The air grew heavy. Not with pressure, but with implication. The doppelgänger that now stood across from Toji wasn't like the others. It cast no shadow. Its presence didn't ripple the water—it warped the reflection around it, like a magnet dragging iron filings of memory in its wake.
Toji kept his grip steady on Phantom Edge, the blade now crackling faintly with memory resonance. The Mnemo-Eye flickered, pulse stuttering as though calculating something it didn't want to say aloud.
Kaela took a step closer, Kareth shielding her flank.
"Toji," she said quietly. "That one's different."
"I know."
The figure pointed again. "Give it back."
Kaela looked to him. "What did you—?"
"I don't know," he said, teeth clenched. "But it thinks I do."
Before she could reply, the echo-Toji launched forward.
Its motion wasn't natural—like a memory skipping frames in a reel. One moment it was across the water, and the next it stood inside Toji's guard, blade raised, mirroring Phantom Edge exactly.
Clash.
Steel met steel.
But not real steel.
Toji felt the impact in his mind before his muscles caught up—a jarring, phantom pressure, like remembering pain without having felt it yet.
He reeled, sliding back across the wet stone path.
"Split and regroup!" Lysara's voice echoed from the far end. "These aren't just memory imprints. They're tether inversions!"
Niko shouted as he slammed one echo into the marble with a spear of flickering wind-imbued force. "They're using our forms! Our echoes! How!?"
"They're not using them," Kaela said, slashing through her doppelgänger with precision. "They're mirroring the emotional resonance from our tethered states!"
Toji breathed through his teeth. "Meaning… they're showing what we're most afraid we might become."
He raised Phantom Edge again.
The echo-Toji watched him with cold, perfect stillness.
"You're not me," Toji said.
The figure tilted its head. "Not anymore."
Then it leapt, the same stance Toji used when he struck the Leviathan memory weeks ago.
Toji ducked low, letting the blade pass, then rolled sideways and swung upward—not at the figure's head, but at its tether.
That invisible thread of memory magic—the echo line trailing behind its shoulder like a cord.
Phantom Edge ignited with violet-black memory resonance as it sliced through the tether.
The doppelgänger froze.
Then cracked.
A spiderweb of glowing fractures spread across its form before it burst into fragments of memory—like glass catching sunrise.
Toji stood still as the pieces dissolved.
Silence fell around him.
Kaela approached cautiously. "That one… wasn't like the others."
He nodded. "It was me. But from a timeline that never existed."
She frowned. "You're guessing?"
The Mnemo-Eye drifted lower.
"No," it said. "I'm confirming."
Toji stared at it.
"You said they weren't here to kill us."
"They aren't."
"Then what was that?"
The Eye rotated. "A recovery protocol."
Kaela blinked. "Recovery?"
Toji didn't take his eyes off the Eye. "From what?"
The Eye paused.
"…From forgetting."
Before either of them could respond, Lysara's voice rang again.
"Class, regroup! A rift has formed ahead—beyond the cathedral's far wall. The second layer of the Veins is beginning to manifest!"
Toji looked across the dark water.
Where once stood a solid wall now hovered a broken arch, cracked down the middle, revealing a descending staircase made of floating memory-slabs.
Each one pulsed with echo-sigils, none identical.
Kaela exhaled. "Guess we're not done."
Roth stomped up, bruised and scowling. "If I ever see another clone of myself again, I'm gonna scream."
Niko patted his shoulder. "Then you better brace. There's probably a whole choir of you waiting below."
The four unknown students stood apart, eyes fixed on the new staircase. One of them, a sharp-faced boy with an obsidian-thread cloak, turned to Toji.
"You ended yours without hesitation," he said.
Toji met his gaze. "It wasn't me."
"No," the boy said. "But it knew you."
He turned and walked toward the rift.
The others followed.
Toji remained still.
Kaela touched his shoulder. "You okay?"
He nodded once. "Not really. But it doesn't matter."
They walked toward the stairs together.
As the class began their descent, the cathedral dimmed, light from above pulling back like a curtain.
And behind them, the water stilled again.
Reflections faded.
Echoes slept.
But not for long.
Because the Veins Beyond didn't forget.
They only waited for the next memory to walk in.
——
Layer Two breathed.
That was the only word Toji could think of as they stepped into the new space.
The staircase led into what felt like a submerged forest—a realm suspended in false silence. Roots like spiraling veins curled up from the ground and hung from the ceiling like arteries. Every branch glistened with sigils. Not carved, not painted—but grown, like barnacles made of memory. The air shimmered faintly with illusion. Phantasms of voices, words, dreams flitted past their ears—each echo a half-formed thought from lives they'd never lived.
Kaela walked just ahead of him, her posture tight. She hadn't spoken since they crossed the threshold.
