The reflection was still there. Two steps behind. Always two steps behind.
Kairo didn't look back. He didn't need to. He could feel its presence, a subtle shift in the air, a phantom weight on his cloak. It wasn't a shadow. It was a perfect, silent mirror of himself, moving with him, yet distinct. A constant, chilling reminder of Loop 7's words: "You're still the real one. For now."
The room he'd exited was a forgotten memory, already blurring at the edges of his perception. The corridor stretched endlessly before him, walls of polished, seamless glass reflecting his form into infinity. Each step he took echoed not just twice, but a hundred times, a cacophony of phantom footfalls that made his teeth ache. The air was cold, tasting faintly of ozone and something metallic, like old blood.
His hand instinctively went to his palm, where the Fragment of Pride pulsed with a faint, silver light. It was a constant thrum, a low hum beneath his skin that had nothing to do with his heartbeat.
[S.I.N. INTEGRITY: PRIDE 9% // CORRUPTION STABLE]
[STATUS EFFECT: ECHO WHISPER // MINOR]
The whisper was there, too. Not Eiras's voice, but a collective murmur, a chorus of forgotten selves. "Better… stronger… less human…" It was insidious, planting thoughts that felt like his own, yet subtly alien. He gritted his teeth, pushing the whispers back. Not mine. Not yet.
The corridor opened into a vast, sprawling city. Not a city of stone and mortar, but of reflections. Towers of shimmering glass spiraled into a mirrored sky, their peaks vanishing into recursive depths. Bridges, thin as razor wire, arced between impossibly tall structures, each one a perfect, inverted twin of the last. The light, refracted a thousand times, was a blinding, colorless glare that made his eyes water.
There were no people here, not in the traditional sense. Only reflections.
He saw them everywhere. Figures moving in the mirrored walls, on the glass bridges above, in the depths below. They were all Kairo. Hundreds of them. Some walked with purpose, others stumbled, some were curled into fetal positions, their faces contorted in silent screams. He saw versions of himself wearing different cloaks, different expressions, some with wounds that healed and unhealed in an endless loop.
A particularly gaunt reflection, its eyes wide with terror, suddenly slammed its face against the glass wall beside him. He flinched, but the glass was seamless, unmarred. The reflection simply dissolved, replaced by another, calmer Kairo, staring blankly ahead.
This place is a cage of selves, he thought, the idea chilling him to the bone. Syne doesn't just rule here. She is this place.
He tried to focus, to find a pattern, a path through the labyrinth of his own fractured existence. The city didn't follow conventional physics. Gravity seemed to apply differently to different reflections. A Kairo walking upside-down on the ceiling might suddenly appear right-side up on a distant tower's face. It was a dizzying, disorienting experience, a constant assault on his perception.
His Fork//Trace skill, newly acquired, hummed faintly, almost like a sixth sense. It was a passive awareness, a subtle pull towards the more significant Echoes, but it also made the sheer number of them overwhelming. Every flicker, every movement in the mirrored depths, was a potential version of him.
As he walked, the whispers grew louder. "You could have done more… You could have been faster… Why did you fail?" They were the voices of his past mistakes, amplified by the pervasive Sin of Envy. This domain wasn't just reflecting his image; it was reflecting his regrets, his perceived shortcomings, and the idealized versions of himself he could never quite reach.
He saw familiar faces, too, flickering in the reflections. A fleeting glimpse of a woman with braided red hair, then a man with a scarred eye. People he knew, but couldn't name. People from other loops, other lives. They were just reflections, but the raw emotion in their mirrored eyes was unsettlingly real.
Then, he saw her.
A reflection of Lira.
She stood on a bridge far above him, her snow-white hair luminous against the glare. She wasn't frozen. She was moving, her lips parted as if speaking. Her black, void-like eyes were fixed on him, and for a split second, he felt a surge of hope, a desperate longing for a familiar, trustworthy face in this maddening maze.
He raised a hand, about to call out.
But then, the reflection of his hand, two steps behind him, moved. It didn't mimic his movement. It reached out to her reflection, a gesture of desperate yearning.
And the Lira on the bridge smiled. A soft, knowing smile that didn't quite reach her eyes.
A cold dread coiled in Kairo's gut. "Not all reflections belong to you." The system warning from before echoed in his mind.
He forced his hand down. The phantom reflection of his hand, two steps behind, slowly lowered as well, its smile fading into a faint, melancholic expression.
