There was no impact when they landed.
Just a sudden, sickening stillness—like the world had muted itself.
Damon hit the ground hard, rolling across a surface that wasn’t stone, wasn’t tal, wasn’t anything he could na. It felt like stepping on the skin of a dream—soft one second, unyielding the next. Lira crashed beside him, gasping for breath. Shadow and Ember shook violently, their fur standing on end, eyes wide with primal terror.
The tear had spat them out into a place that shouldn’t exist.
A place shaped from the absence of reality.
Damon stood slowly, muscles trembling from the pull of the fracture. Above them, no sky—just layers of swirling gray, like ash drifting in water. The ground reflected faint, flickering images beneath their feet.
Images of mories.
Not just his.
Everyone’s.
Millions of them, overlapping in a whispering ocean.
Lira shivered. “Where... are we?”
Damon swallowed hard. “Inside the tear.”
His voice echoed strangely. Too loud. Too soft. Wrong.
Shadow growled low, ears flat. Ember pressed against Damon’s leg, whining.
Then a mory flickered beneath their feet—a younger Damon, sitting alone on a rooftop, staring at a city that still lived. Lira saw it and reached toward him, instinctively.
It dissolved the second her fingers touched it.
A pale light flared along the horizon. A structure erged—massive, angular, pulsing faintly. It wasn’t made of matter. It was made of events. Choices. Monts. Imagined futures that had never happened.
“The Hall of Unmade Monts,” a voice whispered.
Damon spun.
His perfected double stood several yards away, completely untouched by the chaos of the realm. His feet didn’t sink into the mory-ground. His hair didn’t move in the phantom breeze. He belonged here.
“You weren’t supposed to reach this place,” the double continued. “Only those chosen by the fracture can enter it willingly. You forced yourself in.”
Damon clenched his fists. “Good. Now tell how to get out.”
The perfected version smiled softly. “You don’t. Mortals who enter the Hall are absorbed into it. They beco... options.”
Lira stepped forward, fury burning in her eyes. “We’re not your options.”
The double didn’t even look at her. “You are Damon’s. Not mine.”
Shadows rippled along the ground. Not the wolves—sothing else. They slithered between mories, feeding on the fading images like parasites.
Damon pulled Lira closer, lowering his voice. “We move. Now. Away from him.”
But the double raised a hand, and the shadows stilled.
“You misunderstand,” he said. “I’m not here to kill you.”
Damon froze.
The double’s gaze softened. “I’m here to show you what you could have been—before the world ruined you.”
The Hall pulsed.
mories rose from the ground like ghosts:
—Damon choosing a different path.
—Damon saving people he never t.
—Damon living a life untouched by apocalypse, loss, or guilt.
—A Damon without blood on his hands.
Lira grabbed his arm. “Don’t look.”
But it was too late.
The perfect life of his perfect self towered before him—real enough to touch.
The double stepped beside him.
“All you must do,” he whispered, “is let this broken version of you fade.”
Damon’s heartbeat thundered in his chest.
The Hall waited.
The mories shimred.
And for the first ti...
Damon felt the temptation.
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