The elevator had no buttons. No cables. No walls.
Just a narrow platform suspended in nothingness — waiting, humming with memory.
Cobb stepped onto it first, eyes tight, jaw clenched. Aeon followed without hesitation.
The moment their feet touched the platform together, the descent began.
There was no motion, only sensation — as if their souls were being pulled downward, through layers of silence and weight. Colors passed like brushstrokes. Whispers fluttered like leaves caught in breathless wind.
Aeon closed his eyes.
He could feel it now — the texture of the dream changing.
The air thickened.
The truth began to bend.
When the descent ended, they stood in a house.
Not a replica — but a memory, whole and raw.
It was evening.
Outside the windows, the city blinked in quiet light, but the house remained untouched by time. Books on shelves. A record playing a familiar tune. A single glass of wine half-drunk on the table.
Cobb didn't move.
Aeon looked around.
"This is where it began," he said.
Cobb nodded slowly. "The night she asked me to go deeper with her. Before I knew the layers could blur."
He stepped forward, brushing his fingers against the edge of the table.
"She smiled that night," he whispered. "But it wasn't real. She wanted me to stay, even then."
The music warped — slowed, then reversed.
Outside, the lights began to dim, one by one.
Aeon turned toward the hallway. "Something's coming."
They moved room to room.
Photographs stared back at them with eyeless smiles. One showed Cobb and Mal on a beach, but the ocean behind them had no horizon. In another, the children's faces had been scratched out from the inside of the glass.
Cobb's breath grew unsteady.
"I buried these," he said. "I locked this layer. No one should be here."
"You didn't bury them deep enough," Aeon said. "Or something helped them surface."
A door opened by itself.
Beyond it: a spiral staircase, descending into darkness.
Cobb hesitated.
Aeon placed a hand on his shoulder.
"She's not waiting for you," Aeon said gently. "She's using you to wait for it."
Cobb nodded once.
And they descended.
The staircase emptied into a cathedral.
Vast.
Impossible.
Floating above them was a constellation of chandeliers, glowing softly. Instead of pews, memories filled the space — frozen moments, looping endlessly in silence.
Cobb walking with his daughter.
Mal laughing in the sun.
The children sleeping beside a fireplace.
Each image shimmered, but behind every one was a fracture — a jagged break that flickered with something dark.
Aeon looked up.
At the altar stood Mal.
But not as before.
This was no passive observer.
She wore white now, her dress rippling with shadows. Her hair floated as if underwater. Her expression was calm, but her eyes — her eyes were fathomless voids, and when she smiled, the stone walls cracked.
"You came back," she said.
Cobb took a step forward. "Mal…"
"No," Aeon said sharply. "That's not her voice."
The woman turned her gaze to Aeon. "But I remember you."
The dream shook.
Aeon narrowed his eyes.
The Shadow was here — not as a storm, but as a whisper inside love.
"You're wearing her," Aeon said.
"Love is the easiest mask," she replied.
Cobb dropped to his knees.
"She's mine," he murmured. "She's—"
"She's gone," Aeon said. "This is her shadow. Yours. And mine."
Mal took a step down from the altar. The air around her shimmered with familiar forms — the outline of a child, the broken crown of a king, a battlefield lined with crosses.
"You're not just her memory," Aeon said. "You're a wound."
"A gift," the figure corrected. "He gave me her grief."
"Who?" Cobb asked, looking up.
But Aeon already knew.
The Shadow wasn't here fully.
But it had left a piece behind.
The cathedral darkened.
The memory-images twisted. The children's faces turned hollow. Laughter echoed like screams.
Mal raised her hand.
The dream tore.
Aeon stepped forward, eyes glowing faintly.
"Cobb," he said without looking back, "you need to remember what she asked of you before she left."
Cobb stared at the floor. "She told me to stay."
"No," Aeon said. "She told you to live."
The false Mal hissed. "He doesn't want to live."
Aeon raised his hand — and the shadows recoiled.
"You don't decide that."
Light bloomed in the space between them — not alchemy, not dream logic, but truth. Aeon stepped into it, and the shadow-image of Mal faltered, her voice cracking mid-sentence.
Cobb stood.
Shaking.
He looked her in the eyes.
"I'm sorry," he said. "But I know now… this isn't you."
The figure screamed — and the cathedral collapsed inward.
The dream cracked like glass.
Aeon grabbed Cobb's arm.
And they fell.
Downward, deeper still — but now, chasing what remained of the truth.