He wakes in a world built of glass, where even the shadows lie.
Kairo came to with blood on his teeth and a smile he didn't remember making.
Not that it was his blood.
And not that he was smiling now.
The surface beneath him was smooth—too smooth. Not stone. Not tile. It was like lying on a mirror dipped in frost. His breath fogged faintly as he exhaled, yet the mist didn't rise. It fell, vanishing into the cold-glass floor like smoke drawn back into the lungs of a corpse.
He sat up slowly.
Something about his hands looked wrong—like they weren't syncing with his movement. There was a fractional delay, like the world's frame rate had dropped. Then it snapped back into place, and everything moved in rhythm again.
[REBIRTH PROTOCOL ACTIVE][S.I.N. INTEGRITY: PRIDE 9% // CORRUPTION STABLE][NEW DOMAIN DETECTED: ENVY // SYNE'S REFLECTION]Caution: Perception may be non-linear.
He rolled the alert away with a flick of his hand. His skin felt colder than before. Not ice. Not illness.
Just… off.
The world he'd woken in was a dome of glass. High above him, endless mirrored panels curved inward, reflecting each other in recursive spirals. There were no clouds. No sky. Just reflections, hundreds of them, refracting light in impossible angles.
And in every reflection—he could see himself.
Standing.
Staring.
Motionless.
Except for one.
His.
Which hadn't moved.
He stood now, watching the version of himself directly in front of him, mirrored on the surface. It should have moved when he did. But it didn't.
It blinked. Slowly. Then smiled.
Kairo did not.
"Not funny," he muttered, stepping forward.
The reflection didn't follow.
It watched him, lips curled slightly—almost apologetically. Then, without transition, it turned its back.
And walked away.
Across a surface that no longer reflected light at all.
Kairo's heart jumped once, sharp and involuntary.
The other him vanished into the mirrored floor, like water accepting a single drop.
[SYSTEM WARNING: DOMAIN // ENVY ENFORCES FALSE ECHOES]Not all reflections belong to you.
Kairo exhaled sharply and ran a hand through his hair. It felt longer than he remembered. He caught his own real reflection now, clean and accurate—gray eyes, jaw set, a faint scar under his left cheekbone. He still looked like him. Tired. A little older than before.
Kairo Vale. Still him. Still here. For now.
He moved.
The surface beneath his boots shimmered, not with color, but with suggestion. Buildings unfolded from reflections. Glass towers bloomed like flowers, spiraling upward from nothing. Bridges extended where he walked, assembling in response to his intent.
The world was designing itself for him.
Or for a version of him.
He stepped carefully, boots clicking softly on the newly-formed path. Below, the mirrored depths reflected not just the sky but entire false cities—versions of Domain: Origin, the Cathedral, even a burnt field he couldn't yet place.
He caught a glimpse of Lira's eyes in one panel.
Blinking.
But when he turned, there was nothing.
He moved cautiously down the corridor, each step answering with a soundless pressure beneath his boots—like the floor inhaled and exhaled with him. The mirrored walls swirled as he passed, their reflections warping slightly, bending inward and out like liquid breathing. The ceiling above was no more than a river of polished glass, and through it, shapes flickered—cities folded into themselves, staircases that spiraled nowhere, and distant silhouettes walking... upside-down.
No sky. No stars. Just endless refracted dimensions.
A flicker passed in the corner of his eye.
Kairo paused, glancing upward. One of the ceiling-walkers had stopped. It was him again—another version. This one limping. His face obscured by a bandage. When Kairo blinked, it was gone.
He whispered to himself, "How many of me are there?"
A narrow corridor unfurled ahead. No seams. No supports. Just glass walls that rippled faintly as he passed, like they breathed.
Each step echoed twice.
His own.
And one just behind.
He stopped.
So did the second echo.
He turned.
Nothing but reflections.
And then—faint—something shifted in the wall beside him. Not behind the mirror. In it.
A faint impression. A smudge. A palm print.
Small. Pale.
His size.
But fresh.
[SKILL TRIGGERED: SHATTER//TRUTH – LV.1]Perception realigned.
The walls around him peeled back—not physically, but perceptually. Beneath the perfect surface, distortions flickered. Faces. Hands reaching out. Versions of himself screaming silently. One with no mouth. One wearing the mask from the Pride Domain.
One with Lira's hand in his, smiling with eyes hollowed out like someone had scooped the soul from her head.
He reeled back.
The skill collapsed.
The walls shimmered, returned to stillness.
He forced himself onward. Every step now left behind not just an echo but a visual smear—faint glitches in the glass that didn't go away. His reflections multiplied, rippling outward like oil in water.
They whispered, but the words were backwards.
He heard his name. Then hers.
Then nothing.
At the end of the corridor, a door appeared.
White.
Ornate.
Carved from something that resembled bone, but flowed like melted candle wax.
A sigil was etched into it: a teardrop reflected upside down, the mark of Envy.
The door opened on its own.
Music spilled out—an old piano, slightly off-key, playing something painfully familiar.
And then a voice:
"You're early this time."
Kairo stiffened.
The voice wasn't Syne's.
It was his.
Exactly his.
Tone. Breath. Cadence.
But older.
He stepped through.
The room was a copy of something from a memory he couldn't place. High-backed chairs. A round wooden table. A teapot that never steamed. A broken mirror on the far wall reflecting only static.
And at the table, a man sat.
Kairo.
Another Kairo.
Older by years.
Eyes sunken. Lips dry. Face gaunt but controlled. He smiled when Kairo entered, though the smile didn't touch his eyes.
"Don't worry," he said softly. "You're still the real one. For now."
Kairo didn't sit. His hands tightened at his sides.
"I'm not here because of your failure," he said. "I'm here to destroy the cycle that created you."
Loop 7 smiled gently. "That's the thing about cycles, Kairo. You don't destroy them. You join them. Or you bend them until you're not sure if you're the spoke or the wheel."
"I'm not like you."
"Oh, I said that too. In my third loop, I think."
Kairo leaned over the table, hands flat on the mirrored surface, staring directly into his older self's hollow gaze.
"If you really are me… then you remember how stubborn I can be."
Loop 7's smile faltered, just a little.
"I also remember when that stopped being enough."
Kairo finally looked down.
Beneath the surface, the reflections weren't still. They shifted like deep sea shadows, endless Kairos flickering in and out of view—some screaming in silence, some curled in corners, some laughing with blood on their teeth.
A glimmer of silver caught his eye.
One reflection held a Fragment in its chest—embedded, glowing, pulsing with runes.
Kairo's own heart tightened.
Loop 7 followed his gaze. "That one… he didn't break. He absorbed all seven. Became something else. Something the system couldn't rewrite."
"What happened to him?"
"He disappeared," Loop 7 said, softly. "Or maybe he finally escaped. We never found out."
Kairo straightened slowly.
"I didn't come here for tea," he said.
"I know."
"I came for the Fragment of Envy. And to kill Syne."
Loop 7 tilted his head. "She's not what you think. She doesn't want your body. She wants your outcome."
"Then she'll be disappointed," Kairo said flatly.
Loop 7 gestured to the mirror wall behind him. A ripple passed across its surface like breath on ice.
"You should go. The next Echo is almost here. And he's not as polite as me."
Kairo stepped back from the table. The whispering reflections grew louder.
"I'll be seeing you," Loop 7 said with a wink.
Kairo's hand hovered over the door handle behind him. "Not if I break the loop."
And with that, he walked out—his reflection following two steps behind.