Chapter 75: PATH OF THE UNWRITTEN
The door did not exist. Not in the classical sense, at least. It phased in and out of reality, stitched together by fluctuating threads of code, the form refusing to solidify.
One moment it was steel and stone, the next it shimmered into lines of gold script and recursive glyphs written in a language the system was never meant to understand.
Kaito didn’t hesitate. His boots passed through the veil with a gentle whine, the world tilting slightly around him as gravity lost its grip. Nyra followed him through, silent and unshakeable. Then Kael and Iris stepped through—refusing to be left behind, even if none of them knew what lay in front.
Air on the other side was colder, but not in any physical sense. It was dense with memory, static-charged and incomplete.
They walked into a hall of mirrors.
Not ordinary mirrors. They did not echo their bodies but their information—shards of what they had been, what they were, and what they would be.
In Kaito’s reflection, the Reaver mask expanded and contracted, stitched across his face like a parasite.
Underneath, other images emerged: a broken console, a boy screaming in a vacuum, the first time he made contact with the Abyss and it replied.
Each time he took a step, the sound repeated—first in the hallway around him, then again in the strange reflection ahead. It was like the echo had a mirror of its own. Still, he kept walking without pause.
Nyra shared no such bloody thoughts—but stranger ones. Her face dissolved into a score of expressions at once—some soft, some empty-eyed, some burning with the icy fire of systems long obscured.
For an instant, her figure twisted and she was a child walking hand in hand with a shadow. The shadow had no name, but Kaito felt it look at him through the glass, a mute defiance veiled in grief.