Lyra's weight against Aiden's arm felt impossibly light, but the pressure threading behind her eyes—the fractured memories tugging at her mind—felt heavy enough to bend the air around them. Every step toward the Shadow Market's exit tunnel was a risk. Every breath Aiden took was measured, controlled, restrained.
Because the parasite inside him was no longer hiding its hunger.
**ANCHOR IN PROXIMITY.
RESONANCE PATHWAY OPTIMAL.
SEEK CONTACT.**
Aiden clenched his jaw until it ached.
"Stay quiet," he whispered under his breath.
Lyra didn't hear him.
But the parasite did.
It murmured back, low and mechanical and disturbingly patient:
**You cannot save her.
Only integrate her.**
Aiden's shadows flared violently, forcing him to steady himself against the tunnel wall.
Lyra noticed.
"Aiden… are you hurt?"
Her voice was soft. Hesitant. Sweet in a way that made the parasite coil like a serpent sensing warmth.
Aiden forced a slow breath.
"I'm fine," he lied.
Lyra tightened her grip on his sleeve.
"No you're not. Your shadows—your eyes—they're shifting. And when I touched your hand, I…" She swallowed, voice trembling. "I saw things that weren't mine. Memories. Yours."
Aiden's heart dropped.
Too soon.
Too close.
Too dangerous.
He looked away quickly, afraid that meeting her eyes would trigger another Resonance pulse.
"I'm sorry," Aiden said quietly. "That shouldn't have happened."
Lyra shook her head. "But it did."
The fracture of moonlight danced across her irises as her brows pulled together.
"Aiden… who are you? Really?"
The question hit him harder than any monster had.
Shadows rippled uncontrollably behind him.
The parasite purred.
**Truth accelerates resonance.
Allow her to know.
Allow us to bond.**
Aiden dug his nails into his palm, using pain as an anchor.
"I can't tell you," he said, voice raw.
"Why not?"
"Because the truth would ruin you."
Lyra stepped in front of him suddenly, blocking the stairway.
Her face was pale—shaken—but her eyes burned with something fierce.
"Don't tell me what I can handle."
Her voice cracked. "Don't decide for me."
Aiden's breath stilled.
This was Lyra as he remembered her—
defiant, stubborn, unyielding in all the ways that made her unforgettable.
"Lyra… please."
"No," she whispered. "I see fractures when I look at you. I hear echoes of my own voice calling your name in places I've never been. I see you dying in a city that doesn't exist yet."
Aiden shut his eyes.
Every sentence she spoke split the timeline a little more.
"I need to know what you are," Lyra said. "Or what's happening to me."
He stepped back until shadows wrapped around him like armor.
"Lyra… if I tell you the truth, the world will start collapsing around you."
Her voice softened to a whisper.
"It already is."
Aiden opened his eyes.
And realized she was right.
The fracture behind her glowed brighter—silver threads forming patterns that looked disturbingly like wings.
She wasn't just remembering.
She was awakening.
The parasite surged with exhilaration.
**ANCHOR SYNCHRONIZATION: 12%
RESONANCE UNFOLDING.
HOST—SUBMIT.**
Aiden nearly screamed from the pressure building behind his ribs.
Lyra took his hand.
He flinched—
—but didn't pull away.
Her voice trembled.
"Aiden… please. Am I losing my mind?"
Aiden's answer was barely a breath.
"No.
You're remembering mine."
And the tunnel lights shattered.
The lights didn't simply flicker out—they **burst**, popping like glass spheres under a sudden shift in pressure. Darkness rolled through the tunnel like a silent wave.
Lyra gasped and instinctively pressed closer to Aiden.
His shadows reacted before he did.
A thin ring of black flame rippled around them, an automatic defensive reflex born from the parasite's predatory instinct. The air shivered with it. The walls groaned. The fracture behind Lyra glowed brighter, responding like a mirror to Aiden's rising instability.
The parasite whispered, ecstatic:
**ANCHOR CONTACT MAINTAINED.
RESONANCE CAPACITY EXPANDING.
ALLOW SYNCHRONIZATION.**
Aiden gritted his teeth hard enough to hurt.
He forced the shadow-flame down.
Forced the mantle to behave.
Forced the parasite into silence.
It worked… barely.
Lyra's fingers tightened around his sleeve.
"Aiden… what was that?"
"Not me," he lied.
His voice was too sharp, too fast.
Lyra's eyes narrowed.
"It _was_ you," she whispered. "Or something tied to you."
Aiden cursed internally.