"Light shift," Roth muttered, his voice slightly muffled. "Sound bend too."
Toji tested his tether with a light pulse. The Mnemo-Eye swirled near his shoulder, slower now—almost as if hesitating.
"Where are we?" Niko whispered.
"A memory rift within a rift," one of the Echo-bound students said from behind them. "The second layer isn't one place. It's overlapping mentalities. Shards of forgotten realms, reassembled by the Veins."
Toji scanned the surroundings, then Kaela.
She was breathing shallow.
"Kaela," he said quietly.
She didn't respond.
"Kaela."
She blinked, eyes unfocused—then turned to him.
"…Sorry. It's just—something's off."
"What do you see?"
She stared ahead.
"Not what I see. What I feel."
She took a step forward—and suddenly, her foot met nothing.
Before she could fall, Toji grabbed her wrist and pulled her back just as the root beneath her blinked out of existence, revealing a hole into a spiraling void. A low hum filled the space, like an unseen heartbeat.
Kaela stumbled, clutching her head.
Toji steadied her. "You alright?"
"No—my tether just… convulsed. It split."
He stared at her.
Split tethers were rare—and dangerous. It meant the memory echo she was bonded to had begun fragmenting due to spatial stress or emotional instability. Or both.
Kaela sank to one knee.
"I can't see straight. It's like I'm walking through someone else's dream and they're trying to make me feel it."
The Mnemo-Eye pulsed.
"She is dissonant," it said. "One of her echoes has been absorbed into the Veins. If we do not retrieve it, the mental rift will deepen."
Toji crouched beside her. "Then let's get it back."
Kaela gritted her teeth. "Toji—if I lose control of it—"
"You won't."
She looked up, eyes trembling.
"…You're sure?"
He didn't speak.
He just offered his hand.
She took it.
They moved carefully away from the group, Toji marking the terrain as they navigated toward the source of the tether's pull. It guided them like a distant pressure behind the eyes—an instinct rather than a direction.
As they passed a cluster of translucent vines, Kaela suddenly froze.
"There," she whispered.
Ahead, hanging between two memory-roots like a caught butterfly, shimmered an orb of deep violet light—pulsing faintly with Kaela's signature. Wrapped around it was a strange construct: a figure made of mirror shards and flowing silk, with no face and no legs. It hovered silently, its many shards rotating like feathers on a broken wing.
"What is it?" she asked.
The Mnemo-Eye responded. "A Vein-Watcher. It feeds on incomplete tethers. Let it finish its process, and her Echo will dissolve."
Toji didn't wait.
He stepped forward, Phantom Edge humming to life.
The creature reacted instantly—its mirror-shards aligned and fired beams of refraction magic toward him. Toji ducked the first, sidestepped the second, and hurled a phantom slash into the air that cleaved through the beams' path. The blow didn't damage the Watcher, but it staggered—its rotation pattern glitching momentarily.
"Go!" Toji called. "Pull it free!"
Kaela dashed in, ignoring the way the ground warped underfoot. Her hand passed through the orb—and for a moment, her whole body convulsed with visible tethers of memory pulling against her limbs.
She screamed, just once.
Toji's heart leapt—but he couldn't look. The Watcher re-formed and dove, shards spiraling like blades.
He intercepted, catching the blow against Phantom Edge and throwing the entire creature back with a rippling counterblast. The Eye pulsed furiously.
"Now!"
Kaela roared—half-cry, half-incantation—and tore the orb from the trap.
Light exploded around them.
The forest blinked.
For three seconds, everything turned black.
Then they stood in silence again.
The orb was gone.
Kaela's tether had reformed.
She staggered into Toji's arms.
"I got it," she whispered.
"I know," he said.
The Mnemo-Eye hovered solemnly. "Her anchor is stabilized. But the Veins Beyond do not repeat trials—they adapt. Next time, it will be him they test."
Toji didn't respond.
He held Kaela close for a moment longer before helping her stand.
She looked up at him. "Thanks."
He nodded once.
.
.
.
The memory forest thinned as they pressed deeper. The whispering branches grew less frequent, replaced by stillness—an eerie calm after the tether-ripping chaos. Kaela walked beside him now, more composed but visibly strained. Her echo had stabilized, yes, but her soul bore scars the others couldn't see.
Toji could.
He'd felt it.
Something in the way her fingers trembled when they stopped for water. Something in the way her eyes darted to the edges of the forest, expecting the world to warp again.
"You should rest," Toji said quietly, not looking at her.
Kaela shook her head. "Can't. The Veins respond to weakness."
He didn't argue. She wasn't wrong. But her voice cracked at the end—and that said enough.
A few minutes later, the terrain shifted again.
