The cry deepened until it filled every surface, every echo of glass and shadow. It wasn’t coming from one place anymore. It came from everywhere.Selene stumbled forward, covering her ears. “No no, it isn’t real.”But the sound twisted through the air, small at first, then sharper, more human, until it felt like a blade made of grief.Fowler followed the sound, drawn as if by instinct. He didn’t want to see it, yet he moved toward it, each step heavy with dread.The glass beneath him rippled with scenes from that night hospital lights, alarms, the white sheet he never wanted to remember.He saw the crib again. Only this time, there was someone standing beside it. Selene gasped. “That’s me…”Her reflection paler, thinner, eyes hollow stood rocking the cradle. The baby in her arms was wrapped in a blue blanket. Its tiny hand reached upward, grasping at nothing.“Don’t look,” Fowler whispered, though his own eyes wouldn’t close.The other Selene began to hum the lullaby, voice soft and b

Light swallowed everything. Not the soft, golden radiance of Selene’s power this light was colder, sharper. It carved instead of illuminated.Fowler tried to move, but his body refused him. The force pouring through his veins felt alive, threading fire beneath his skin. He reached for breath that wouldn’t come, for ground that no longer existed.And then darkness. He hit something solid, the impact knocking the air back into his lungs. His fingers found smooth glass beneath him, slick with condensation. He blinked, disoriented. The world had changed.The Sanctum was gone. He was standing in what looked like an infinite corridor of mirrors walls of translucent crystal, each surface reflecting not his face but fragments of other worlds.Cities suspended in midair. Oceans that burned like metal. Skies without suns.Every reflection moved independently, as though reality itself had been split into thousands of possibilities and he was walking through the fracture line.“Selene?” His voic

The world had gone quiet again. Not the kind of silence that came from peace, but the aftermath of something too large to name.Fowler walked through it with slow, deliberate steps, his boots crunching over the fractured earth. The horizon bled gray and gold, the morning sun trying to climb through what was left of the clouds.The handprint of light still hovered there massive, impossible, etched into the sky like the residue of a god’s touch. It pulsed faintly, each throb sending tremors through the ground.The closer he walked, the more the air thickened around him, humming with an energy that wasn’t wind and wasn’t alive.He stopped at what used to be the Sanctum’s perimeter. Now it was just rubble, twisted beams half-buried in soot and dust.A section of wall still stood upright, charred black, with streaks of gold light running through the cracks like veins.He reached out and touched one. The warmth bit through his skin not enough to burn, but sharp enough to make him flinch. Th

The hum beneath the earth didn’t fade. It grew. Fowler stood at the crater’s edge, chest heaving, staring at his own hands as gold light pulsed under the skin.Each beat of his heart echoed through the ground too loud, too synchronized. Nara backed away slowly, her scanner trembling in her hands, the display stuttering with impossible readings.“Fowler,” she whispered, voice trembling, “your vitals are off the charts. Neural resonance… quantum phase overlap God, I don’t even know what that means. You shouldn’t be standing.”He clenched his fists, trying to slow his breathing. The light inside him flared in answer, not resisting responding. It was alive. “She’s in here,” he said hoarsely. “Selene’s still here.”Nara shook her head. “No, Fowler. Whatever that thing is, it’s not her. It’s”He turned sharply. “Don’t say that.”Her voice cracked, a whisper now. “It’s changing you.”He looked down again. The gold glow wasn’t confined to his veins anymore. It was bleeding outward, spreading

The reflection blinked. It shouldn’t have. Reflections didn’t move on their own. But this one did slow, deliberate, with eyes that were his and not his.He felt it before he heard it: a low hum threading through his bones, pulling at the edges of thought. Every instinct screamed at him to look away. He didn’t.“You can’t win against a mirror,” the reflection said softly.Its mouth didn’t move. The words came from the space between their gazes, vibrating in the glass air. Fowler gritted his teeth. “You’re not me.”“I am what you made when you said yes to the light. You thought you could control it. You thought loving her would make it yours.”The voice had Selene’s rhythm gentle, unhurried but beneath it lay something vast and cold. “You can’t cut us apart. You are the line.”The ground trembled again. The fissures widened, exposing the furious rivers of gold and white beneath. Every pulse from below sent heat up through his knees, through his spine, into the space behind his eyes.He