We buried her without a name.
No one said anything. No one wept. We didn't even leave a marker.
Just a hump of ground, half-frozen, hidden under the roots of a dying tree.
The others didn't think it mattered.
She was just one of the many that we'd lost.
But I remembered.
Not her face..it was already gone...but her scream when the fire took her. She held the bridge so we could run. She didn't hesitate. She didn't ask to be remembered.
She just burned.
And I ran.
---
It had been days since we departed the Fractured Crossing, but the image lingered on my mind like smoke in my lungs. I closed my eyes and saw her shape in the fire..her arms outstretched, her head tilted back, as if she'd taken something I still hadn't.
Luro told us we were going to shelter. An ancient ruin constructed prior to the Collapse. Nobody knew who had constructed it. Only that no creature ever ventured inside. Which meant, by our measurements, it was safe.
But I had learned one thing about why monsters stay away from places.
It's not because of kindness.
"---"
We arrived at the ruin just after dark.
Carved into the canyon wall, the entrance was guarded by three pillars of stone—split but still standing, each with symbols carved that writhed when you gazed at them for too long.
The others crowded in, thankful for stone walls and dry earth. But I lingered at the door.
Because the carvings on the stone?
Familiar.
Not from reading.
From before.
Before the fire. Before Kaelis disappeared. Before I changed my name.
"These marks remind you," something whispered within me.
I walked in regardless.
"_"
Within the ruin, the air didn't stir.
It was heavy. Quiet. As if time itself had ceased breathing.
Dust covered everything—floor, ceiling, bones. But no evidence of recent death. Only ancient quiet.
Hiran, one of the younger scouts, discovered a half-shattered sword with runes that glowed upon being touched. Luro took a beaten map. Others foraged in silence.
I strayed deeper.
Attracted to something that wasn't sound.
Felt like memory.
I stumbled upon the chamber by chance.
The rock under my foot split just so as to echo. I turned-noticed a hairline crack in the wall. A doorway, half-hidden behind a slab of carved obsidian.
I shoved.
It rolled open.
And beyond it.
A hall of mirrors.
Not glass. Not reflection. Memory.
Every panel flashed a glimpse of something different.
A battlefield flooded with black rain.
A spire of ash reaching for the stars.
A boy kneeling above a broken mask.
Both scenes concluded with a name seared onto the surface.
And one of them—
Kevin.
But not my script.
"..."
I took a step closer.
The panel blazed.
The scene changed.
And I watched myself—altered, older, face weathered by age—running. Not from combat.
From Kaelis.
He stood in the middle of a tempest, eyes blazing with light I couldn't identify, yelling something I couldn't hear. I stumbled. My other self whipped around, brandishing a blade at his own reflection—
And the glass exploded.
Next came the noise.
Stone scraping behind me.
I spun around.
A wall split apart.
And from it crawled something not alive.
Not quite dead either.
A Remnant.
Shadow-flesh and bone writhing like a man, eyes burning with pale fire. It didn't lunge. It didn't snarl.
It talked.
"Kevin."
Not yelled.
Whispered.
Like it was familiar with me.
Not now.
"I recall when you departed from her."
I froze.
"You clasped her hand and then released it."
Its smile stretched, splitting across its jaw.
"Just like Kaelis."
"..."
I didn't answer.
I unsheathed my blade instead.
The Remnant charged—quick, slashing, like thought in flesh. I dodged, swung low. Steel sang out, scored across its side. It did not bleed.
It laughed.
"Every loop, you try to forget."
"Every time, she dies again."
"Every time, he screams your name."
I plunged forward. Clean hit to the chest. My blade throbbed—silver-blue, with her scream on the bridge.
The Remnant grabbed.
Its body writhed, shattered, then disintegrated mid-sentence.
Gone.
---
Silence returned.
Except. it didn't.
The mirrors whispered.
The ruin recalled.
And in the dust where the Remnant perished, I saw it:
A name I'd buried.
My real name.
The one I'd used before I became Kevin.
The one I vowed never to utter again.
I fled the ruin shaking.
Back to the camp, where Luro glared at me suspiciously but remained silent. He knew better.
I sat beside the fire, holding my blade.
And waited for the dreams.
Because I knew that they would arrive.