CHAPTER 64: CHAPTER 64 –“THE SAVIOR’S SHADOW”

The world should not bleed.

Yet the Pane did.

The lattice of silver law was cracked open, dripping not blood, but a strange river of liquid light—black, violet, and crimson all at once, twisting like smoke through water. The shards of order that fell to the ground fizzled, rewriting themselves into nothing, erasing their own meaning before they could touch the ground.

Ren staggered forward, Thorn clutched so tightly his knuckles split. His breath came in ragged pulls. Every second holding the Thorn now felt like it was flaying him alive. The ruin-light seared deeper into his skin, spreading veins of black fire along his arms and neck.

But he didn’t let go.

The girl was beside him, silver flame dancing wildly from her palms. She stared at the Pane with trembling eyes, her voice caught between awe and horror.

"You... you really cut it. You made the infinite bleed."

Ren forced a grin, though his vision swam. "Guess infinity isn’t as untouchable as it thinks."

Above them, the Pane convulsed. Its voice cracked, no longer the flawless decree it once was, but a broken hymn.

"REN... CHILD OF DEFECT... YOU ARE... UNNATURAL. THIS... WILL NOT STAND."

The Mirror World answered the Pane’s cry.

The ground rippled like liquid. The sky twisted into a spiral of fractured eyes. Every reflection—every shard of broken glass across the battlefield—turned into a screaming mouth, spitting fragments of language that made the air tremble.

The world itself was convulsing because law had been wounded.

Ren braced himself as the Pane extended its wound like an infection. Its lattice pulsed, pouring more of that black-violet ichor into the air, and suddenly the Mirror World wasn’t just unstable—it was dying.

The girl’s flame flared, struggling to hold the world around them steady. Her voice was sharp now, commanding.

"Ren! If it bleeds too much, the Pane will collapse—this entire world will collapse with it!"

Ren spat blood into the ruin-cracked dirt, chuckling. "Sounds like a good start."

She shook her head, grabbing his shoulder hard enough to ground him. "No—you don’t understand. If the Pane falls completely, this world doesn’t vanish. It breaks open. Every reflection, every memory, every distortion will spill into your world. Nothing will separate them anymore."

Ren froze. His grip on the Thorn trembled, his grin faltering.

"...You’re saying the Pane isn’t just a cage. It’s... a dam."

Her silver eyes burned as she nodded. "And you just cracked it."

The Pane’s voice thundered again, fragments of words breaking apart as if the language itself was bleeding.

"YOU ARE THE ERROR. YOU WILL BE ERASED."

The sky split. From its wound poured not soldiers, but something worse.

Fragments of time, jagged as glass, falling like meteors. A hundred different versions of Ren—reflections twisted by doubt, fear, rage—spilled across the battlefield, eyes glowing, Thorn-shadows gripped in their hands.

Every one of them was him.

The Pane hissed, its voice doubling.

"KILL YOURSELVES. ERASE THE ERROR."

Ren’s heart pounded. He stood face-to-face with his own fragments, his own shadows, all born from the Pane’s wound. The battlefield was no longer a war—it was a mirror of himself.

And in that moment, he realized:

Hurting the Pane was only the beginning.

The battlefield had become a hall of mirrors without walls.

Dozens—no, hundreds—of versions of Ren stepped out from the shards raining from the cracked Pane. Their silhouettes flickered between real and unreal, their faces caught between pain and fury, some older, some younger, all scarred with the weight of choices Ren had never made.

They carried weapons that were echoes of Thorn—burning, shadowed, broken, or whole. Every blade hummed with the same ruinous vibration, yet each carried a different hunger.

The girl’s silver fire surged brighter as she took her place beside him, eyes wide. "They’re... your fragments. The Pane’s wound pulled them out from the distorted current. Every shadow of you that could have been—every path you never walked."

Ren smirked bitterly, despite the dread curling in his gut. "Guess I’m more messed up than I thought."

