CHAPTER 71: CHAPTER 71 – “FLAME AGAINST THE MOUTH OF SIN”

Silence.

But not the silence of peace.

The silence of something waiting to be named.

The Architect’s corpse was dissolving into rivers of silver, its faceless mask crumbling into dust that glittered like snowfall. All around them, the Pane trembled as though ashamed, its fractured sky folding and groaning. Reflections swirled without direction, desperate, headless things no longer guided by law.

And in the center of it all—

Ren and the girl stood, still joined hand to hand.

His cracks pulsed faintly, glowing with flame. Her wings of fire bent inward, curling like a shield, but also like a cocoon. She was breathing heavily, not from weakness, but from weight. Something was pressing on her—inside her—as though all the countless voices freed from the Architect had turned toward her alone.

Ren squeezed her hand. "Stay with me."

Her eyes snapped to him. For the first time since he’d met her, they weren’t fractured. The glasslike fissures running through her irises had softened, melting into a glow that was alive, not broken.

"...They’re whispering," she murmured. "Not the Pane. Not the Keeper. The echoes. The ones who were trapped."

Ren narrowed his eyes. "What are they saying?"

She stepped closer, pressing her forehead against his. Her voice was low, trembling, but certain.

"They’re calling me by a name. My name."

The Pane reacted violently, silver lightning arcing across the sky, reflections cracking into screams. The world itself didn’t want her to speak it.

Ren growled. "Then say it louder."

Her breath hitched—half in fear, half in defiance. She shut her eyes, flames coursing through her body, bleeding into his cracks, wrapping both of them in firelight.

The whispers surged. Thousands of voices, once silent, now unchained.

—"Aelira."

The name slammed through the Pane like a hammer.

Her body convulsed, her wings flaring wide, their flames cutting through the broken horizon. The air itself bent as though forced to bow.

She screamed it this time, her voice echoing with the weight of every freed soul:

"My name is AELIRA!"

The silence shattered.

The Pane howled, its endless reflections convulsing in pain. Whole swathes of its surface collapsed, bleeding into void. The girl—no, Aelira—lifted her face, her flame brighter than moons, brighter than law itself.

Ren’s breath caught. For a heartbeat, it wasn’t just her.

He saw her layered over every other version she’d ever been. A caretaker of reflections. A prisoner of the Pane. A rebellion. A flame. And now—herself.

Aelira.

Ren tightened his grip on her hand, grinning faintly even as blood dripped from his lips.

"Good," he whispered. "Now the Pane knows who you are."

Her eyes burned like molten glass. "And now it’s time they remember what I am."

The Pane began to collapse faster. Somewhere deep within, something stirred—the next defense, the next jailer, the next law.

But Ren and Aelira were no longer standing apart.

They were no longer broken pieces.

They were names.

They were flame.

They were unwritten.

The Pane’s collapse was not quiet.

It screamed. Not with one voice, but with all of them—the wails of a thousand fragments, the screech of broken reflections, the sound of entire forgotten lives being torn free. The sky bled silver rain. The ground became a mirror sea, rippling with faces half-formed, gasping like drowned children.

Ren felt his cracks ache as though they were resonating with every cry. He gritted his teeth, fire flickering in the veins of glass across his arms.

Beside him, Aelira stood firm, though her flame bent and swayed under the pressure. Her wings wrapped wide, shielding them both from the shards falling like knives.

"The Pane..." Ren muttered, eyes narrowing. "It’s birthing something new."

She nodded slowly. "A replacement. The Pane never tolerates a gap in its laws. The Architect is gone. So now—"

The mirror-sea trembled. Then split.

From its depths, a figure rose.

At first, it was formless, a storm of shards bound by nothing. But then the shards drew together, fusing into limbs, a torso, a face—or rather, the mockery of one.

Its body was stitched entirely from reflections: cracked glass showing strangers’ lives, strangers’ sins. Every step it took left behind ripples of memory—murders, betrayals, whispered lies, all replaying in fragments that cut into the ground.

Ren clenched his fists. "...What the hell is that thing?"

Aelira’s voice shook. "...A Sin-Eater."

The figure tilted its head, the cracks across its face rearranging until it wore a dozen masks at once, each whispering different words.

It stepped closer, and the Pane seemed to stabilize around it, as though the very existence of this new being rewrote the law.

Ren’s flame guttered in his chest. The air itself resisted his breathing. His fire wasn’t being extinguished—it was being swallowed.

The Sin-Eater’s voices merged into one, deep and hollow:

"Names bring sin.

Sins bring weight.

All weight belongs to the Pane.

I am its mouth."

Aelira’s wings flared brighter, struggling against the gravity pulling her flames inward. "It’s feeding on everything unclean in us. Every fracture. Every guilt."

