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Chapter 10 - Chapter 10: The Reset or the Reckoning

The world was white.

Blank. Unwritten.

Skye floated in nothing and everything. In her hand, the Merchant's coin flickered—Key or Eye.

Reset the world.

Or open it.

She closed her fingers around the coin—and time began to ripple.

---

Voices whispered in the whiteness.

"Skye! Come back!"

"You promised to fix this."

"You were always Maevra. Just hiding from yourself."

"This isn't the end. It's the echo."

---

Suddenly, she was back in the Watchtower.

But it was burning.

Smoke spiraled through the corridors. Screams echoed from fractured mirrors. The walls cracked like eggshells. The ring on her finger blazed red-hot.

And at the heart of the inferno stood Maevra.

Not a reflection.

Not a copy.

But her—fully formed, eyes glowing like stars ready to collapse.

"You stalled too long," Maevra said, voice layered like a chorus of broken glass. "The loop's collapsing. You brought us here."

Skye stepped forward.

"I am you," she said. "But I'm not your mistake anymore."

Maevra tilted her head. "Then choose."

The coin pulsed.

Key: erase all versions. Return to the start. A new life, memory wiped, no monsters—just peace.

Eye: destroy the Protocol. Let the truths run free. Let the world remember everything.

Behind her, the Merchant appeared, flickering like static.

"Be careful," he whispered. "You can't undo either choice. One gives you silence. The other gives you… consequence."

Skye stared at the coin.

She remembered the child in the Mirror Room. The twisted reflections. The laugh she didn't recognize. The deaths she might've caused. The inventions. The lies.

And she remembered the fire inside her.

She threw the coin in the air.

It spun—Key, Eye, Key, Eye—until it vanished mid-air.

Skye made her choice.

She reached into the burning vault and pulled out the original memory core—the glowing sphere that contained everything.

Then… she crushed it in her hand.

Light erupted from her body, blinding and endless.

---

When the world rebuilt itself, it was raining.

The city buzzed below. No fire. No Watchtower. No Mirror Room.

Just Skye, standing alone at a bus stop in a world that had never known her name.

She had no ring.

No Protocol.

No memory of who she had been—only a strange feeling when she passed mirrors. Like something was watching.

A phone buzzed in her pocket.

Unknown number.

One word.

"Echo?"

Skye stared.

And smiled.

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