He had survived monsters, gods, and the end of the world—
but one conversation with Lyra Everen could unravel him faster than a collapsing Rift.
She stepped around him, blocking the tunnel's exit again, her breath uneven but her posture unshakable.
"You can't protect me by keeping me in the dark."
Aiden didn't move.
He couldn't.
Not when another pulse of resonance flickered through her aura—silver and fragile and beautiful in a way that made his chest feel too tight.
Lyra continued:
"People don't hallucinate burning cities. Or someone's death. Or… or _your_ death."
She swallowed. "Not unless something is very wrong."
Aiden felt his throat close.
"It's complicated," he said.
"It's killing me," she replied softly. "Whatever this is—whatever's leaking into my mind—it's scaring me more than any monster attack ever did."
Her voice trembled.
"Aiden, I don't want to be afraid of you."
Aiden flinched.
That cut deeper than any blade.
He forced himself to step forward.
Careful.
Controlled.
As if the air might shatter if he breathed too loudly.
"You don't need to fear me," he said quietly. "You never did."
Lyra searched his face.
"How can you say that when I don't even know who you are?"
Aiden inhaled slowly.
He couldn't tell her the full truth.
Not here.
Not while the parasite was this unstable.
Not with the fractures listening.
But he could give her something.
A thread of truth, small but real.
"Lyra…"
He met her eyes.
Her breath hitched.
"In another life, I failed you."
Lyra froze.
He continued, voice barely a whisper.
"And I swore if I ever got another chance… I'd protect you. No matter the cost."
Silence filled the tunnel.
Lyra stared at him as if trying to recognize a ghost.
"Aiden," she whispered, "why does that sound like something I already knew?"
A pressure wave rolled through the tunnel—
a small reality tremor—
the fracture responding to her awakening memories.
The parasite surged.
**ANCHOR SYNCHRONIZATION: 18%
SEQUENCE PROGRESSING.**
Aiden slammed his back against the wall, forcing the surge back down.
Lyra stepped toward him.
He held up a shaking hand.
"Don't. Please."
She stopped immediately.
But her voice softened.
"You're shaking."
"I'm… holding something back," he breathed.
"Something dangerous?"
He nodded once.
Lyra didn't step away.
"You're hurting. And you're alone."
She hesitated, then added, "You don't have to be."
Aiden felt something collapse inside him.
A memory—faint, blurred, on the edge of being devoured by the parasite—
flashed through him:
Lyra grabbing his wrist on a rooftop under dying moonlight.
Her voice cracking:
_You don't have to face this alone, Aiden. Please, just once—let someone stay._
He almost fell to his knees.
Not from weakness.
From grief.
Lyra reached out again—slowly this time, giving him space to refuse.
Aiden didn't refuse.
Their hands touched.
A ripple of light—silver and violet—exploded between their palms, visible only to them.
Lyra gasped.
Aiden's shadows surged like breath.
The parasite whispered:
**ANCHOR RESPONSE CONFIRMED.
HEART RATE SYNC: 92%.
RESONANCE LINK: FORMING.**
Aiden tore his hand away with a choked sound.
"No—Lyra, you don't understand. If this completes—"
"Then tell me!" she cried. "Tell me what happens!"
Aiden's voice broke.
"You'll lose everything."
Lyra froze.
Aiden stepped back into the darkness.
"I can survive losing myself," he whispered. "But I won't let this thing take _you._"
Lyra's breath trembled.
"Aiden—"
The sirens overhead wailed louder.
Guild officers were descending.
Aiden forced his shadows to settle.
"This is my problem," he said. "Not yours."
"Aiden—don't walk away from me."
He shook his head.
"I'm not walking away."
A beat.
"I'm keeping you safe."
He turned—
Disappearing into the shadowed stairwell before she could reach him.
Lyra's knees hit the stone.
"Aiden…" she whispered to the empty tunnel.
The fracture behind her pulsed silver once—
—and followed him.
Aiden didn't breathe until he was three tunnels away. Even then, it wasn't breathing so much as _survival panting_—the kind you do when you've barely stopped your own powers from nuking someone you care about.
He leaned against a rusted pipe, sweat dripping down his temple, shadows flickering around his boots like restless wolves.
The parasite was furious.
**ANCHOR CONTACT SEVERED.
RESONANCE SEQUENCE INTERRUPTED.
HOST ACTION: HIGHLY INEFFICIENT.**
"Good," Aiden hissed. "Stay angry."
The parasite didn't bother hiding its contempt.
