Mirrors were outlawed after the Collapse. Not because of vanity, but because they revealed too much. In the world that remained, truth was a dangerous indulgence.
He stood before a broken shard embedded in a rusted frame, staring at the ghost of himself. The face he wore was not the one he remembered—because there were no memories left to align with it. His reflection flickered, glitching like corrupted data.
"They tampered with your thread," said Kira, watching from the shadows. "Your mind. Your memories. Your origin. All rewritten."
"Why?"
"Because you knew something they couldn't afford to exist. Something buried in the fracture."
She handed him a data scroll etched in fine threads of organic light. He opened it. It hummed.
"This is you," she said.
"No," he replied quietly. "This is what they made me into."
The scroll detailed experiments in consciousness, digital reincarnation, and synthetic souls. It referenced a place called The Threshold—beyond the machine veil, where the true world was said to end.
Kira's gaze hardened. "If you want truth, you'll have to go where reality thins. That's where they left the pieces of you."
The reflection in the mirror twisted—eyes growing deeper, darker, as if something inside watched back. He touched the glass. It shattered—not outward, but inward.
And so began his journey into the deeper dark.