The battlefield should have gone quiet.

The Maw lay torn open, its mask shattered, its silver grin destroyed. Shards rained like broken stars, the ground trembling beneath Ren's feet. For a moment, he thought the fight was over—that he had carved his will deep enough to silence even hunger.

But then… the Pane began to move.

Not tremble. Not crack. Move.

The endless glass horizon rippled like liquid, its surfaces folding inward, collapsing into spirals that mirrored the Maw's teeth. Fragments fused together, reshaping into something organic, something alive. What had been an infinite battlefield was now bending toward Hunger's Face, as though the Pane itself sought to feed its wounded master.

The shard-winged girl gasped, her silver feathers flaring defensively. "No… it's consuming the Pane! It's rewriting the battlefield!"

Ren's breath hitched. His grip on the Thorn-blade tightened, sweat and blood dripping from his knuckles.

Hunger's Face rose to its feet. Its broken form should have been weak, yet power surged around it—an aura not stolen, but swallowed. Its maw yawned wide, and the Pane bent further inward, shards stretching like streams of glass drawn into its throat.

"You think… you starved me…" the Maw rasped, its voice now layered with countless echoes. "But I am hunger itself. Even the world cannot resist being eaten."

The Pane cracked like a mirror under strain. Reality warped. The sky inverted, its colors bleeding into shades of black and violet. The ground peeled back into skeletal ribs of glass, hollowing out into an abyss beneath Ren's boots. The battlefield was no longer infinite—it was digesting itself.

Ren nearly stumbled as the ground beneath him tilted. Shards slid like ice into the Maw's waiting throat. His reflection, once scattered harmlessly across broken glass, now twisted—each shard showing him consumed, his eyes empty, his form devoured by shadow.

The shard-winged girl spread her wings and pulled him close, her voice trembling but urgent. "Ren, listen! If it eats the Pane completely, it will no longer be bound. It'll become hunger without walls, without a prison—pure void!"

Ren's jaw clenched, his blade pulsing with rebellion's fire. "So I stop it before it finishes."

She stared at him, torn between awe and fear. "You can't cut what becomes the battlefield! To strike it, you'll have to strike the Pane itself—knowing it could shatter reality!"

Ren met her gaze, eyes alight with grim determination. "Then I'll shatter it on my terms."

The Maw's teeth gnashed in spirals, its body swelling as more of the Pane disappeared into its void. The battlefield shook with each bite, collapsing further. Soon there would be no ground, no sky—only hunger.

Ren planted his feet, Thorn-blade blazing brighter, thorns curling outward like living veins.

"If hunger devours everything," he muttered, voice steady despite the chaos, "then I'll be the one thing it chokes on."

The Pane screamed as another massive section collapsed into the Maw's throat. The battlefield was dying.

And Ren leapt straight into the collapse.

Ren's leap carved a streak of rebellion through the collapsing Pane. The Thorn-blade cut air, cut reflection, cut even silence itself as he swung down toward Hunger's Face.

But the Maw didn't move.

It opened.

A spiral of glass, shadow, and unending teeth unrolled beneath him. It wasn't a maw of flesh anymore—it was a maw of decisions.

Ren saw himself falling, not into darkness, but into scenes. Each tooth of Hunger's Face was a memory sharpened to a point.

The day he first touched the mirror.

The night he almost chose to never return.

The moment he met the shard-winged girl.

Every "yes" and every "no," every hesitation, every rebellion—all of them mirrored back at him as if his very life were nothing more than a banquet waiting to be consumed.

The shard-winged girl screamed his name, her voice shaking. "Ren! Don't let it in! If it eats your choices—it'll erase the you that chose them!"

Her cry barely reached him.

Inside the Maw's spiral, Ren landed on fractured ground. The battlefield was gone. Instead, he stood in a hall of mirrors that stretched infinitely, each reflection showing a different him. Some smiling. Some broken. Some never having fought at all.

Hunger's Face loomed above the hall, its echoing voice slamming against the walls of his mind.

"You are nothing but choices made and unmade. You are the taste of paths you'll never walk. Let me eat them, Ren. Let me take the weight from you."

One of the mirrors rippled.

Ren saw himself there—older, scarred, kneeling before a shattered frame. In that reflection, he looked tired. Too tired. The reflection spoke with his voice.

"I wish I'd given up sooner," it whispered. "You don't have to carry this anymore. Let him take it. Let hunger free you."

Ren's grip on the Thorn-blade wavered.

Every reflection began to speak at once, a chorus of hims begging, screaming, tempting.

"You'll never beat him."

"You'll only ruin her."

"You'll be swallowed like the rest."

"Let go. Let go. Let go—"

The Maw's spiral shuddered, feeding on the voices. Its laughter was a grinding of bone and glass. "See? Even you agree. You are already my meal."

Ren fell to one knee, breath ragged, chest tight. For a heartbeat, he almost believed it. Almost.

