The hand was mine.
It gripped my wrist with a strength I didn't know I had. When I looked up, the wall was no longer brick—it was a mirror, and inside it stood another me.
Same face. Same scars on the knuckles. Same exhaustion buried in the eyes. But his breathing was calm, measured, as if he'd been waiting for this exact moment.
He yanked me forward.
For an instant, there was no impact, no shatter of glass. The mirror swallowed me whole, and the city vanished like smoke.
I landed on my knees in a room without walls. Or maybe it had walls—I couldn't tell. The space was endless yet confined, dark yet glowing with faint veins of light that ran like cracks across nothingness. It felt less like a room and more like the inside of a broken clock.
My double stood across from me. He did not hum, did not flicker. He was real. Too real.
"Last time," he said, his voice carrying no echo, "you ran until you couldn't. You always run, Kael. That's why you failed."
I opened my mouth, but the air here felt like iron dust. My words stuck in my throat.
He continued: "You think this is the first time the sky went blank? It isn't. The cycle repeats. The letters choose someone who can see. Someone who can act." His eyes narrowed. "And they chose you. Again."
I shook my head. "I don't—remember."
"That's the point." His tone sharpened. "The memory is taken so you can try again without fear. But fear is all you ever find."
Behind him, the veins of light pulsed, sketching faint shapes: the faceless thing, the masks, the endless city folding in on itself.
My double stepped closer, his expression hard. "This time, you can't run. If you do, it won't be just the sky that disappears. It will be everything."
A tremor ran through the space, the cracks widening. From them, I heard the hum again, rising. The creature was finding me even here.
My double reached into his chest and pulled something out—a fragment of light, shaped like a letter. He pressed it into my hand. It burned, searing into my skin until it left a mark: a symbol glowing where my palm had been empty.
His eyes locked with mine.
"Remember this. You're not running this time. You're waking up."
And then he pushed me backward, out of the mirror-world, straight into the open jaws of the hum.