The tower rose like a wound in the sky.
Twisted crimson spires spiraled into the clouds, jagged and pulsing, as though the stone itself was alive. Around its base, the air shimmered—heavy with Rift energy, like stepping into a dream you couldn't wake from.
Valen stood before it, breath slow, fingers curled around the hilt of his Echo-forged blade. Behind him, the rebels stirred uneasily. Kira stood closest, bandages still fresh on her side from the Hollow ambush two nights ago. Her face was pale, but her eyes sharp.
"This is it," Valen said, voice low. "The Red Cathedral."
They'd followed the Rift traces for days beyond the Ashlands—through ash-strewn wastelands, collapsed highways, and fields where time itself seemed to blur. But nothing had prepared them for this.
The Cathedral didn't just exist—it remembered.
And it wanted them to remember, too.
Inside the Cathedral
The first steps were the hardest.
No sound. No echo of footsteps. Only silence and the soft hum of something vast and ancient thinking just beneath the surface.
The interior was a labyrinth of red-veined walls and shifting corridors. They glowed faintly, like veins pulsing with bloodlight. The deeper they went, the more distorted the world became.
"Keep your minds clear," Valen warned. "The Rift is strong here. It feeds on memory."
"How do you fight something like that?" whispered one of the rebels—Nara, a younger scout, gripping her rifle too tightly.
"You don't," Kira answered before Valen could. "You survive it."
And that's when the illusions began.
The Past That Bleeds
They walked into a room and came out in another year.
The hallway twisted, then dissolved into a quiet street. Sunlight. A child's laughter. Valen froze.
He knew this street.
It was from before. From the life he buried.
"Valen?" Kira's voice was far away.
He turned—and saw her not as the soldier she was now, but as she had been. Before the apocalypse. Younger. Alive in a different way.
Behind her, his mother stood in the doorway of his childhood home. She smiled.
"Come inside," she said, voice warm. "Dinner's almost ready."
Valen's knees buckled. The smell—rice and fried garlic, just like it used to be—hit him like a bullet.
"It's not real," he whispered. "None of it's real."
But gods, it felt real.
He stepped forward before catching himself.
The Others Begin to Fall
Across the Cathedral, other rebels were falling into similar illusions. One cried out for a lost brother. Another curled into a ball, trapped in a memory of war. A third screamed, eyes wide with terror as the wall behind her shifted into the gates of the first Rift invasion.
Valen ran through the corridors, finding them one by one, breaking them free with touches of Echo—a jolt of truth strong enough to shatter the dream.
But it drained him.
And with each memory broken, his own grew louder.
The Illusion of Self
Eventually, the Cathedral gave him what it had been building toward:
Himself.
He entered a circular chamber at the tower's heart and saw someone standing in the center. Same build. Same voice. Same eyes.
But younger.
Softer.
Clean.
Before the apocalypse.
Before the screams, the fire, the black-marked sky.
The illusion tilted its head and smiled.
"Look at you," it said. "How far you've fallen."
Valen stared at him, at the boy he used to be.
"I did what I had to."
"You became a weapon," the illusion replied. "You let them carve you out until nothing was left but power and pain."
Valen's hands trembled. "And you died."
The illusion stepped forward. "I was human."
"And I survived."
The younger self laughed. "Is that what this is? Survival? You hear voices in your sleep. You wield power meant for things not born of this world. And look at you now—black eyes, cursed mark, a sword that drinks light."
Valen grit his teeth. "I fight for the living."
"You fight because it's the only thing left."
The walls pulsed around them, the cathedral feeding on the conflict.
The Choice
A mirror formed between them, hovering in the air.
One side reflected the old Valen—innocent, full of dreams.
The other, the current Valen—scarred, shadowed, burning with the Echo of the End.
The voice of the tower echoed through the chamber, neither male nor female. Not words, but understanding.
"To remember is to remain."
"To forget is to become."
The choice.
He could let go of the pain. Let the tower absorb it. Return to who he was. Be free of the voice. The burden. The coming war.
Or…
He could let that old self die. Truly die. And step into the monster he had to become.
He stared at both reflections.
One offered peace.
The other offered war.
He raised his hand—and shattered the mirror.
Becoming What He Must Be
Light exploded in the chamber.
When the smoke cleared, Valen stood alone, Echo swirling around him in dark flames. The illusion was gone. Not destroyed—absorbed.
He had not rejected who he was.
He had accepted who he had become.
The voice in his mind stirred, but it no longer laughed. It whispered low, watchful.
"You've chosen."
Valen turned and walked back through the halls, back to his team—some still recovering, others awakened by the shockwave.
He looked to Kira, who stared at him like she was seeing something both familiar and foreign.
"You made it," she said, voice dry.
"Barely," he admitted. "But I know what this place is now."
"And what is it?"
Valen looked back at the Cathedral, its walls beginning to crumble.
"A tomb for the person I used to be."
Outside the Tower
The team emerged into the dusk. The sun bled orange across the horizon, smoke curling from the cracks in the Cathedral. Behind them, the tower began to collapse in slow-motion—like it, too, was remembering how to die.
Valen turned to the others.
"No more illusions," he said. "No more running from who we are."
Kira nodded. "Then what now?"
He looked north.
"To the Riftfront."
The final war wasn't coming.
It had already begun.