One of the fragments stepped forward—a Ren whose eyes were hollow, whose Thorn was dripping with black ichor as though it had been feeding endlessly. His voice was ragged, animal.

"You should’ve given up... You should’ve died back then. Everything after was pointless."

Another stepped beside him—a Ren dressed in bloodstained white, grinning with teeth too sharp. "No. He should’ve burned them all. That was the only way."

Dozens of voices rose at once, a storm of accusation and temptation:

"You failed her."

"You ran when you should’ve fought."

"You fought when you should’ve run."

"You’re nothing but a mistake repeated."

Ren’s breath caught. For the first time, it wasn’t just the Pane or its soldiers pressing down on him—it was himself.

The girl stepped closer, her hand briefly brushing his wrist, anchoring him. Her voice cut through the chaos. "They want you to drown in your own weight. If you believe them, you’ll become them."

Ren exhaled, his grin crooked, his eyes burning. "Then I’ll do what I always do."

He raised Thorn. The ruin-light screamed down the blade, searing the air, bending it.

"I’ll fight myself."

The first fragment lunged. The hollow-eyed Ren swung his ichor-drenched Thorn with a speed born of despair. Ren caught it with his own blade—pain shot up his arms as if he’d parried his own bones snapping. The force rattled his teeth, but he didn’t give ground.

A second fragment rushed in—the bloodstained one—slashing diagonally, his laughter ringing like broken glass. Ren ducked, then kicked upward, sending him reeling into a wall of shattered sky.

But for every one he knocked down, three more surged forward. Their strikes weren’t wild—they were precise, intimate. They knew his every habit, every flaw, every hesitation. They were Ren, after all.

Steel rang against ruin-steel. Sparks of silver flame burst as the girl’s power lashed out, burning fragments before they could cut Ren’s back. But even she faltered, eyes darting nervously as more Rens crawled from the cracks, their bodies twisting like nightmares into mockeries of him.

One had no face at all, only a screaming void where his features should be. Another was shackled by chains of glass, dragging them behind him like a curse. One even had wings of mirror shards, each feather dripping with reflection.

Ren’s chest heaved. His body screamed in protest, every blow from his fragments carving echoes of pain into his nerves. Each clash with them was like tearing himself apart, piece by piece.

The Pane’s broken voice thundered above, venomous and triumphant.

"FIGHT YOURSELF, ERROR. BLEED YOURSELF DRY. IN THE END, YOU WILL PROVE ME RIGHT."

Ren spat blood, his grin widening into something wild. He staggered forward, Thorn blazing with ruin-light so bright it seared his vision.

"You don’t get it, Pane. You think fighting myself will break me?"

He slashed in a wide arc, shattering three fragments at once into splinters of screaming glass. His voice rose like fire through a storm.

"I’ve always been fighting myself."

The girl’s flame surged beside his, silver intertwining with ruin-light. For the first time, the fragments faltered, their movements stuttering, as if her fire burned away the certainty of their accusations.

Ren tightened his grip. His arms trembled, his veins burned, but his grin didn’t fade.

"Come on then. Let’s see which Ren survives."

The battlefield of reflections erupted into chaos—Ren against himself, ruin against ruin, as the Pane’s wound widened above, bleeding the war of one man’s soul across the Mirror World.

Ren’s chest was on fire. His arms trembled under the weight of Thorn, veins bulging, muscles screaming, his breath ragged.

The fragments pressed in like a tidal wave. Hollow-eyed Ren slashed down again, ichor dripping from his blade. Bloodstained Ren shrieked with manic laughter, spinning his Thorn in a flurry of cuts. The winged Ren descended from above, shards slicing the air like razors.

Ren parried, ducked, countered—each movement tearing open another wound across his body. But it wasn’t just the injuries. It was the familiarity. Every strike felt like he was cutting his own throat, stabbing his own heart.

One voice hissed in his ear as a blade grazed his cheek.

"You failed her."

Another cut across his ribs.

"You wanted power. Admit it."

A third shoved him back with a brutal kick.

"You’ll end up just like us."