A silver stream split through the path, shimmering with inverted reflections. When Toji looked down, his face wasn't his—it was older, sharper, colder. A possible future, perhaps.
Kaela looked down too. Her reflection was missing.
She didn't comment on it.
He did.
"Still dissonant?"
"…Maybe."
He filed it away for later. For now, they crossed carefully, stepping on curved stones that hummed with each touch.
Past the stream, the land widened into a clearing. There, five other students waited—Roth, Niko, and the three Echo-bound: Sorei, Mirell, and Dain.
"You two took long enough," Roth muttered, crossing his arms.
"Her tether split," Toji said bluntly.
That silenced everyone.
Mirell, a narrow-eyed girl with fingers laced in spectral rings, tilted her head. "She survived it?"
Toji answered again. "She stabilized it."
Even Dain, the usually silent Echo-binder with vine tattoos curling around his neck, gave Kaela a new look—half wary, half impressed.
Varn's voice buzzed through their comm-rings: "You've reached the threshold. Ahead lies Echo Gate One. Your objective is to locate the anchor stone and retrieve the fragment within. Expect memory compression. Expect interference."
The Echo Gate stood beyond the clearing—a monolith of bone-white crystal veined with living silver, shaped like an hourglass carved in reverse. Whispers poured from it—not like the forest's passive murmurs, but voices of pain, of longing, of decision.
"It's an anchor site," Sorei said quietly. "Old thoughts cling here."
"What kind of thoughts?" Niko asked.
Toji answered without hesitation. "The kind that leave scars."
Kaela exhaled beside him, soft and steady.
Together, the seven passed through.
⸻
Inside, the world was liquid.
No gravity. No horizon.
The air shimmered like oil on water, thick with scentless mist. They weren't walking—they were floating through scenes built from half-memories. An archway twisted into a hallway. A torchlight that never reached the floor. A classroom of frozen statues all facing an invisible lecturer.
Toji's senses strained.
Phantom Edge hummed quietly at his side, unsummoned but alert.
The Mnemo-Eye, now dimmer than usual, flicked beside his head like a nervous lantern.
"This place…" Kaela murmured, arms slightly spread as if keeping her balance, "…it's not showing memories anymore."
"It's becoming one," Toji said.
Then—everything snapped.
⸻
They stood in an arena. Real stone. Real heat.
At the center: a beast made of iron and ash, twenty feet tall, its body forged from broken blades and rusted armor. Its face was a melted helm with eyes of pulsing blue.
"Memory construct," Mirell hissed. "Built from collective trauma."
Toji stepped forward.
"No," he said.
"This one's mine."
The others didn't question it.
He summoned Phantom Edge.
The katana-odachi hybrid slid into being with a low growl, its folded blade glowing with shadow-threaded light. The Mnemo-Eye circled once—then split, sending three copies across the arena to monitor the beast's movement vectors.
It charged.
Toji moved.
He ducked under the swipe of a molten axe-arm, parried the follow-up with a reverse twist, and brought Phantom Edge slamming into the creature's core with a blast of rebounding shadow force. The construct staggered—but didn't fall.
It shrieked, and the arena shook.
Kaela stood with hands clenched, watching. She didn't intervene. Not yet.
Toji gritted his teeth.
The fight wasn't just physical.
Each strike the creature took, it bled a memory—a moment of rage, regret, betrayal. Faces flashed before his eyes—his old world, the survey, his parents, the moment he typed "Toji Fushiguro" and changed everything.
It wanted to drown him in himself.
He wouldn't let it.
He shifted grips.
One-handed swing. Upward carve.
Echo-slide. Blink-step.
Phantom Edge pulsed—and Toji drove it upward through the creature's helm in a streak of raw violet flame.
The construct exploded into shards of half-truths.
He stood alone.
Breathing hard.
But not broken.
The others stepped in.
Roth clapped him on the shoulder—reluctantly, but sincerely. Niko grinned. Sorei nodded once. Mirell made no comment, but her gaze lingered on the Mnemo-Eye.
Kaela approached last.
"You alright?"
Toji exhaled. "Enough."
She smiled faintly.
⸻
The anchor stone emerged from the ruins—cracked, weeping violet light.
Kaela stepped forward this time.
"I'll take it," she said.
Toji didn't stop her.
She placed both hands on the fragment—and as it sunk into her palm, a new echo formed behind her.
Not monstrous.
Not broken.
But shaped like a tower—firm, elegant, rising into sky that didn't exist.
Her own Echo, fully realized at last.
Kaela's shoulders straightened.
For the first time since entering Layer Two, she smiled without effort.
Toji didn't smile.
But he was content.
They turned toward the exit as the world began to fold back into itself.
Toji walked a step behind her now.
The Veins Beyond pulsed once.
And deeper still, something old watched them go.