CHAPTER 152: A WORLD REMEMBERED WRONG

The door didn’t open the way a normal door would—it swallowed them whole.

For a brief moment, they saw the corridor ahead, stretching endlessly in blinding white, its surface flickering and warping like shattered glass.

Then the frame itself surged forward, as if it were alive, dragging them inside with the unstoppable pull of an ocean tide. They had no time to resist, no breath to steady themselves, not even a second to plant their feet.

Kaito’s body came apart and pulled itself back together, as if every piece of him was being forced through tiny cracks of memory.

His breath was stolen before he could even take it. For a heartbeat he was burning, his whole self turned to fire, and in the next instant there was nothing—only the faint echo of the Root’s laughter pounding at the edge of hearing, cruel and distant.

Then, suddenly, his boots struck solid ground.

He gasped, filling his lungs with cold air. Real air. Not the suffocating stillness of the void, but something sharp and alive, reminding him he was still here.

He staggered forward, nearly losing his grip on the scythe as his chest rose and fell in sharp, ragged breaths. The burning pain of the mark eased, leaving behind a deep, pounding ache that refused to fade. Around him, the others crashed down to the ground one after another.

Mika hit the earth hard, rolling onto her side with a sharp curse before forcing herself up onto her elbows, her face twisted with pain.

Kael landed flat, the impact knocking the wind out of him, and he coughed so violently that blood spilled into his mouth.

Nyra came down last, her dark wings spreading wide to steady her as she touched the ground. She still held her blade, her stance steady, her eyes bright and fierce, sharp as a hawk’s in the hunt.

But it wasn’t the fall that made their blood run cold.

It was the world that waited for them when they looked up.

They stood on stone, aye—but not the shattered veins of the Fork. Not the bottomless corridor of light. Rather, they stood on a plateau, looking down over a vast breadth.

The sky hung above them, painted with colors of twilight, striped with red clouds that pulsed feebly like open sores.

Below, there were cities unfolding—cities they knew. Steel and glass skyscrapers, streets twisted like veins, bridges spanning rivers. But they were wrong.

Kaito looked, his heart tightening. The skyline was familiar. He had walked those streets, lived beneath those skyscrapers. Earth. Or something like it.

But the angles bent unbearably, impossibly. Buildings swooped toward each other in impossible configurations that had to have buckled them. Streets curled over on themselves like snakes eating their own tails. Windows flashed with light, not from lamps, but from eyes.

And everywhere, dancing between the buildings, was violet fire.

The Root had brushed against this city. No, better than that—it had grown roots here.

Mika clutched her chest, eyes wide. "This... this is my city. But it isn’t."

Kael struggled to stand, cleaning blood from his mouth. His face was pale with shock. "It’s a reconstruction. A remembered thing built into matter. The Root is trying to overwrite reality with a fantasy of itself."

Nyra’s gaze swept the skyline, jaw clenched. "A world remembered wrongly."

Kaito grasped his scythe. The symbol on his chest pulsed, attuning to the wrongness below.

The Root hummed quietly and smugly.

[SEE? YOU NEVER LEFT. YOU ONLY RETURNED.]

They moved down from the plateau in silence, placing each step with care. The air around them felt thin and restless, tingling against their skin, as though they were breathing in the memory of someone long gone.

With every pace toward the city, the atmosphere grew heavier. Whispers drifted on the wind, faint at first, then swelling until they seemed to pour from every direction—from broken windows, from open doorways, even from the cracks that split the streets beneath their feet.

The closer they came, the harder it was to tell if the voices were outside or inside their own heads.

Mika flinched, covering her ears. "They sound like—like us. All of us. I can hear my own voice—"

Kael clasped her steady with a trembling hand. His sigils flickered feebly under his skin, unstable, as if the environment itself disrupted them. "They are us. Or pieces of us. Echoes caught up in the Root’s tapestry."

Nyra led, back straight, wings tightly folded. Her face was impassive, but her eyes flashed to every shadow, every flicker of movement in the bent-angled streets.

