Senti's POV
The rain hadn't stopped for days.
Vale looked cleaner when it poured — like the city was trying to wash away everything it didn't want to see. But it never lasted. The dirt always came back.
I hadn't slept since the factory. Couldn't. Every time I closed my eyes, the reflection was there — standing behind my thoughts, wearing my face, speaking in a voice that wasn't layered anymore.
Now it was just one.
One tone.
One calm, perfect voice that never raised itself, never paused to breathe.
You did what you had to.
The White Fang had gone quiet after the incident. Patrol chatter said half their southern routes were empty. That should've been a victory.
It didn't feel like one.
I used to feel something after a fight — exhaustion, guilt, purpose. Now it was just silence. The kind that sticks under your skin.
I kept moving anyway.
When you stop, the city starts asking questions.
The reflection followed me everywhere now. Not in mirrors — in windows, in puddles, in the shine of my blades. Always there, always watching.
Sometimes I'd catch it moving when I didn't. Tilting its head. Smiling faintly.
Never mocking — just patient.
"You're enjoying this," I said once, walking down an empty street past shuttered stalls.
I'm not enjoying it, it said. I'm relieved. You've finally stopped pretending.
"Pretending to be what?"
Human.
I didn't answer.
The Fang's trail led north, toward Vale's transport lines. Smaller cells were reforming, taking advantage of the Atlas redeployments.
Every time one fell, another rose somewhere else.
You couldn't kill a cause. Only its believers.
I found a lead — a contact who used to run weapons for them. His name was Marn. Middle-aged, ex-merc, the kind of man who'd sell you a lie and invoice you for it.
He met me in an abandoned café near the river, eyes darting toward every window.
"You're the Wolf?"
I didn't correct him.
He slid a drive across the table. "Schedules, locations. Everything they're planning for the next quarter."
"What do you want for it?"
"Nothing. Just… stay away from my family."
I stared. "If you thought I was going to hurt them, you wouldn't have come."
He swallowed. "Doesn't mean I'm wrong."
The reflection whispered, He's lying.
I didn't want to believe it.
But when I connected the drive later, the data looped empty — corrupted beyond use.
That night, I went back to the café. Marn wasn't there.
The door was still locked from the inside.
And there was blood on the floor.
Atlas would write it off as another Fang dispute.
I knew better. Marn hadn't lied. Someone else had found him first.
I sat in the corner booth where we'd met, watching the rain bead on the window. The reflection appeared faintly in the glass — my eyes faintly gold in the streetlight.
You could still make this right, it said.
"How?"
End it. All of it. The Fang. The shipments. The network. You know where to start.
"And when it's done?"
Then you rest.
I laughed once, dry and bitter. "There's no rest for things like me."
Then there's quiet.
By the time I left, the rain had stopped. Vale's streets gleamed with light, clean for the first time in months.
It felt wrong.
The world shouldn't look peaceful after you decide to destroy it.
I reached my safehouse near dawn. The walls were damp, the floor still littered with glass from the mirror I'd shattered. I hadn't cleaned it up.
The shards caught the morning light, flashing like small suns.
For a second, I thought I saw movement between them — my reflection scattered across a hundred surfaces, all looking back at me.
Then they spoke, all in unison, one voice carried through a hundred mouths:
You're ready now.
"For what?"
The end of hesitation.
I stood there, surrounded by fragments of myself, and realized what they were showing me.
Not ghosts.
Not guilt.
Just inevitability.
The White Fang was a disease that wouldn't die on its own.
And maybe I wasn't meant to cure it.
Maybe I was just meant to cut it out.
The reflection smiled in every shard, and I smiled back.
For the first time, we looked the same.