He continued walking, but his gaze kept returning to the Lira reflection. She began to descend, moving with an unnatural grace, her form shimmering as she passed through layers of mirrored architecture. She was coming towards him.
Too easy, Kairo thought, the Pride Fragment pulsing a warning. Too perfect.
He found himself in a wide, circular plaza, the ground a vast, unbroken mirror. The Lira reflection was now directly in front of him, no longer a reflection, but a solid figure.
She looked exactly like the Lira he knew from the void. Same white hair, same void-black eyes. But her smile was too wide, too serene. It didn't have the sharp wit, the underlying weariness he'd seen in the real Lira. This Lira was… an ideal.
"Kairo," she said, her voice like wind chimes, soft and clear. "You came back."
He didn't answer. He watched her. His Shatter//Truth skill thrummed, ready.
She stepped closer, her hand extended. "You remember me, don't you? From the void. I told you… you promised me you'd kill the system."
Her words were perfect. The memory she invoked was real. But something in her cadence, in the way her eyes held no true depth, screamed false.
"What do you want?" Kairo asked, his voice flat.
Her smile faltered slightly. "I want to help you. The system is trying to erase me from this loop. It wants to keep you blind."
[SYSTEM ALERT: CONSTRUCT MANIPULATION DETECTED] [SOURCE: DOMAIN // ENVY // ENTITY: FALSE ECHO] [WARNING: PSYCHOLOGICAL SUBVERSION IN PROGRESS]
The system's alert was a jarring confirmation. This wasn't Lira. This was a sophisticated trap, a manifestation of the Envy Domain designed to exploit his longing for connection and his fragmented memories.
"You're not Lira," Kairo stated, his voice hard.
Her smile vanished. Her eyes, still black, seemed to deepen, to become truly empty. "How disappointing. You're getting smarter. The last one… he believed me until the very end."
Her hand, still extended, twisted. Her fingers elongated, sharpening into obsidian claws. The gentle chime of her voice deepened into a guttural snarl.
"Then I'll just have to make you believe."
She lunged.
Kairo reacted instinctively, activating Shatter//Truth. The world around him fractured, not physically, but perceptually. The flawless plaza shimmered, revealing underlying distortions. The False Lira's perfect form flickered, revealing glimpses of something skeletal beneath, something made of jagged glass shards and raw, exposed nerves. Her "beautiful" eyes were now a chaotic swirl of fragmented images—his own face, screaming, repeated endlessly.
The skill gave him a momentary advantage, disrupting her "logic tree" as the system described it. She recoiled, screeching, her form momentarily unstable.
Kairo didn't waste the opening. He lunged past her, aiming for the nearest exit from the plaza. He knew this wasn't a fight he could win head-on. Not yet. He needed to understand this domain, to find its weaknesses.
The False Lira recovered quickly, her form solidifying. She didn't pursue him directly. Instead, her voice, now a distorted echo of Lira's, boomed across the plaza, reverberating from every mirrored surface.
"You can't escape your reflection, Kairo! Every path leads back to yourself!"
As he ran, the mirrored ground beneath him began to shift. Reflections of his own running form multiplied, each one slightly different. Some ran faster, some slower, some stumbled and fell, only to be absorbed by the glass. The city itself seemed to be twisting, the spiraling towers bending inward, trying to funnel him.
[SYSTEM WARNING: DOMAIN // ENVY // ENTITY: LOOP 4 ECHO DETECTED] [THREAT LEVEL: CRITICAL] [IMMINENT CONFLICT]
Kairo skidded to a halt. The floor ahead of him rippled, and a section of the mirrored path solidified.
From it, a figure emerged.
Not a reflection. Not a phantom. Solid. Real.
It was him.
But this Kairo was different from Loop 7. His cloak was torn, stained with what looked like dried blood and ash. His face was a mask of grim determination, eyes narrowed, and a cruel, knowing smirk played on his lips. He held no weapon, but his hands were clenched, knuckles white. His presence radiated a raw, contained power, like a coiled spring.
This was the "unpolite" Echo.
Loop 4.
He didn't speak. He simply raised a hand, a single finger pointing at Kairo.
And then, all the reflections in the city, every single one of Kairo's faces, turned.
And they began to move.
Not towards Loop 4.
Towards him.
Kairo stood alone in the center of the vast, mirrored city, surrounded by an army of himself.