The wind howled over the jagged cliffs of Durnmir, echoing like the voices of lost souls. Grey stood at the edge of the precipice, the ocean below roaring like a beast denied its prey. His cloak, tattered from the last battle in the Ash Vale, clung to his frame as if reluctant to let go. In his hand, he held the blade "Nullwake," no longer ordinary steel, but something older—something aware.
Behind him, Chris and a dozen survivors from the resistance patched wounds and tended to the dying. The cost of facing Wale's newly summoned chimera horde had been high. Three of their best were dead. The line had held, barely. But Grey had done something new—he'd bent the flow of time for a second. Just a second. Enough to shift a deathblow meant for Chris into empty space.
And it hadn't been magic. Not entirely.
Chris approached, her face pale, her armor smeared with ash and blood.
"You shouldn't have pushed that hard," she said.
Grey didn't look at her. His eyes were on the sea, as if it held the answer to a question he hadn't dared ask aloud.
"I didn't," he said finally. "Something else did it through me."
Chris frowned. "You're talking about that presence again."
Grey nodded. "It's waking. It's not just memory, Chris. It's something alive inside me—older than this war, older than this world. I think Wale knows."
Chris hesitated. "Then why hasn't he struck you down yet?"
Grey gave a mirthless chuckle. "Because I'm part of his plan."
There was silence between them as the wind gusted harder.
Grey turned to face her, voice steady. "I need to go to the Mirror Nexus."
Chris flinched. "You're not serious."
"I am. That place twisted Wale. If I can understand what it showed him… maybe I can unmake what he became."
"No one survives the Nexus," she said. "Even Wale didn't. He just came back… different."
Grey sheathed Nullwake. "Then I'll come back different too. Just not like him."
Far above the clouds, in the Throneplane of the Faithful, Wale sat on his throne of golden lies. The glass beneath his feet reflected not his face, but Grey's—cracked, distorted, but still whole.
"Still pretending you're the exception," Wale murmured. "Still clinging to the illusion of purity. Let's see how long that lasts."
Beside him, the Orator of Chains bowed. "Shall I stir the cults in the west?"
"No," Wale replied. "Let them watch. Let them believe. Belief is the seed. And when enough forget Grey ever lived… even truth will kneel."
That night, Grey left the camp alone.
The journey to the Mirror Nexus wasn't on any map—it wasn't a place, not exactly. It was a wound in reality, a place where minds were unstitched and rewoven. The path there was walked in silence, through dreams and guilt. But Grey had been dreaming of it since the day he'd looked into Wale's eyes and seen something not human looking back.
He crossed the Blackridge in three days, avoiding patrols and nightmares both. The land bent subtly the closer he got—trees leaned the wrong way, rivers flowed upstream, and time misbehaved like a child left unsupervised.
At last, he found it.
A mirror, half-buried in the soil, taller than a man and cracked down the center. It hummed softly—not with sound, but with memory.
Grey stepped toward it.
And the mirror opened.
He fell through void, through versions of himself—one that killed Lucien, one that betrayed Chris, one that was Wale. The visions clawed at his sanity, each demanding to be accepted.
Then, darkness. A single voice.
"You are not Grey."
He stood in an endless white room. Across from him stood… himself. But aged, regal, monstrous. It was Grey, if he had accepted everything—power, arrogance, ruthlessness.
"You think you can defeat Wale," the mirror-Grey said. "You will become him."
"I won't," Grey replied.
"You already have. You just renamed the throne."
Grey closed his eyes. "Then I break the throne."
The vision grinned—and attacked.
They fought not with weapons, but with ideology. Memories shattered around them as they clashed—visions of Wale's fall, of Chris's hope, of Lucien's secrets. Every strike was a choice: power or restraint. Control or freedom.
Grey bled. But he held on.
And in the end, the mirror shattered.
He woke at dawn beside the broken relic, eyes filled with tears.
Something had changed.
His body felt lighter, but his soul… heavier.
He now knew.
Wale had not fallen in the Mirror Nexus.
He had been reborn there—as a creature of collective belief, a being made not from magic, but the need of the world for order, for illusion, for comfort.
And now, Grey had seen the temptation. He had felt its pull.
He would never be the same.
Back at the camp, Chris looked up as Grey returned.
"You're… different," she said.
Grey nodded. "So is the war now."
He looked at the horizon.
"Wale doesn't need to kill me to win. He just has to make people forget me."
Chris touched his arm. "Then we make them remember."