The light of the Soul Gate faded behind them, and the silence that followed wasn't empty—it was waiting.
Ethan held tightly to Noel's hand, his palm warm and trembling. Ahead of them, a new path had opened. Not glass, not shadow, but something real. Earth. Stone. Moonlight. Reverie was changing.
"It's reshaping," Noel whispered, "around us."
Not behind. Not beyond. But within. Reverie had never been just a world—it was the landscape of memory, pain, and love. A mirror of the soul.
And somewhere deep within it, Seren waited.
––
They found him at the base of the Obsidian Tree.
He was sitting cross-legged in its roots, head bowed, hands laced with vines that pulsed like veins. His silver hair shimmered beneath the moonlight, and when he looked up, his eyes were calm. Too calm.
"Seren," Noel said. No guards. No illusions. Just his brother.
Seren stood. "I've been waiting for you."
His voice was soft.
"You broke the gate," Seren continued. "I felt it."
Ethan stepped forward. "It's over. You don't have to carry it anymore."
But Seren smiled faintly, and it made Ethan shiver. "You think this ends with me letting go?" He touched his chest. "This wound doesn't close. Not without a price."
Noel's voice cracked. "Then let me pay it."
Seren looked at him, eyes unreadable. "You already did. When you chose him."
A silence fell.
Then Seren raised his hand—and the entire world rippled. The tree behind him grew taller, blacker. The ground beneath them cracked open with mirrored light.
"I don't want revenge anymore," Seren said. "I want to be remembered."
He stepped forward, but his body began to distort—cracks spreading through his skin like broken porcelain.
"No!" Noel ran toward him. "You're still here! You're still you!"
Ethan followed. "We won't forget you. I promise."
Seren staggered. The tree behind him began to weep silver.
Then:
"I see it now," Seren whispered. "He's not your replacement. He's your mirror."
Ethan caught him as his body began to fade—first light, then memory.
And in his final breath, Seren said, "Thank you for loving me, even when I broke."
––
The Obsidian Tree shattered.
In its place bloomed a garden of light—wild, infinite, beautiful. Reverie had been rewritten. The curse undone not by destruction, but by forgiveness.
Noel stood in the center of it all, eyes glassy, hand in Ethan's.
"You're still here," Noel whispered.
"And I'm not going anywhere," Ethan replied.
The mirror world no longer pulled at their souls.
It opened its gates.
And for the first time, they could choose where to go—together.