The world trembled.

The giant of blackened glass stood like a mountain of jagged edges, its shifting face reflecting a thousand fractured identities. Sometimes Ren's own, sometimes hers, sometimes hollow void. Each breath it exhaled was a storm of shards, slicing the air with a shriek that made even the ground tremble.

Ren steadied his breath, fingers tightening on the shard-blade. The weapon pulsed faintly, as if sharing his heartbeat.

Beside him, the shard-winged girl spread her glass-feathered wings, their edges catching what little light pierced through the broken sky. Though her lips bled, her gaze was steady.

The titan leaned forward, its shifting face splitting open in a grotesque grin. From its mouth spilled voices, layered and endless:

"You cannot kill hunger. You cannot kill what you are."

Ren spat blood from his lip, eyes narrowing.

"Then I'll carve it into silence."

The titan moved first.

Its arm—longer than the tallest tower Ren had ever seen—swung down with the force of a collapsing world. The ground cracked, mirror-floor exploding outward in spirals of dust and glittering fragments.

Ren leapt.

The blade slashed upward in a silver arc, colliding with the titan's descending limb. The impact was like thunder. Shards exploded, raining down like burning stars. Ren's body rattled from the force, his arms screaming in protest, but the strike held.

The shard-winged girl launched beside him, her wings snapping open. Each beat sent a wave of cutting light upward, carving chunks from the titan's forearm. The giant roared, staggering back, its face flickering between Ren's anguish, his laughter, his despair.

Ren landed hard, knees bending, chest heaving. He didn't hesitate. He sprinted up the collapsing fragments of the titan's arm, racing toward its shifting chest.

The titan's torso split apart, revealing a core of swirling obsidian light. Within it, reflections spun in a storm—countless versions of himself. Happy, broken, angry, terrified. Each one screamed, reaching for him through the barrier.

The sight froze him for an instant. His chest clenched.

Are they… me?

"Don't look!" the shard-winged girl cried, her voice breaking. She launched higher, slamming her wings together. The sound echoed like a cathedral bell, shattering the illusions around him. "If you falter now, you'll drown!"

Ren's jaw tightened. He surged forward, the shard-blade burning in his grip.

The titan raised its other arm, claw-like hand closing around him with terrifying speed.

Ren's body screamed for him to dodge. His instincts begged for retreat. But something deeper, something far more reckless, burned hotter.

Strike anyway.

He drove the blade forward—straight into the titan's chest.

Light erupted.

The blade pierced the swirling storm, tearing into the obsidian core. Shards screamed, voices howled, the titan convulsed. Its body fractured outward in spiderweb cracks, every inch of it glowing with unstable fury.

But Ren wasn't free.

The blade was stuck. The titan's hand closed around him at last, jagged fingers crushing with unstoppable force.

Pain seared through him, bright and endless. The blade vibrated violently, pulling him deeper, threatening to drag him into the storm of reflections.

Ren's teeth clenched, his vision blurring.

The shard-winged girl dove, her wings cutting like guillotines. She struck the titan's wrist, slicing deep, buying him a breath of space. Her voice cut through the chaos, raw and desperate:

"Ren—don't you dare let go!"

He roared, summoning every ounce of fury, despair, and defiance inside him. His hand clamped harder around the shard-blade.

And with one final heave, he pushed.

The blade drove deeper into the titan's core—

The storm of reflections shattered—

And the world itself screamed.

The shard-blade sank deep, and the titan's scream shook the Mirror World itself. The sound wasn't a roar—it was the tearing of a reality unspooled, the collapse of laws written and rewritten too many times.

Cracks webbed across the titan's colossal frame. Its body no longer resembled anything stable; it flickered between towers, beasts, broken statues, and faces—all of them his. The hunger it embodied tried to cling to coherence, but Ren's strike had pierced its heart.

The core split wide.

Out poured reflections—millions of them. Each one a Ren that could have been: the one who never touched the Pane, the one who fell to despair, the one who burned everything, the one who never lifted a blade at all. They whirled like a hurricane, screaming, clawing, desperate to merge back into him.

Ren's body locked, his mind shaking under the weight of them.

I… I can't…

The storm tried to pull him inside. His arms felt heavier, his breath shallower. If he yielded, he would dissolve into them—become another drowned voice inside hunger's endless mouth.

"Ren!"

The shard-winged girl's cry tore through the chaos. She dove, her wings scattering light like fire across a black ocean. She crashed into him, wrapping her arms around his waist, holding him from being dragged deeper.

"You're not them!" she screamed, tears cutting paths down her glassy face. "They're shadows! Fragments that hunger wants you to swallow! If you take them in, you'll lose yourself—forever!"

Her words pierced, but the voices of the reflections hissed back, whispering in his skull.

"We are you."

"You can't deny us."

"You're weak without us."

"Embrace hunger. Embrace the infinite."

Ren's grip on the blade faltered. His vision fractured, splitting into dozens of perspectives—each belonging to a different "Ren." One laughed. One cried. One slit his own throat. One smiled while watching the world burn.

He felt them all, like his soul was being shredded into ribbons.

The shard-winged girl's arms tightened. Her voice shook, but her will was unyielding:

"You are the Ren who stood up. The Ren who fought anyway. Don't let them decide what you are. Decide it yourself!"

