The world that formed around me wasn't heaven, hell, or anything in between.
It was a memory trying to remember itself.
I opened my eyes to a vast cathedral of glass — walls made of reflections stacked endlessly, each one showing a different moment from my life. I saw the city skyline, the Bureau offices, the train yard. I saw myself, always from just out of reach.
And at the center, standing beneath a massive ring of light, was Aria.
Her hair was longer now, almost silver-white, moving like smoke in an invisible wind. Her expression was calm, but her eyes glowed faintly — not human, not demon, something in between.
"You made it back," she said softly.
I took a breath that didn't feel like breathing. "You sound surprised."
"I wasn't sure which part of you would come through."
I walked toward her. Every step echoed twice — once in sound, once in thought. The Core reacted to my presence; the mirrored walls rippled, shifting through fragments of our shared past.
"Where are we?" I asked.
"The Resonance Core," she said. "It's the place where our minds overlapped during the Dive. The Bureau built it as a containment field for dual consciousness. They used us to perfect it."
"Containment," I repeated. "For what?"
She hesitated. Then she turned and gestured toward the ring of light above us.
Inside it, suspended like a heartbeat, was a shape — neither human nor demon, but both. Its form shimmered and twisted constantly, like it couldn't decide what to be.
"That," she whispered, "is the Original Resonance."
The air around us vibrated. I could feel it — the hum of infinite thoughts compressed into one.
"The Bureau didn't invent the resonance experiments," Aria continued. "They discovered them. The Original Resonance was found deep beneath the city — a consciousness older than us, older than demons themselves. They said it could synchronize with any mind, mirror any emotion. It was the purest empathy ever recorded."
"Empathy," I muttered. "And they weaponized it."
She nodded. "They always do."
I stared up at the entity — the way it pulsed, as if breathing in rhythm with me. "It's… alive?"
"In a way. But it doesn't think. It reflects. It's what we used to call the Echo before it fragmented. The part of you that came back from the Dive—" she looked at me carefully "—might have carried some of it."
That explained the whispers. The hallucinations. The feeling of being watched by my own reflection.
I wasn't just haunted.
I was infected.
"Why didn't you tell me before?" I asked.
Aria's eyes darkened. "Because you were the only one who could reach me. If I told you the truth, you might've rejected the sync. I needed you to believe we were still separate."
I laughed bitterly. "So we're just two halves of a broken experiment now?"
"No." She stepped closer, her hand brushing mine. "We're the only part of it that's still human."
The Core trembled — faintly at first, then harder. The mirrored walls cracked, revealing flashes of reality outside: Bureau agents in sterile rooms, technicians shouting, Takeshi watching from a monitor.
"They're trying to pull us apart," she said. "They're flooding the system with interference."
"Can we stop them?"
She shook her head. "Not for long. But maybe we can choose what they take."
I frowned. "Meaning?"
"Meaning one of us stays. The other wakes up."
The words hit like a bullet.
"No," I said immediately. "We're not doing that."
"Ren, listen—"
"I came here to bring you back, not to lose you again."
Her expression softened, sadness blooming behind her eyes. "You don't understand. The Bureau's not after me. They're after the data inside me — my resonance patterns, the link to the Original. If they extract it while I'm conscious, they'll gain full access to every synced mind on the grid."
"So you want me to leave you behind to stop them?"
"If you wake up, you can destroy the connection from outside. End it for good."
"And what happens to you?"
She smiled faintly. "Then I become what I was meant to be — a reflection."
The tremors grew stronger. Shards of mirrored glass fell from the ceiling like rain, each one showing flashes of Bureau labs, machines, faces I'd almost forgotten.
Takeshi's voice echoed through the Core, distant and distorted:
"Ishikawa! The Core's destabilizing! If you're in there, get out now!"
I ignored it.
The ring of light above began to fracture. The Original Resonance stirred, its form becoming more defined — eyes forming, mouth stretching, as if mimicking us.
Aria stepped back, her hand glowing faintly. "Go, Ren. Please. Before it merges with you completely."
"I'm not leaving you," I said again, though my voice was shaking now. "There has to be another way."
She tilted her head — that same old habit from when she was thinking too fast for words. "Maybe there is."
She reached into her coat and pulled out the pendant. The same one I'd found in the train yard. It glowed softly now, pulsing with our shared heartbeat.
"This holds a resonance fragment of me," she said. "If you take it with you, I won't be gone. Just… quieter."
I wanted to argue, but my voice failed.
The Core was collapsing now — glass walls shattering, light turning into storms of data and memory. The Original Resonance screamed, a sound that wasn't sound but pressure, like the air itself was begging to be understood.
Aria grabbed my face, eyes locked to mine.
"Promise me," she whispered. "Don't let them use us again."
"I promise."
She smiled through tears — real this time, not the perfect composure she always wore. "Then go."
Light swallowed everything.
For a split second, I saw the Core implode — Aria standing beneath the collapsing ring, her hand raised toward the entity as it reached back. And then she was gone.
I woke up choking on air.
The lab around me was in chaos — alarms blaring, red lights flashing. Bureau technicians were shouting, their screens filled with static.
I ripped the cables from my body and fell to the floor, gasping. My reflection in the shattered glass looked almost human again.
Almost.
In my hand was the pendant. Cold. Silent.
Takeshi burst into the room, gun drawn, eyes wide. "Ren! What did you do?!"
I looked up at him, voice steady.
"I kept my promise."
He hesitated. "Where's Vale?"
I opened my hand. The pendant glowed once — faintly — then dimmed.
"She's gone," I said. "And so is the Core."
He stared at me like I'd just confessed to killing God. "Do you realize what you've done? You've erased the only working Resonance field left."
I stood, my legs shaking but steady. "Good."
"You think this is over? The Bureau won't stop."
"I know," I said, brushing past him. "But now, neither will I."
Outside, the city was quiet again. The storm had passed, but the air still smelled like electricity.
I walked down the empty street, the pendant clutched in my hand, feeling the faint pulse of something still alive inside it.
Her hum.
Her voice.
The echo between thoughts.
Somewhere deep in my skull, I heard her whisper again — soft, amused, familiar.
"You really are terrible at goodbyes."
I smiled, looking up at the gray dawn.
"Yeah," I murmured. "But I'm getting better at finding you."