Echo stepped into the abyss, the rain falling heavier now, each drop striking his skin like warnings whispered by the city itself. The footprints that led away into the fog—Lani's?—seemed impossible. She was supposed to be dead. She had died. Her absence had shaped everything he had become.
But the rules of the Mind-Eater's game had never been fair.
His heart pounded against his ribs as he followed the fading steps, each one pulling him deeper into the twisted veins of Nu'Ravin, where reality blurred. The further he walked, the more the world shifted—alleyways stretched unnaturally, buildings leaned inward, their windows blinking like silent sentinels. The rain turned thicker, redder, staining the cracked pavement beneath his feet.
Nu'Ravin was watching.
The city remembered him.
The streets twisted again, narrowing into a corridor of broken mirrors. Echo's reflection splintered in every direction—versions of him he could barely recognize. The boy from the Asylum. The King seated on his throne of stolen minds. The fragment of himself searching for answers.
And then—her.
A silhouette on the edge of the shattered reflections.
Lani.
She was waiting for him, just like she had been before.
Echo swallowed hard. He stepped closer.
She did the same.
Their mirrored movements made his skin crawl.
"You shouldn't be here," he whispered.
Her reflection spoke, but the voice didn't match the movement of her lips.
Neither should you.
Echo flinched. The voice echoed around him, warping, twisting—not Lani's, but something deeper. Older. A presence carved into the bones of the city itself.
The game was shifting again.
A flicker of light—the smallest pulse of energy—radiated from the silver key around his neck. It knew something he didn't. It had survived through every version of him, witnessing every rewrite.
Do you remember me now? Lani's voice asked.
Echo's fists clenched. "I—"
The mirrors shattered.
Echo was thrown backward, slammed against cold stone. The corridor vanished, replaced by endless darkness. He gasped, reaching blindly, feeling nothing beneath his fingers.
And then—
A stage.
A single spotlight flickered to life.
He was standing in the middle of an abandoned theater, velvet curtains swaying as if disturbed by unseen hands. The wooden floor beneath him creaked.
Rows of empty seats stretched out before him.
No audience.
Just echoes.
And on the stage, a chair.
Not just any chair.
The execution seat.
The one Lani had been strapped into the night she betrayed him.
Echo stumbled back, breath uneven, his pulse a hammer against his skull.
This was it.
This was where it had ended.
Where the Mind-Eater had lost control.
Where Lani had carved herself free from his influence.
You wanted to erase me. Her voice drifted through the theater, but there was no visible source—just the words pressing against his mind, forcing their way in.
Echo clenched his teeth. "You were going to kill me."
I was trying to save you.
The chair pulsed with dark energy, runes flickering along its wooden frame. The ropes that had once bound her twitched, curling like fingers.
Echo could feel it now—the weight of his past, pressing against the present. This wasn't just memory. This was a crack in the fabric of Nu'Ravin itself. The theater wasn't real.
It was a prison.
And he wasn't the only prisoner.
A movement in the shadows.
Something shifted in the rows of empty seats.
Echo turned sharply.
A figure stood.
Porcelain mask. Black teardrop.
One of the Red Court.
No.
Not just any.
His first.
***
Echo's breath was shallow, his pulse hammering beneath his ribs. The figure standing in the rows of empty seats did not move. It remained perfectly still, its porcelain mask gleaming in the dim glow of the theater. The black teardrop painted beneath its eye seemed to pulse, shifting with each flicker of the spotlight.
Echo swallowed hard. He knew who this was.
Not just another puppet of the Red Court.
The first.
The original mind he had rewritten.
He stepped forward, ignoring the way the execution chair behind him trembled with unseen energy. The rain outside had faded—no longer falling, no longer distracting. Nu'Ravin held its breath as if waiting for the confrontation.
The masked figure shifted at last, tilting its head in slow deliberation, watching him.
"Do you remember me?" it asked.
Echo clenched his fists.
The voice was familiar. Too familiar.
Lani's voice.
Echo's stomach twisted. The rain had erased her, wiped her from his mind. And yet—her voice had returned in the body of the first.
"You aren't her," Echo said, though the words lacked conviction.
The masked figure laughed—a soft, melodic sound, laced with sorrow. "No, but I carry her memories, just like you do. She left traces. She left pieces."
Echo stepped forward cautiously. "Why are you here?"
The masked figure lifted its hands, fingers trembling as it traced the edge of the mask. "To ask you the only question that matters, Echo."
The spotlight above dimmed. The theater groaned, shifting as if the walls themselves breathed. Echo's mind strained against the weight of the past pressing down on him. He could feel the truth coiling beneath his skin, clawing its way toward the surface.
The figure stepped closer.
It was barely a whisper when it spoke.
"What happens when the Mind-Eater is the one who gets rewritten?"
Echo's pulse froze.
Something inside him cracked—something deep, something foundational. The silver key around his neck pulsed wildly, as if struggling against the flood of realization.
"No," he murmured.
But the masked figure was relentless.
"You think you are the player in this game. The one pulling the strings. But haven't you asked yourself why the city keeps shifting? Why your memories never hold?"
Echo shook his head, stepping backward, stumbling slightly as the execution chair behind him rattled.
"You were rewritten too, Echo," the figure whispered. "Your mind was broken. Your past was reshaped. You were supposed to forget her entirely."
Echo's breathing was erratic now. The walls of the theater trembled. His heartbeat slammed against his ribs.
"Who?" he asked, barely able to form the word.
The masked figure tilted its head again, slow, deliberate.
"The girl you loved," it whispered. "The girl who refused to be rewritten. The girl who found a way to rewrite you instead."
A sharp pain exploded in Echo's skull. Images flashed. A red door, the scent of charred roses, fingers gripping his wrists as ink bled from his veins—
Lani's face, eyes defiant, whispering something he couldn't hear.
He had been trying to remember her all along.
But she hadn't been erased.
She had rewritten him.
Echo stumbled, clutching his temples. The silver key burned hotter. The masked figure did not move, did not press forward. It simply waited, watching him struggle against the truth unraveling in his mind.
"I—" Echo's voice cracked.
The execution chair behind him snapped violently, the ropes coiling around empty air, searching for something to bind.
The masked figure finally reached for its own face.
And in a slow, deliberate motion—
It removed the porcelain mask.
Echo's breath hitched.
It wasn't Lani.
But it wasn't a stranger, either.
It was himself.
An older version. A version that had seen more, lost more. A version that had understood the truth long before Echo had pieced it together.
His own reflection stared back at him, fractured but real.
"You were never meant to win the game," the version of him whispered. "Only to play it. And now?"
Echo took a step forward.
His reflection did the same.
"The rules have changed."
Nu'Ravin trembled violently.
The silver key around Echo's neck split in half.
And the city remembered everything.