The spiral behind them sealed shut.
No sound.
No light.
No air.
Just weightless stillness.
Lyle could no longer feel the direction of gravity—just the pull of something ancient, like thought frozen in time.
Juno clutched his hand.
He gripped back.
> If we lose contact, we lose everything.
---
The Codex didn't pulse anymore.
It shivered—fluttering with half-formed glyphs and broken fragments of text that no longer made sense.
> [Language Core: Decaying]
Memory fields collapsing.
Root Guardian: Dormant… or watching.
They passed through an arch that hadn't been there a second before.
On the other side?
A long hallway.
But it wasn't a hallway.
It was… every hallway Lyle had ever walked through in his life.
Layered on top of each other.
He saw the house he was raised in.
The library where he found the spellbook.
The hallway of the Academy's third floor.
All stacked.
All bleeding together.
Juno whispered, "We're walking through your mind."
"No," Lyle murmured. "We're walking through the Codex's memory of mine."
---
At the end of the corridor, a door with no knob.
Only a single word scratched into it:
> "Lie."
Lyle reached out.
The door didn't open.
It asked.
> "Which memory will you give up to pass?"
He froze.
Juno stepped forward.
"Take mine," she said. "I'll choose one."
"No," Lyle said. "That's not how this works."
He placed his palm on the door.
And whispered:
"Take the day I got my mother's final letter."
The door clicked.
And opened.
---
He staggered back—hard.
Juno caught him.
"Are you okay?"
He blinked. Confused.
"What… what letter?"
Then froze.
Because he knew something was missing.
He just didn't know what.
Juno's hand trembled.
"That was real. I saw you hold it. The one that led you to the Codex."
But Lyle looked at her now, and said:
"I don't remember anything like that."
---
Inside the door, the world changed again.
No corridor.
Just a vast field of mirrors, stretching in every direction.
Each mirror showed them.
But not them.
Slightly older.
Slightly broken.
Versions of themselves from futures that hadn't happened.
One showed Juno standing over Lyle's body, her hands bloodied.
Another showed Lyle alone, surrounded by shattered books, with glyphs tattooed down his spine like chains.
The third showed them holding hands, kneeling before a burning world—together, but too late.
The Codex pulsed once.
> [Initiating Echo Trial: Mirror Path]
Defeat the version of yourself that believes they've already won.
The mirrors cracked.
And from each… they stepped out.
Not reflections.
Echoes.
Lyle and Juno squared up.
No words.
No hesitation.
Because in this place, even doubt had weight.
And right now?
They couldn't afford a single ounce.