Kaito trailed them all, though his steps faltered. With every thud of his boot on the ground, earth seemed to breathe out with him. The city reacted to him. The Root reacted to him.

He did not like it.

When they stepped out into the suburbs, the world leaned in.

Shops were along the street, their signs glowing softly with purple letters. Faces peered out of windows, blurred like unfinished pictures, staring without eyes. Vehicles stood along the curb, motors humming though no one drove them.

And then a face spoke.

"Kaito."

He froze where he was. The voice was hers.

Not Mika. Not Nyra. Not anyone living.

His sister.

"Kaito," the window-object went on, lips drawing back over teeth that were not teeth. "You left me. You let me fall."

Mika spun around him in horror. "Don’t pay attention! It’s not true—it’s the Root distorting memories—"

But the voice stabbed with a keener point, sharper, better, flawless in pitch and cadence. "You promised you’d never release me."

His chest burned. His scythe trembled in his grip. For a moment, he could not breathe.

Nyra’s grip locked his arm, holding him back. Her silver eyes cut through him. "It is not her," she said quietly. "Don’t let it have power."

He gulped and nodded once. The mark pulsed, but he forced his legs into motion. The window froze, face folding back to blank glass.

They pushed further.

More voices followed—Kael’s father, snarling disapproval; Mika’s mother, begging forgiveness; Nyra’s own voice whispering to her that she should have stayed in the void. Every step was a battle of wills, every corner another ancient sore peeled open.

Kael nearly broke when a crowd of indistinguishable people massed in the street, spitting his name, demanding payment on debts he never uttered out loud. His legs went weak, but Mika and Nyra pulled him on, refusing to let him fall.

"This world consumes us," Kael growled, dripping with sweat. "It knows our fear. Our guilt. That’s how it rewrites the world—it uses us as the ink."

And what if we exhaust our will?" Mika gasped.

He did not respond.

At the center of the city was a spire. Not of steel or glass, but of bone and fire, curling up into the scarlet horizon. The Root’s flame snaked around it like tendons.

The sight of it curled Kaito’s gut. He did not need Kael’s words to know what it was.

The Root’s seed.

Its anchor.

The thing keeping this world to its filth.

Mika’s voice shook. "That’s where we have to go, isn’t it?"

Nyra’s blade glinted as she pulled it out again. "Where else?"

Kaito looked at the tower, his chest a boiling pot of pain. The mark pulsed faster now, resonating with the seed like a mutual heartbeat.

The Root uttered, low and unyielding.

[COME. BE WHO YOU WERE MADE TO BE.]

He held the scythe more firmly, gritting his teeth.

"I wasn’t made for you," he growled. "Not anymore."

They reached the plaza at the foot of the tower in the evening—although evening in this place was only a darker shade of red, the sky bleeding darker without stars. The plaza was crowded with figures, all warped reflections.

Each one had their faces.

Mika gasped, stepping back as dozens of replicas of her turned to look at them.

Kael swore under his breath, staring at the twisted copies of himself that glared back with mocking faces. Each movement he made, they mirrored, as though the shadows wanted to remind him of everything he hated.

Even Nyra, who rarely hesitated, froze in place. Her sharp eyes scanned the illusions—dozens of silver-eyed figures that shifted in perfect unison with her, as if waiting for her to make the first move.

And in the center of it all stood Kaito’s double. Not just one—dozens of them, scattered across the haze like a small army. Every replica bore the same wound: a blazing hole burned through the chest, violet fire flickering from within. Each one gripped a scythe, its blade glowing faint.

Mika’s voice broke. "We can’t fight this."

Kael’s fists are clenched, blood oozing from his palm where nails dug into flesh. "Then we break through. Any way we can."

Nyra’s wings spread wide, shadow spilling over the plaza. "We cut our way to the tower. No pause."

Kaito said nothing. His thoughts grinned at him, teeth razor-sharp as knives, eyes glowing, whispering in unison.

[YOU ARE ALREADY OURS]

He lifted his scythe, his mark burning like fire, and stepped forward.

"Then I’ll kill what’s mine," he said.

And the battle began.