Damon’s breath caught in his throat.
The mories floating before him shimred with impossible warmth—sunlight untouched by ash, streets alive with people who never died, a future where he wasn’t hunted by fate. It was too real. Too bright. Too cruel.
His perfected double stepped beside him, hands folded behind his back as though showing an exhibit.
“This is what you were supposed to be,” the double murmured. “Before the world made you small. Before it carved you down to survival and scars.”
One mory drifted close—a version of Damon holding a child with Lira’s eyes. Damon flinched and looked away instantly, heart hamring.
Lira grabbed his arm. “Don’t engage with it. This place feeds on doubt.”
But the ground below them pulsed, reacting to Damon’s hesitation.
Perfect Damon smiled faintly. “It’s not doubt. It’s recognition.”
Another mory rose—Damon in a clean apartnt, cooking dinner with hands unshaken by violence. Another—Damon laughing with friends he’d lost long ago. Another—Damon winning a dal at so event he never lived long enough to experience.
“You see?” the double whispered. “You were never ant to be the man scraping through ruins. Or depending on wolves to survive. Or dragging Lira into horrors she was never ant to endure.”
Lira stiffened. Shadow growled. Ember stepped forward, hackles raised.
Damon shut his eyes. The images seared deeper behind his eyelids.
A normal life.
A peaceful life.
A whole life.
It was everything he’d ever wanted. Everything he’d given up.
A hand touched his shoulder.
Not Lira’s.
His double’s.
“Let this broken version fade,” Perfect Damon said gently. “You’ve carried pain too long. Step into what you were always ant to be.”
Damon opened his eyes—and the perfect life expanded, showing a Damon who never lost control, who never hurt anyone, who never bore the weight of mistakes.
But then...
A mory flickered that shouldn’t have been there.
Damon saw his wolves.
Shadow and Ember—older, peaceful, resting beside him in a world without ruin.
And Lira.
Sitting on a rooftop with him, her hand in his.
Not the Lira from this apocalypse. A version of her from that perfect world—a world where she was safe, free, smiling in sunlight.
But her eyes were wrong.
Empty.
Unknowing.
A stranger wearing the face of soone he loved.
Damon’s chest tightened. His breathing steadied.
“That isn’t her,” he said.
The double blinked. “What?”
“That’s not Lira.” Damon stepped back. “That’s just your version of her. A pretty shape in a pretty mory.”
The perfected Damon’s expression cracked.
Damon’s voice hardened. “My life—the one you call broken—gave them.” He motioned to Lira, to Shadow, to Ember. “Pain or not, that life is real. These bonds are real.”
The Hall shuddered, reacting to his resolve.
The double’s calm shattered. “You’re choosing suffering.”
“No.” Damon’s eyes burned. “I’m choosing truth.”
The mories darkened. The perfect world flickered.
The double lunged.
Lira shouted, “Damon!”
And the Hall of Unmade Monts collapsed into chaos.
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