**Integration is inevitable.
Host sentimentality is delaying optimal evolution.**
"Sentimentality?" Aiden shot back. "You mean 'basic human decency'? Yeah, sue me."
Silence.
Then a cold warning:
**Memory Slot unstable.
Host identity degradation accelerating.**
Aiden's breath stopped.
"What… did I lose this time?"
The parasite gave no answer.
And that—
that silence was worse than the truth.
His hands curled into fists until the skin tore. Shadows leaked from the wounds like smoke.
He closed his eyes.
"Please… not her name," he whispered. "Not again."
A faint echo rippled through his mind—
a laugh he couldn't fully recall,
a smile blurred at the edges,
a voice calling his—
Then—
Gone.
Aiden's chest tightened.
He pushed off the wall violently and forced himself forward.
He needed distance.
He needed direction.
He needed to stabilize before the next collapse.
But as he turned a corner, his vision warped.
Not from the parasite.
Not from panic.
From the **world**.
The walls stretched too long, then snapped back. The torches flickered into moonlight, then darkness, then moonlight again. The floor fractured into two versions of itself—the present-day Market and a burned-out ruin from the end of the last timeline.
Aiden staggered.
"Not now—don't you dare—"
The tunnel split open like a mouth.
Aiden was thrown into memory.
He stood in a ruined street under a bleeding sky. Twin moons cracked like shattered glass. Fires roared in the distance.
This was the **Final Night.**
The night the world died.
The night he failed.
Aiden stumbled forward, heart pounding.
He knew this exact moment.
He knew what he was about to see, even though it tore his insides apart.
Lyra stood at the center of the street, surrounded by ash, reaching for him with shaking hands.
"Aiden!"
Her voice was broken, frantic, drowned in the roar of collapsing reality.
"Aiden—don't leave me—"
He tried to run to her.
His feet didn't move.
His body stayed locked in place—frozen in the position he remembered himself dying in.
Lyra screamed his name again—
a sound that haunted every regression, every nightmare, every "second chance."
Aiden clawed at the air.
"No. No. Please. I can't watch this again—"
But the timeline wasn't asking for permission.
The memory played.
Lyra lunged toward him—
—and was engulfed by a wave of black fire.
Aiden shouted until his voice broke.
Reality snapped—
And the shadow-fire turned into a familiar silhouette.
Aiden's breath froze.
**The Shadow-God Echo.**
His future self.
The parasite's end-stage evolution.
The monster that destroyed the world.
Its eyes—his eyes—glowed like twin voids as it stared at him across the collapsing memory.
"Incomplete," it whispered.
"Unstable."
"You are failing the cycle."
Aiden felt cold needles pierce his veins.
"You're not real," he choked. "You're just a memory."
The Echo tilted its head.
"Not memory.
Destination."
The parasite inside Aiden purred in perfect harmony.
**SINGULARITY FORM: FUTURE SELF CONFIRMED.**
Aiden stumbled backward.
"No—no, I am not becoming you—"
The Echo raised a hand.
Shadow erupted.
The world shattered—
Aiden slammed back into the real tunnel, hitting the floor so hard his vision went black around the edges.
He coughed violently, blood splattering the stone.
His entire body trembled.
His voice came out raw and broken:
"…Not… him. I won't let myself become him."
The parasite whispered, smug.
**All hosts become their pinnacle.
You are merely late.**
Aiden forced himself onto his knees.
"I will not be your weapon."
**You are already forged.**
He staggered to his feet, gripping the wall.
He needed air.
He needed the surface.
He needed to get away from the fractures before another memory collapsed.
But as he climbed the stairs out of the Shadow Market—
A familiar voice called from above.
"Aiden?"
He froze.
It wasn't Lyra.
It was Rowan Vance.
Guild lieutenant.
Early awakener.
Human lie detector.
And the last person who needed to see him looking like a collapsing paradox.
Rowan stepped into view, eyes narrowing.
"Aiden… why are your shadows behaving like that?"
Shit.
Not now.
Not him.
Not when Aiden could barely stand without the world fracturing at the edges.
Rowan took another step.
"You're coming with me," he said. "Right now."
Aiden's pulse slammed.
He backed away instinctively.
Rowan's eyes sharpened.
"Aiden Crowe," he said slowly, "what happened to you down there?"
Aiden swallowed.
The parasite whispered one final warning:
**DO NOT TRUST HIM.
HE SMELLS THE PARADOX.**
And Rowan's hand closed around Aiden's arm.