The plain of mories shuddered beneath Damon’s feet.
Each tremor sent waves of shifting images rolling outward—scenes from his childhood, nightmares, monts he had never lived but could have, all blurring together in a chaotic tapestry. Above them, the sky split wider, white fractures spiderwebbing through the void.
The creature stood at the center of it all, a twisted echo of Damon trying desperately to stabilize its stolen form. It shook, glitching between versions of him—angry, frightened, older, younger—none of them able to hold.
Damon wiped blood from his mouth and steadied his stance.
“Only one of us leaves,” he said softly.
The creature’s mouth twitched into a broken smile.
“Yes.
And I deserve existence more than you.”
Its skin peeled back, revealing a churning storm of mories beneath—faces and voices Damon didn’t recognize colliding with his own.
Damon took a single step forward.
“So prove it.”
The creature scread—not a sound of rage, but of desperation—and charged.
Damon braced.
The impact shook the Between.
Both of them were thrown backward through layers of overlapping mories—stumbling through his childhood ho, falling through a street he’d never walked, sliding across a frozen lake from soone else’s life. Each mory dissolved the mont they touched it.
The creature slashed at him, claws made of fractured mory-light flickering in its hands.
Damon ducked, rolled, and grabbed the creature’s arm—only for it to split into two arms, then three, all grabbing him, all pulling him closer.
“Give the rest,” it hissed, mouths multiplying across its body.
“All the paths you never took.
All the choices you didn’t make.
All the versions of you that died inside.
I want THEM!”
Damon snarled.
“Then you should’ve picked soone weaker.”
He slamd his forehead into the creature’s face.
A burst of white erupted outward as both stumbled apart.
The ground flickered violently. The Between was destabilizing—fast.
Images shattered like glass beneath them, falling into the crack-lined void below.
The creature rose, shaking.
Its stolen Damon-face warped as it shrieked:
“I AM YOU! I DESERVE TO EXIST!”
Damon’s breath faltered—but only for a second.
He saw a mory flicker beneath his feet.
Lira smiling at him.
Shadow resting his head on Damon’s knee.
Ember curled beside a fire.
A promise he had never said out loud:
I won’t abandon them.
He straightened.
“No,” Damon said. “You’re not .
You’re everything I refused to beco.”
The creature lunged.
Damon didn’t step back.
He stepped through the attack, grabbed the creature by the wrist and shoulder, twisted—
—and slamd it onto the cracking plain.
The creature howled as its form split into dozens of versions, all writhing, all dissolving.
Damon pressed his palm against its chest.
“This is where you end.”
The creature’s many eyes widened.
“Please... don’t erase ... I just wanted—”
“—to be real. I know,” Damon whispered.
“But you’re not real by stealing others. You beco real by choosing.”
He pushed.
mory-light surged through him and into the creature.
Not to feed it.
To unmake it.
The creature scread—voices overlapping, collapsing—
and then its form shattered into thin, dissolving ribbons of white.
The Between went silent.
Damon fell to one knee, breathing hard.
The plain around him cracked open. The sky tore wider, pulling him upward like a rising tide.
“Lira...” he whispered.
The Between collapsed in a blinding flash.
And Damon was thrown back toward reality—
alone.
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