Her glass wings flared wide, striking against the storm. Each beat broke apart more reflections, scattering them into nothing. Her body bled with every strike, shards snapping from her feathers. Still, she refused to let go.

Ren's teeth ground together. Blood ran down his chin. His mind screamed from the pressure—but deep beneath the chaos, a fire sparked.

Not the fire of hunger.

Not the fire of despair.

The fire of defiance.

His grip steadied on the shard-blade. He pulled with everything he had left, wrenching it upward.

The blade split the titan's core wide open.

The reflections shrieked, their whispers twisting into desperate wails. The titan convulsed, its colossal hand crumbling, its face splintering into dust.

Ren roared, a sound born from the marrow of his being, as he tore himself free. The storm of selves collapsed behind him, consumed in the shattering of the titan's heart.

And then—

Silence.

The titan exploded into fragments of black glass, raining endlessly around them. The ground steadied. The storm was gone.

Ren fell to one knee, gasping, the shard-blade still clutched tight. Beside him, the shard-winged girl collapsed too, her wings shattered, her body trembling.

The Mirror World was eerily quiet now, as if holding its breath.

Ren's chest rose and fell. His knuckles bled. His eyes burned with exhaustion. But in that silence, something stirred—something far more terrifying.

A whisper, softer than breath, slithered from the cracks left behind:

"…You think you've silenced hunger? Fool. You've only woken it."

And the world trembled again.

The silence didn't last.

The shards of black glass that rained from the titan didn't vanish like ordinary fragments. They hovered, suspended in the air, as if refusing to fall. Each one quivered, glowing faintly with a pulse… like a heartbeat.

Ren's head snapped up, his chest still heaving. He gritted his teeth, forcing himself to rise despite the ache in his legs. His hand shook around the shard-blade, but he wouldn't drop it. He couldn't afford to.

The shard-winged girl tried to speak, but her voice came out hoarse. "Ren… it's not over…"

She was right.

The fragments began to drift together, circling him, spiraling tighter and tighter until the storm of glass closed in. They weren't forming a titan this time. They were shrinking, condensing, folding into a shape that made Ren's blood run cold.

A figure stepped out of the swirling shards.

It was human.

No—worse.

It was him.

Not the twisted, grinning double the Shard-Keeper had summoned before. This was something else. This Ren wore no expression, his eyes blank mirrors that reflected only emptiness. His movements were slow, deliberate, almost tender as he raised his hand and let shards gather into a blade identical to Ren's own.

Ren froze. His throat tightened.

"…Another me?"

The shard-winged girl shook her head, terror written across her shattered face. "No. This isn't another version. This is what hunger wants you to become. The face it wears when it decides you're ready."

The copy tilted its head, the faintest crack of a smile breaking the blank mask.

When it spoke, it wasn't Ren's voice. It was thousands of voices layered atop each other, like every reflection he had rejected was speaking through the same mouth.

"I am the part you starve. The one you keep caging. I am every desire you denied. Every weakness you crushed. I am hunger made whole."

The girl stumbled back, glass wings scraping against the ground. "Ren, don't let it touch you! If it does, it'll overwrite you completely!"

But Ren couldn't move. He was caught staring at the thing—at himself—realizing how close this shadow truly was.

Because when he looked into its eyes, he saw something that almost broke him.

Inside those mirrors was not just hunger. It was relief. The kind of relief that whispered: If you just let me win, you don't have to fight anymore. You don't have to carry it. You can rest.

Ren's grip faltered. His chest clenched. For a heartbeat, he wanted it. He wanted to give in.

The copy—Hunger's Face—stepped forward. Each footfall cracked the Pane beneath them. It raised its shard-blade with grace, like it had all the time in the world.

The voices inside it whispered again:

"Why suffer, Ren? You can be whole again. You can stop running. Stop resisting. Just… feed me. And I'll carry the burden."

The shard-winged girl's scream shattered the pull. "Ren! Don't listen! That isn't salvation—it's erasure!"

Ren's body trembled. His vision blurred. His blade felt unbearably heavy.

And then—he did something unexpected.

He laughed.

A broken, breathless laugh that startled even himself. He spat blood to the ground and forced his eyes up, glaring at Hunger's Face with raw defiance.

"You think I fight because I like carrying it? Because I'm strong enough to hold it all? No…" His voice rasped, but it carried a heat that could burn through the void. "I fight because if I let you win, then every damn step I've taken… every scream, every tear—all of it—means nothing. And I won't let you make it nothing."

The empty-eyed copy froze, the faint smile twisting. For the first time, its voice faltered, the countless layers overlapping in discord.

Ren leveled his blade, his knees nearly buckling but his spirit refusing to yield.

"You're not me. You're just hunger pretending to wear my skin. And I'll starve you, even if it kills me."

The shard-winged girl's eyes widened, her lips parting in a silent gasp.

The copy smiled wider, the kind of smile that didn't belong on a human face. The Pane behind it cracked further, spilling darkness that looked more alive than shadow.

"Then come, Ren. If you can kill me… you'll kill yourself."

And the two blades clashed—

Ren versus Hunger's Face.

The war wasn't just against the Mirror World anymore.

It was against the part of him that wanted to surrender.