Then—he clenched his fist, his blade glowing brighter as thorned veins surged up his arm.

"No," Ren spat, his voice cutting sharper than the reflections. His eyes blazed with defiance, locked on the Maw above. "I am not your meal. I am not your banquet. Every choice I've made—every failure, every victory, every broken path—they're mine. They hurt. They scar. But they're mine."

The reflections screamed louder, but now their voices cracked, fracturing as the Thorn-blade pulsed. Shards began to shatter around him, glass exploding outward as if his words alone were enough to cut.

Ren raised the blade high, thorns lashing like chains against the collapsing hall. His voice was raw, but unyielding:

"If you want to eat me… then choke on all of me."

The Maw roared, its spiral collapsing inward, desperate to consume him faster.

But Ren was already moving.

He surged forward, Thorn-blade ignited in fire and shadow, swinging with all the weight of his will—not to escape the Maw, but to pierce through the core of its hunger.

The hall of mirrors shattered in unison. Glass screamed. Hunger itself recoiled.

Ren struck.

And the Pane bled light.

The Thorn-blade connected.

For one impossible moment, silence ruled.

The Maw of Hunger froze, its spiral collapsing inward on itself like a dying star. The hall of mirrors around Ren shattered, not into glass—but into possibility. Shards didn't fall as debris; they hung in the air, each one glowing faintly, alive, like fragments of unborn futures.

Ren staggered forward, chest heaving, gripping his blade with both hands. The backlash of the strike burned through his arms. His veins glowed faintly, as though the thorns inside him had reached too deep this time.

The shard-winged girl cried out, rushing to him, her mirrored feathers quivering violently. "Ren! Stop—you've cut too deep! You didn't just wound it—you've torn the Pane!"

Her words came too late.

The Pane itself cracked.

Across the sky above, a jagged rift split open—black, white, and colorless all at once. The ground beneath them buckled, folding in on itself as if reality were a sheet of paper being creased by invisible hands.

Hunger's Face reeled back, its scream echoing like a thousand starving throats. But even as it howled, Ren could see—it wasn't dead. It wasn't even weakened the way he hoped.

It was changing.

The Maw twisted into shapes that didn't belong to mouths. Its teeth grew into towers. Its tongue unraveled into rivers of glass. Its laughter became the sound of doors slamming in endless corridors. Hunger was no longer one thing—it was becoming many things, feeding on the Pane's wound.

Ren fell to one knee, sweat dripping from his chin. "Tch… damn it. I thought I struck you. But I struck the Pane too."

The shard-winged girl grabbed his arm, panic in her mirrored eyes. "You don't understand. Hunger's Face isn't bound to one form—it's bound to absence. You've opened more of the Pane for it to consume. If it takes root in the cracks… there'll be no sealing it again."

The world shook.

Through the rift in the Pane, Ren glimpsed things he shouldn't have. Not reflections. Not memories. But… outsides.

A city floating upside down.

A moon bleeding into a sea of fire.

Shadows that moved like people but had no faces.

And among them—something watching back. Something vast.

Ren gritted his teeth, planting his blade in the ground to steady himself. His vision blurred, but he refused to look away. "If that's what comes through… then sealing it won't be enough. We'll have to fight it."

The shard-winged girl shook her head, feathers trembling. "No, Ren—you don't fight what's outside the Pane. You survive it. That's all anyone ever did before."

Before Ren could answer, Hunger's laughter boomed again, deeper, fuller—echoing from every reflection still standing.

"You tore the Pane for me, Ren. You fed me. And now, your choices… your screams… your very existence…"

Its voice warped as its form multiplied, sprouting across the rift like roots devouring cracks in glass.

"…they are mine to feast on."

The world tipped. Reality lurched sideways, and suddenly the battlefield was no longer ground and sky—it was fragments of shifting mirror-planes, tumbling through endless void.

Ren clutched the shard-winged girl and forced his footing on a slanted shard of glass, his blade gleaming with unstable thorns. His body screamed with exhaustion, but his eyes never wavered.

"Fine," Ren growled, every syllable jagged with fire and defiance. "Then let's see if Hunger can choke on rebellion."

The Thorn-blade pulsed, brighter than before—thorns spreading like cracks of light across the Pane itself.

The shard-winged girl whispered, almost to herself, voice shaking: "You'll break yourself before you break it. But you'd still choose that… wouldn't you?"

Ren's answer was a grin—wild, sharp, alive. "Damn right I would."

And then he leapt again, this time not at Hunger's Maw but directly at the rift in the Pane.

Because if Hunger was feeding on the crack, then Ren would strike the wound itself.

The moment his blade touched the bleeding rift, everything convulsed.

Light and shadow, memory and hunger, rebellion and absence—they collided, collapsing in on Ren.

The Pane screamed.

The shard-winged girl screamed.

And Hunger laughed.

The shard he struck rippled outward like a pond's surface—sending shockwaves through the entire Mirror World.