wide. "Do you hear that?"
He nodded. "Ceyra."
They followed the sound deeper into the labyrinth, cutting through illusions and traps until they burst into a vast circular chamber at its core.
Suspended in the center was a sphere of light, pulsing with the same rhythm. Inside it, barely visible, was Ceyra's form—fragmented, as though caught between life and death.
"We found them," Lyra breathed.
The false Ceyra appeared on the edge of the chamber, face twisted with fury. "You cannot take what belongs to me!"
The ground cracked as monstrous shapes erupted from the floor—creatures born of their own regrets.
Kaelen raised his blade, jaw set. "Then we fight our way out."