The plain stretched endlessly—shattered but smooth, each surface reflecting a warped version of herself. Elena staggered upright, boots crunching on the scorched glass. Every reflection was wrong. So versions burned brighter, their eyes hollow lanterns. Others were already gone, ash outlines lingering in the shards.
Mira rose beside her, or what remained of her. Her body was patchwork light and matter, fractures woven together by a glow that pulsed with the sa rhythm as the hovering fla. Every ti it beat, Mira’s shards clicked back into place like a puzzle desperately trying to solve itself.
Elena’s chest throbbed. She pressed her hand against it, but the ember inside no longer felt alone. The third fla’s heartbeat matched her own, slipping into the rhythm of her body like it belonged there. She shivered with the realization: she wasn’t just carrying it. It was carrying her.
The silence of the plain was unbearable. No wind, no echoes—just the faint hum of the fla. But then, beneath the glass, movent stirred. Shadows writhed within the translucent floor, as if countless things were buried just under the surface. Their hands—or claws—scraped upward, leaving trails of blackened cracks in the pane.
Mira’s breath caught. “It’s not empty.”
The fla pulsed, and the cracks glowed white-hot. Shapes began to form in the glass—figures with faceless heads, their bodies stretched thin like molten silhouettes. They weren’t climbing out. They were being written into existence.
Elena’s instincts scread. She reached for Mira, but her hand burned when it touched her. Not from rejection—Mira was too bright, too unstable, as if holding her was like gripping the edge of a star.
“Elena.” Mira’s voice was both hers and sothing else’s—layered, harmonic, almost choral. “They’re not enemies. They’re... outcos. Possibilities.”
“Possibilities don’t try to claw their way into the world,” Elena spat, backing away as the first figure pressed against the glass hard enough to make the surface splinter.
The fla throbbed between them, faster now, like an accelerating heartbeat.
Carry. Break. Beco.
The words rattled through her bones.
“No,” Elena hissed. She clenched her fists, ember-fire crackling at her knuckles. “I won’t be rewritten.”
But when she tried to summon the ember’s fire outward, it resisted—not weakly, but with intention. Her power was no longer entirely hers to wield. The fla’s pulse caught it, reshaping the fire mid-strike into a circle of light that rippled across the plain.
The figures below stilled, as if waiting.
Mira stepped forward into the circle. The glow in her veins matched the sigil’s hum. “It’s not asking permission,” she said softly. “It’s directing.”
Elena’s jaw tightened, fury boiling with fear. “Then we cut it out before it takes everything.”
The fla beat again—once, twice—and the glass beneath their feet shattered into spiraling fragnts. The figures below rose, not as corpses or monsters, but as blank vessels of light, their hollow eyes fixed on Elena and Mira.
And with one synchronized breath, they spoke the words she already dreaded:
“Carry. Break. Beco.”
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