Ren staggered, his boots skidding on the glass-like ground. His blood spattered the fractured surface, absorbed instantly into the cracks, as if the Pane itself was feeding on him.

The silver-haired girl cried out, flames erupting as she burned three fragments before they could pierce Ren’s back. But her fire wavered, too—her light flickering as exhaustion bled into her movements.

"Ren!" she shouted, desperation cutting through the chaos. "Don’t let them take you!"

Her voice barely reached him.

Because in that moment, a horrifying thought slithered into his mind—what if these fragments weren’t lies? What if they were all true? Every accusation, every failure, every hunger he tried to bury...

His grip loosened. Thorn wavered in his hands.

The hollow-eyed Ren smirked.

"That’s it. Give in. You know we’re the only truth left."

Dozens of fragments rushed forward at once, their laughter and screams melding into one deafening roar—

And then—

The world stopped.

Not silence. Not stillness. Something deeper. A command, not spoken, but written into existence.

Every fragment froze mid-strike, as though time itself had been strangled. Thorn’s ruin-light flickered, confused, uncertain. Even the Pane’s bleeding wound seemed to hesitate, as if startled.

Ren gasped, chest heaving, his mind fighting to catch up. "What—?"

The girl’s eyes widened, her silver fire recoiling instinctively. "No... it can’t be..."

A shadow fell across the battlefield.

Tall. Upright. The silhouette of a man walking with deliberate calm, his figure rippling through the cracks as though the Pane itself parted for him. His footsteps echoed unnaturally loud, each one striking like a heartbeat against glass.

As he emerged into the ruined battlefield, Ren felt his stomach lurch.

Because the figure looked like him.

But not like the fragments—this one wasn’t twisted, or broken, or insane. His posture was regal, commanding. His eyes glowed with steady light, not ruin or despair. His Thorn wasn’t cracked or drenched or winged—it was pristine, gleaming as if it was the original.

And yet...

There was something wrong.

He wasn’t flesh. He wasn’t reflection. He was something in-between, like an idea that had learned how to walk.

The fragments trembled, even frozen. Some hissed like animals. Some fell to their knees. Even they recognized what he was.

The Pane’s voice, usually thunderous and cruel, faltered.

"...YOU."

The man finally stopped a few steps away from Ren. His gaze lowered, steady, heavy enough to pin Ren in place. His voice was calm, deep, terrifyingly certain.

"Ren."

Ren’s heart hammered in his chest. He tightened his grip on Thorn, forcing his voice not to shake. "...Who the hell are you?"

The figure tilted his head, almost disappointed.

"I am the Ren who was never broken. The one who carried every failure, every betrayal, every death... and kept walking. The Pane called me an anomaly. But you—" he pointed Thorn at Ren, sharp and accusing, "—you are the fracture. The unstable shadow that wasn’t supposed to last this long."

Ren’s eyes widened, sweat dripping down his temple. "You’re saying... you’re me?"

The man’s lips curved into something between a smile and a judgment.

"I am the savior you should have been. The one they prayed for. The one who would’ve saved her."

The words hit harder than any blade. Ren’s mind reeled—his failures, his regrets, his buried guilt—all dragged to the surface at once.

The girl’s flames flared in protest, silver light lashing at the figure. "Don’t listen to him, Ren! He’s not salvation—he’s a lie!"

But the figure didn’t even flinch. Her fire passed through him like wind through smoke. He didn’t need to resist. He simply existed too strongly to be touched.

Ren’s knuckles whitened around Thorn. His grin faltered, replaced by clenched teeth. "...So what are you gonna do? Save me?"

The figure shook his head slowly.

"No. I’m here to erase you. To take back what never should have slipped free. This battle isn’t between you and your fragments anymore..."

He raised his Thorn, its pristine blade shining with unbearable light.

"...It’s between you and the savior’s shadow."

The frozen battlefield began to move again—fragments shrieking, the Pane trembling—but all of it faded against the weight of what was about to come.

Ren vs. the version of himself who was everything he could never be.