The cavern pulsed like a living lung.
Pillars of crystallized ore lined the walls, breathing with faint silver light. Every beat echoed through the tunnels — slow, deliberate, ancient.
Eunha could taste the metal in the air.
Jiheon's hand never left his sword.
Across the chamber, Eunho adjusted the mechanical arm strapped to his shoulder. The brass veins glowed faintly, like embers refusing to die.
"You shouldn't have come," he said without looking at them.
Eunha's voice was calm but cold. "You summoned me."
"I summoned a memory, not a person."
She frowned. "Then what am I?"
Eunho turned. "A fragment that refused to forget."
---
⚜️
Jiheon stepped forward, blade half-drawn. "Enough riddles. Speak plainly."
Eunho's smile was almost pitying. "You always were impatient, even in the last cycle."
That word again — cycle.
Eunha's pulse spiked. "You remember too?"
He nodded. "I've lived through four resets, sister. Four lives that began with your death and ended with the empire's collapse. Each time, the Axis pulls us back to the moment it believes can 'correct' the imbalance."
"And this imbalance—what is it?"
"The lie that keeps the empire alive."
He turned toward the glowing ore vein that bisected the chamber. "They said the Axis was a divine relic — a blessing of rebirth. But it was never divine. It was engineered."
Jiheon's eyes narrowed. "By who?"
"The Alchemists of the First Court — Vara, Joon, Kira, Sun, Myung, Ae. The same names in your journal. They built it as a failsafe — a temporal seal to preserve their empire's ideals. But when corruption took root, the Axis began to rewrite reality itself to 'fix' humanity's flaws."
Eunha's breath caught. "So… all of this—my execution, my rebirth—it's part of its mechanism?"
"Yes. The Axis keeps dragging you back because you're the anomaly — the one soul that never fulfills her 'designated role.'"
Jiheon's voice was low. "And what's mine?"
Eunho's eyes softened. "The Knight who never saves her."
---
⚜️
Silence.
Then the hum deepened — the sound of the earth exhaling.
The crystals around them brightened, reacting to their presence. Shadows stretched, forming shapes — figures from the past, looping endlessly in silent motion.
Eunha saw herself — dying again and again in a thousand mirrored timelines: on the scaffold, in a burning library, in Jiheon's arms beneath a crimson sky.
Her knees nearly buckled.
"Stop it," she whispered.
"It's not me," Eunho said. "It's the Axis showing you the pattern."
Jiheon reached for her, steadying her shoulder. "Look away."
She didn't. She couldn't.
In one reflection, Jiheon was kneeling — sword buried in her chest, tears streaking his face.
Her voice cracked. "What is that?"
Eunho's tone turned grim. "The cycle where he chose duty over love. The empire survived five more years before burning again."
Jiheon's hand trembled. "I'd never—"
"You already did," Eunho interrupted. "You just don't remember it."
---
⚜️
The chamber began to quake.
Eunho turned toward the glowing core embedded in the stone — a heart of shifting light, pulsing faster now.
"The Axis senses instability," he warned. "The more we question it, the more it resists."
"So what do we do?" Eunha asked.
"We end it."
"How?"
He reached into his satchel and pulled out a shard of black crystal, humming faintly. "This is a disruptor. It can sever the Axis's cycle — permanently. But it comes with a cost."
Eunha's eyes narrowed. "What cost?"
"Every soul tied to the covenant loses its memories — and its existence. We'll all vanish, as if we never were."
The silence that followed was thick enough to choke on.
Eunha spoke first. "Then the empire starts over clean."
"No," Eunho said. "It starts over empty. Without the lessons, the pain, the memory of what we fought for."
Jiheon looked between them. "So either we die endlessly… or erase everything we've ever been."
Eunha exhaled slowly. "Some choices aren't meant to feel right."
---
⚜️
A tremor shook the ground. Dust rained from the ceiling.
From the tunnel behind them came the clatter of armor — voices shouting, boots pounding against stone.
Imperial scouts.
Eunho cursed. "They followed you."
"They followed the Axis," Jiheon corrected, unsheathing his blade. "It's drawing everything in."
Eunho shoved the disruptor into Eunha's hands. "Go. Take it to the heart. It must touch the core directly."
"What about you?" she demanded.
"I'll hold them off."
"No."
He smiled faintly — the same tired grin she remembered from before her first death. "You can't save me in every timeline, sister. Try saving yourself this time."
He turned before she could protest, raising his mechanical arm. Alchemical runes flared to life — blue fire erupting from his fingertips as soldiers stormed the chamber.
The air became chaos — steel clashing, magic cracking, screams swallowed by thunder.
Jiheon grabbed Eunha's wrist. "Go!"
---
⚜️
They ran through the labyrinth, the hum growing louder until it became a roar. The corridor opened into a vast circular chamber — the Axis's core.
It floated above the ground — a sphere of light and metal, its surface shifting like molten glass, thousands of runes orbiting it in perfect rhythm.
Eunha approached, every step heavier than the last. Her reflection warped across the sphere's surface — countless versions of herself flickering in and out, each whispering a different fate.
Jiheon stood behind her, silent, watching the glow paint her face in silver.
She raised the disruptor. It vibrated in her hand, as if resisting its own purpose.
Jiheon's voice broke the silence. "If you do this, you'll lose everything. Every memory, every person you ever loved."
"I've already lost them a hundred times."
"Then let's lose together — not fade apart."
She turned to him, tears streaking her face. "You'd forget me."
"Then I'll fall in love with you again."
---
⚜️
She smiled — a fragile, human thing — and pressed the shard against the Axis.
The light flared.
The world cracked.
Time folded in on itself, collapsing into a blinding pulse. Every memory — the scaffold, the fire, the laughter, the betrayal — surged through her in a single breath before being pulled away, erased, unmade.
Jiheon reached for her hand as reality fractured.
"Eunha—!"
Then — silence.
The Axis stilled. The hum ceased.
For the first time in a thousand years, the empire slept.