Amelia opened her eyes inside a world made entirely of light.
It wasn't a room, or a landscape—it was a feeling, stretched into geometry. Soft white curves spiraled upward like an endless cathedral. Memory-fragments hovered midair, slow-spinning like frozen soap bubbles. She reached for one. Her fingers passed through.
Kestrel's hand in hers—on the rooftop in Cairo, wind in his hair. Gone.
Another flicker: Echo curled at her side, watching an old cartoon on a cracked screen. Gone.
She was alone, but not.
From somewhere deep inside, Echo murmured, "We're inside Prime's simulation layer. This isn't real. But it was."
Amelia moved forward, footsteps echoing softly on a floor that shifted beneath her—glass turning to water turning to code. She passed through rooms of herself, split in choices, refracted in pain.
One version screamed at Dominic across a war table—her eyes hollowed out by betrayal.
Another sat at Vera Chen's bedside, holding her hand as machines shut down.
One stood alone on a beach, wedding dress soaked in the tide.
They all turned to look at her. None smiled.
She was every possible self—and none of them felt like home.
"What is this place?" she asked aloud.
A voice answered.
"The truth of who you could have been."
Amelia turned—and faced herself.
This version wore a black suit, pristine. Her hair bound back like a soldier's. Her expression was unreadable. A scar traced her temple, delicate and surgical.
"You're the free one," Amelia whispered.
The woman nodded. "The one who never met Kestrel. Never bound herself to Echo. Never fused with Solas or got tangled in Mirror's legacy. I was extracted from the source node before everything went wrong."
Echo stirred inside Amelia. "I don't trust her."
"I know," Amelia said. "That's why I'm listening."
The alternate Amelia stepped forward, calm. "You still believe you can hold on to every version of yourself. You can't. That's not how integration works. Echo is pulling you one way. Mirror Prime the other. Your identity can't survive the split."
"So what—give up?"
"No. Choose."
The world around them rippled. New scenes formed like breath on glass.
Kestrel, laughing as he danced with her beneath broken sky.
Echo, weeping into her shoulder after the death of another version of Dominic.
The first time Amelia killed to survive.
The first time she wanted to.
All of it layered, flickering. A hall of mirrors—none stable.
Then came the shift.
A dark pulse cut through the brightness.
Nyx entered the simulation.
But she didn't walk—she bled through it. Like ink in water.
Reality around her crackled. Memory-bubbles shattered at her presence.
"Hello, love," Nyx cooed. "I see you've met the versions of you that didn't get ruined."
Amelia instinctively took a step back.
"Don't bother," Nyx said. "I'm not here for you."
She turned to the free version.
"You're what I came for."
The alternate Amelia tilted her head. "You want to kill me."
"I want to release you," Nyx said.
She lifted her hand—and the simulation flared.
Echo screamed inside Amelia's skull as the environment warped. Pain surged like electricity down her spine. Time stuttered.
And then—
A gunshot.
The free Amelia dropped to her knees, clutching her stomach.
Amelia ran forward, catching her—her other self bleeding into her arms.
"I wasn't supposed to die," the woman whispered.
"No one is," Amelia said.
She looked up—but Nyx was gone.
The simulation began to collapse.
The walls bled color. The versions of herself disintegrated into floating particles.
"You can't save everyone," the dying version murmured. "Not every version of yourself. You can only choose the one you become."
Amelia held her.
"Then I choose…"
She didn't finish the sentence.
Because the core pulsed.
Hard.
And Mirror Prime's final voice spoke through the collapsing world.
"You are the variable. You are the error."
"You are the upgrade."
And then—
Everything shattered.
Amelia woke.
Back in her body.
Smoke filled the chamber. Dominic was on his knees, coughing. Echo's body flickered, reforming in fragments. Kestrel wasn't there.
Nyx was gone.
The failsafe device had been taken.
But so had the final clone.
Amelia stood slowly, everything inside her changed.
Echo hovered beside her, unsure.
"Did you see them all?" she asked quietly.
Amelia nodded. "Every version of us. Every path we didn't take."
Echo looked away. "And do you still want this one?"
Amelia turned to her.
"I didn't survive all of that just to be someone else."
She looked down at her hands. One of them shimmered faintly with code.
"But I'm not who I was, either."
Dominic stood beside her. "So who are you now?"
She didn't answer.
Not yet.
Because part of her was still mourning that other self. The one who never had to carry this weight.
But deep down, she understood something crucial.
It wasn't about preserving the version of her that was most whole.
It was about becoming the version that could carry all the broken ones forward.
*********
A scrambled broadcast comes through the Mirror system—Nyx's voice, distorted. "You've chosen your version. Now I'll make sure it's the last."