The campfire flickered in defiance of the cold, casting long shadows across the rock-strewn clearing. Around it sat thirty souls—an uneven mix of mages, old rebels, half-trained fighters, and truth-bearers who had seen through Wale's illusions. They did not look like heroes. They looked like survivors.
Chris stood at the edge, watching the firelight dance across their weary faces. The shard she had taken from the Maze—a splinter of Wale's buried truth—glowed faintly at her side, wrapped in silver thread and sealed inside a runic pouch.
Grey approached silently, rubbing soot from his gloves. "It's strange, isn't it?"
Chris didn't look at him. "What is?"
"That it's easier to build an army from broken people than perfect ones."
She finally turned. "That's why Wale failed. He tried to fix what wasn't broken. People don't want perfection. They want the truth."
Grey gave a faint nod, but his eyes stayed distant. He had changed since the Mirror Maze. Not visibly—he was still the same stoic, sharp-eyed swordsman—but quieter. When Chris looked at him now, she sometimes saw a flicker of something else beneath his calm.
Doubt.
Not in her, but in himself.
"You still feel it?" she asked quietly.
"The Maze? Every time I close my eyes."
Chris reached into her pouch and pulled out a small rune-crystal. She handed it to him. "This might help. Lucien made them before the war—designed to absorb lingering mental residue. It won't erase the memories, but it'll stop them from bleeding into your thoughts."
Grey accepted it without a word, his thumb brushing over the rune's etching. The look in his eyes softened for a moment. "Thanks."
Before Chris could respond, a sharp whistle cut through the camp. Isolde stepped into the light, her crimson armor dulled by dust and time, but her voice still carried authority.
"Another group just arrived," she announced. "From the southern rim of Aedros. Twenty-two strong."
Chris stood straighter. "That makes over a hundred now."
Grey glanced around. "A hundred against a god."
"A hundred against a lie," Chris corrected. "And Wale isn't a god. He's just someone who couldn't bear the truth."
Isolde gave a tight nod. "Then we strike before his illusions grow stronger. He's consolidating now. The Spire of Echoes pulses every night—he's drawing in more of the world, rewriting it. Soon there'll be no way back."
Chris stepped toward the map carved into stone. The others gathered close.
"The Nexus Heart sits at the base of the Spire," she explained. "It's what feeds his control. Destroying it won't just hurt him—it'll sever his grip entirely. But we can't just march through the gates. We need a split push."
She pointed to three marks on the map: east, west, and north.
"Three teams. Diversionary strikes to weaken the outer shells. The main force moves through the northern canyon. That's where we'll find the weak point."
Someone raised a hand. A young woman with soot-stained cheeks and mirror shards braided into her hair. "What if he sees us coming? He's rewritten cities with a thought."
Chris met her gaze. "He sees everything through illusion. But this—" she held up the shard from the Maze, now glowing softly— "this is truth. He can't see through that. We'll use it to cloak our presence. It'll blind him long enough to get inside."
Silence followed.
Then someone stood.
Then another.
Soon, all of them.
Ready.
Willing.
Afraid, but not paralyzed.
Chris felt something stir in her chest—not power, not hope, but a sense of purpose. Not forged by fate, but chosen through pain.
They would march at dawn.
That night, as the camp settled into uneasy sleep, Grey found himself standing at the cliff's edge, overlooking the valley where the Spire of Echoes loomed in the distance. Its obsidian surface pulsed faintly like a heartbeat, veins of light crawling across its surface like lightning trapped beneath skin.
"You're wondering if we'll survive," said a voice behind him.
He didn't turn. "No."
Isolde stepped up beside him. "Then what?"
Grey was silent for a long time. Then:
"I'm wondering what I'll become… if we win."
Isolde didn't answer right away.
"Wale wasn't always like this," she finally said. "He was once someone worth saving. Someone Lucien believed in. But something cracked in him."
"I know," Grey said. "And I wonder… if that crack's in me too."
She looked at him.
"It probably is," she said softly. "We all have it. But cracks don't always mean you'll break. Sometimes, they're where the light gets in."
Grey blinked. Then, to his own surprise, he smiled faintly.
"Lucien used to say that."
"I know," Isolde replied. "He got it from me."
Far above them, in the hollow crown of the Spire, Wale watched.
His body stood still, regal and statuesque in a throne of polished glass, but his mind drifted through countless reflections. He saw their camp. He saw their plans.
He heard their doubts.
But something confused him.
He couldn't see Chris clearly anymore. Her shape flickered in and out. Her thoughts were clouded.
And Grey…
Grey pulsed strangely in his mind's eye—like a shadow caught in the wind.
Wale leaned forward, eyes narrowing.
"What did you find?" he whispered to himself.
Then louder:
"WHAT DID YOU TAKE FROM ME?"
His voice cracked the mirrors in the chamber.
His illusion twisted.
And for the first time in weeks, a storm formed above the Spire.