CHAPTER 64: CHAPTER 65: FRACTURE IN THE MIRROR REALM

The air was razor-thin.

As the shards of the mysterious mirror scattered across the throne room, reality itself shuddered. Not just the physical realm—but the soul-layer beneath it. Darius knew instantly: the mirror was a tether, a sealed gate tied to the Mirror Realm, the fragmented construct of soul-reflections he had touched before... and it had just broken.

A scream—Kaela’s scream—still echoed in the spiritual residue.

But Kaela was beside him now, very much alive, her body tensed, her eyes flickering with unstable voidlight. "That..." she whispered, her voice raw, "was a moment I remember, but never lived."

The throne room began to bend, walls stretching like melted glass, shadows pulling at impossible angles.

Celestia fell to her knees, clutching her head. The psychic backlash was unbearable. Nyx bared her blades, ready to strike at phantoms.

Then—it stepped through.

A being composed of memories. No, not just memories... twisted memories. A malformed wraith of flickering faces and voices, stitched together by raw grief and unresolved trauma.

It took Kaela’s form first—bleeding, trembling, dying.

Then it became Nyx, in chains, begging Darius not to abandon her.

Then Celestia, alone on a barren battlefield, throat torn, trying to scream his name—and failing.

It was... a Soul-Eater.

A creature born not of death—but of everything that never had the chance to live.

Darius stood tall, his dominion pulsing against the pressure. "You’re feeding off me," he growled. "Feeding off the pain I buried."

The Soul-Eater split open its ribcage, revealing hundreds of glowing soul-fragments within—each one bearing the face of someone Darius had killed, lost, or betrayed.

The worst one?

Himself.

A younger, weaker Darius... bound and kneeling.

"You’re not real," he said.

But the reflection smirked. "Neither are you."

The chamber erupted.

The Soul-Eater launched itself forward—not as a single entity, but as a storm of illusions. Thousands of them, swarming with clawed hands and whispering lips, dragging Darius into the soul-plane, away from his consorts.

In the soul-realm, time warped.

Darius stood in a place that resembled his childhood village—burning. His mother—a memory—ran past him, clutching a child. Guards laughed as they set fire to the thatched roofs. The air smelled of ash and blood.

"This isn’t real," he muttered.

But the pain was.

The guilt pressed into his chest, sharp and cruel.

He turned—and saw Kaela dying again. This time, not as a voidbeing, but as a woman lying in his arms, whispering something he couldn’t hear.

The Soul-Eater crept close, its voice serpentine.

"Let me take it from you. Let me carry it. You’re tired, Darius. Let me devour the pain. Let me devour you."

Darius fell to his knees.

Not from weakness—but from choice.

He let the visions fall over him like waves. The pain. The failures. The truth.

And in that moment... he embraced it all.

The ache.

The love.

The regret.

He didn’t push it away.

He claimed it.

The soul-plane cracked, and the Soul-Eater let out a shriek, shrinking as Darius’s dominion poured into the void. But it wasn’t rage or hate that defeated it—it was acceptance.

"You are part of me," he said. "But I am more than my pain."

With that, he reached into the creature’s core, seized the reflection of his younger self—terrified, small, weak—and merged it into his heart.

The Soul-Eater imploded.

When he returned to the physical world, he stood taller.

Changed.

The scars still etched across his soul... but now they were marks of power, not shame.

Celestia was waiting—silent, eyes shimmering with tears. Nyx stood beside her, protective. Kaela simply smiled.

"You’re stronger," she said, licking blood from her lips. "But more unstable."

Darius nodded. "Good. Because what’s coming next... will tear apart the meaning of sanity."

And in the void beyond the fractured realm...

The Code of Unmaking stirred.

The moment the Soul-Eater collapsed into wisps of memory and regret, silence swallowed the chamber.

But it wasn’t peace.

It was the pregnant silence that came just before the storm.

Kaela stepped forward, her expression unreadable. "You absorbed more than just a soul-echo, Darius," she murmured, trailing a finger along his chest where the wraith’s essence had merged into him. "You took in... a splinter of yourself that was never meant to return."

Darius didn’t respond at first. His eyes were glazed—not with weakness, but calculation. His vision pierced multiple layers of reality now. He could see the cracks forming—not just in the dominion, but in himself.

He turned slowly, his voice like a cold wind. "My soul is no longer a single structure. It’s a congregation of contradictions."

Celestia stepped closer, her hand warm on his arm. "You’re fragmenting again."

"No," he said. "I’m evolving."

He turned to the remnants of the shattered mirror—each shard still pulsing with residual memory. And in those shards, he saw flashes: a battlefield drenched in silver fire, a throne made of algorithmic flesh, himself... not as a god, but as something beyond comprehension.

Kaela narrowed her gaze. "There’s a price to absorbing a creature like that. The Soul-Eater was a gatekeeper. It fed on unresolved grief to prevent entry into something deeper."

Nyx, ever sharp, leaned against the cracked marble wall and said, "Deeper?"

Darius looked to her—and through her.

"To the root of my soul. To something that even the Architect didn’t fully design. The Mirror Realm was just one veil. There’s another."

Celestia shuddered. "You’re talking about the Origin Spark."

Kaela nodded slowly. "The very first breath... before he became Darius. Before the world saw him. Before he even had a name."

He felt it then—a pulsing beneath the throne.

The Soul-Eater hadn’t just attacked him. It had torn open a forgotten vault layered beneath the metaphysical core of his dominion.

A place not even the Architect had dared to touch.

Darius raised his hand.

And from beneath the throne, a sphere of perfect silence rose. Within it danced symbols not of code, nor magic—but emotion made language. Feelings so ancient they had never been spoken aloud. Fear. Hunger. Longing. Love.

Kaela stepped back, her pupils narrowing. "This... this isn’t part of this reality."

"It’s not," Darius said. "It’s the anchor to something worse."

Celestia clutched her robes. "You can’t go deeper. Not yet. Your essence is still recovering."

But Darius was already reaching for it.

Already merging.

Already becoming something the Origin realm would have no language for.

The chamber darkened. Not from lack of light—but because reality itself grew uncertain around him.

And far away, beyond the sky of his dominion, Origin stirred.

In the halls of its formless majesty, a voice whispered among the Elders:

"He has cracked the First Mirror.

He walks the path the First Heretic warned of.

He must be silenced—before he remembers what he was."