The air was glass.
It didn't shimmer or move—it simply waited, like a breath that hadn't been let go.
Vicky hovered over the still curve of the Web, her grief-shell trailing soft mist behind her. Beside her, Hector pulsed with quiet focus, his echo-sense radiating in spirals, following the last whisper of emotion through the lattice.
They hadn't spoken of Thiridain in some time, but it stayed with them.
Like a second heartbeat.
> "You've been quiet," Vicky said.
> "I keep thinking about him," Hector admitted. "Thiridain."
She nodded. "I know. I still hear that moment sometimes. Not like a voice. More like... something my mind keeps echoing."
> "Do you think it means something?" Hector asked.
> "Everything here means something," she replied. "But Thiridain—he's one of the Endless. That's not something we were supposed to touch."
> "Some gods never meet one," Hector murmured. "And we did. Both of us."
They floated in silence, letting that truth settle in.
It wasn't pride. It wasn't fear.
It was a kind of gravity—pulling on their souls.
> "Maybe that's why the others keep coming," Vicky said. "Why they keep... choosing us. Maybe Thiridain marked us, and now they see the mark."
> "Or maybe," Hector added, "they see a way to pass on what they've lost."
They looked around the glimmering strands of the Web. So many paths. So many knots. So many others, lost or sleeping, drifting through the woven sea of the unborn.
> "We're not chosen instead of them," Vicky said. "We're chosen for them. To carry what they couldn't."
Then the glassy stillness above them cracked—not loudly, but like a ripple through thought itself.
A surface unfurled in midair, glistening with impossible clarity. It was neither solid nor liquid. It reflected—but not them. Not quite.
Vicky stared at the water hung in the sky. It showed a version of her that had never existed.
The Vicky who didn't grieve.
The Vicky who never wore the shell.
The Vicky who refused to become.
Her breath caught.
> "You are not her," a voice said, clear and cool like dusk.
From the mirrored surface emerged no figure—but the shape of awareness itself.
Nahliv of the Mirror-Sky.
Its voice was a ripple through identity. Not sound, but the feeling of being seen too clearly.
> "You come seeking power. But power is only clarity sharpened to action."
> "What are you showing me?" Vicky whispered.
> "You. But not the you you are. The one you could never be."
Vicky reached toward the reflection. Her grief-shell flickered—uncertain. She was not afraid. But she could feel the tension of the mirror-world, pulling.
> "To become, you must choose," Nahliv said. "And choosing means losing the other lives you might have lived."
The mirror rippled.
Now Vicky saw herself older. Smiling. Hollow.
Then another version: wild, monstrous, burning with rage.
Then another: serene, untouchable, made of perfect stone.
She gasped. "None of them are me."
> "No," Nahliv said. "But they all might have been."
> "So what do I do?"
> "Step between them. Learn their weight. Then shed the ones that do not serve you."
Vicky focused. Her shell bent inward, folded over itself like a thought reversed. Then she slipped—only briefly—into the shape of one of her potential selves. Not fully, not forever.
Just long enough to taste the echo.
She felt what that Vicky would have felt.
And returned.
The grief-shell reformed.
Sharper now. More precise.
> "I can choose who I'm not," she whispered. "And by doing that... I learn who I am."
> "That is Becoming," Nahliv said. "And you are worthy of it."
With that, the mirror began to fold back into sky.
But not before leaving an imprint in her.
A hum—like memory stretched thin between lives.
She would carry it.
Even into birth.
---
Hector watched in silence.
But the Web stirred again.
Not above. Below.
The threads darkened—pulsing like veins. And from that depth, something ancient emerged.
A shape that looked like it had forgotten how to speak, but remembered how to hum.
Not forward. Not backward. A lullaby in reverse.
A great void rose—pale, faceless, open like a mind dreaming itself.
Thren the Moon-Eater.
> "You carry echoes that are not yours," the god said. "You collect what others forget."
Hector nodded, his body pulsing dimly. "I feel them sometimes. Other people's dreams. Their... shadows."
> "Dreams are not truth," Thren said, voice vibrating like a chord just out of tune. "They are the weight of truth. Compressed. Distorted. Left behind."
Hector floated closer.
> "So what am I meant to do with them?"
> "Touch them. Taste them. But do not keep them. They are not yours to own."
Thren exhaled—not air, but void. It blanketed Hector for a moment, not smothering, but stilling.
Within that hush, dreams echoed.
A child crying out for a parent never born.
A song sung to an empty cradle.
A man leaping from a height that never existed.
Each one flickered inside Hector.
He breathed them in—and then released them.
And something inside him opened. A space he hadn't noticed. A door that wasn't a door.
> "You can walk forgotten dreams now," Thren said. "Use them. But gently."
> "And after birth?"
> "The imprint will remain. Not memory. But capacity."
The god turned.
> "Tell no one you met me. Not all are ready for the weight."
Then it vanished, like a sigh beneath sleep.
---
Later, they floated side by side.
Two young souls marked by gods, and now, by an Endless.
> "Do you think it's fair?" Hector asked. "That we're the ones they picked?"
> "Fair?" Vicky smiled gently. "What part of this seems fair?"
They laughed.
Softly. But freely.
> "We're carrying more than just ourselves," she said. "That's the point. That's the gift. Or the burden. Maybe both."
> "You think we'll remember all this when we're born?"
She shook her head. "No. Not exactly. But we'll remember how to use what they gave us. The rest will be like a hum we almost know."
They were silent again.
And then, quietly, they began to hum that song—the one no one had ever sung to them.
Their code.
The feeling of home.
A tether between now and later. Between never and always.
Between souls yet born.