There was no falling.
There was only dragging—as if so invisible force gripped Damon by the spine and yanked him through a thousand collapsing realities at once. Colors sared into streaks. Voices beca echoes inside echoes. His heartbeat synced with a rhythm that wasn’t his own.
Then—
THUD.
Damon struck solid ground hard enough to jolt the breath from his lungs.
He gasped, rolling onto his side. The world spun, but eventually shapes sharpened: cracked stone beneath him, swirling mist all around, and a sky that looked like wet ink dripping downward.
Shadow landed next, skidding beside him. Ember followed, growling. A heartbeat later, Lira crashed down in a tangle of limbs and curses.
She groaned. “If the world collapses one more ti this week, I’m suing the apocalypse.”
Damon managed a shaky breath. “You okay?”
“Define okay.”
She pushed herself up—and froze.
They weren’t in the Hall anymore.
They were on a broken pathway suspended over an impossible void. The path stretched endlessly both ways, cracked and glowing faintly, as if it rembered being whole. Beneath it, a hurricane of mories churned—faces, buildings, entire worlds rising and dissolving in seconds.
A corridor of lost futures.
Lira whispered, “Where... are we?”
A voice answered behind them.
“Where I wanted you.”
Damon spun.
His double stood at the center of the path, but no longer perfect.
Half his body flickered like corrupted glass. One eye glowed brilliantly, the other was hollow and dark. His once calm expression was twisted—half anguish, half fury.
“You think breaking the Hall freed you?” the double rasped. “No. It only stripped away illusions. Now I don’t need to pretend.”
Shadow snarled. Ember took a defensive stance. Damon stepped forward, fists clenched.
“What do you want from ?” Damon demanded.
“Not want.” The double’s voice grated like tal. “What I am owed. You are the broken branch. The failed life. But your existence pulls at —corrupts . I cannot be perfect while you remain.”
“So your solution is to erase ?”
“To replace you.”
The ground trembled.
The double raised a hand—and the sea of mories surged upward, forming shapes: people Damon loved, enemies he’d fought, monts he regretted, all twisted into ghost-like attackers with hollow faces.
Lira grabbed his arm. “Damon... we can’t fight mories.”
“We’re not fighting mories,” Damon said quietly. “We’re fighting him.”
The ghosts rushed forward.
Shadow leaped, ripping through illusions that dissolved on impact. Ember barreled into a swarm, scattering them like dust. Lira thrust her hands outward, sending a pulse of raw force that tore a hole through a wall of fragnted pasts.
Damon charged straight for his double.
Their collision this ti was real—flesh, bone, and raw rage.
The double grabbed Damon’s throat. “You are the mistake.”
Damon choked out, “Then why... are you afraid of ?”
For a split second, the double’s eye flickered.
He was afraid.
Damon wrenched free and slamd his fist into the double’s chest. Fractures spiderwebbed across the imitation body.
The pathway shook violently.
Below, the mory storm surged higher, hungrily reaching.
Lira scread, “Damon—MOVE!”
The path cracked under his feet.
And the entire corridor began to collapse.
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