Ren staggered as something heavy clamped down on his chest. His cracks glowed dimly, shuddering. Memories spilled out against his will:

The moment he first touched the mirror.

The reflection of himself smiling with a cruelty he’d never shown.

The blood on his hands, real or imagined.

The doubt, the guilt, the fear.

The Sin-Eater drank it all.

Ren dropped to one knee, choking. "...Tch. This... bastard—"

Aelira caught his shoulder, but even she was wavering. Her fire bent inward, feeding the creature.

The Sin-Eater opened its fractured mouth wider.

"Yes. Give it. All of it. You cannot hold flame when it burns with sin."

Ren’s head snapped up. His grin was sharp, defiant even through blood.

"...Then I’ll burn my sins too."

His cracks flared, not with steady flame—but with wild, unstable fire. It surged recklessly, bleeding across his chest, scorching the mirror-sea beneath him.

Aelira’s eyes widened. "Ren, if you burn like that—"

He laughed through his teeth. "Better me than letting that freak eat me."

The Sin-Eater hissed, its mirrored body trembling as though tasting a flavor it hadn’t expected—flame laced with sin, burning hotter, sharper, more poisonous than it could contain.

Aelira’s wings snapped wide. She pressed closer to him, fire spilling into his veins. "Then we’ll burn together."

Their flames collided, unstable and pure, sin and name, weaving into something the Pane couldn’t recognize.

The Sin-Eater roared, staggering back, its stitched mask cracking.

The Pane shuddered again. For the first time—it recoiled.

The Sin-Eater reeled, its fractured body shaking as if too many sins were trying to speak at once. Its stitched face broke apart, splitting into dozens of mouths that all screamed simultaneously—every scream an accusation, every word stolen from lives long buried.

The mirrored sea boiled under the weight of their clash. The Pane’s vast surface rippled, as though trying to decide whether to shatter or harden.

Ren’s flames surged higher, erratic, unstable—but alive. His veins of fire pulsed with both destruction and defiance. He could feel Aelira’s flame twined with his, steadier, luminous, wrapping around his chaos like wings bracing a storm.

The Sin-Eater lurched forward. With every step, memories spilled from its body—memories that weren’t Ren’s. A woman’s voice confessing betrayal. A child crying with guilt. A soldier whispering about a massacre. Each memory pressed against Ren’s chest like invisible chains, forcing his fire to shrink.

"You carry it too," the Sin-Eater intoned, its mouths forming a single gaping maw. "You cannot burn free. Every fracture, every guilt feeds me. You are mine."

Ren spat blood, then grinned through it. "Mine tastes like poison. Hope you choke."

With a roar, he lunged, his body bursting into a torrent of jagged flame. The cracks along his skin widened, glowing like molten glass ready to shatter.

The Sin-Eater caught him mid-charge. Its maw opened wider than the horizon, trying to swallow Ren whole.

But Aelira was there—her wings blazing like a cathedral of fire, slamming between Ren and the maw. Her voice rang out, clear and burning:

"Names burn brighter than sins."

Her wings struck the Sin-Eater’s jaw, forcing it back. The explosion lit up the Pane like a second sun, shards raining down like meteors.

Ren followed through, his flames spiraling around hers. Together, their fire became a vortex, ripping through the creature’s mirrored limbs.

The Sin-Eater shrieked, the reflections making up its body unraveling into broken fragments. Murderers’ eyes dissolved. Liars’ lips cracked into dust. All the lives it devoured spilled free into the mirror-sea, where they evaporated like steam.

But the Pane itself trembled in fury.

The Sin-Eater wasn’t dying—it was changing. The shards spun wildly, reassembling into something less humanoid, more monstrous. Its body extended outward, covering the horizon, its mouth stretching across the sky like a black eclipse.

"Then I will devour fire itself."

The maw opened, and the Pane bent downward, pulling everything toward it—Ren, Aelira, the sea of mirrors, even the fragments of stars above. The air itself warped into a spiral of consumption.

Ren dug his hands into the reflective ground, cracks glowing brighter with strain. His fire clawed against the pull, but he felt himself being dragged inch by inch.

Aelira’s hand seized his. Her wings anchored them both, though feathers shattered in the wind. Her eyes burned—not with fear, but defiance.

"Ren," she said, her voice steady against the storm. "Let’s give it what it wants."

He looked at her, half-confused, half-mad. Then he understood.

Not to resist being eaten.

But to ignite from within.

A wild grin split his face. "Guess we’ll burn this bastard’s stomach."

They leapt together—straight into the Sin-Eater’s mouth.

Darkness swallowed them whole.

The last thing Ren saw before the maw closed was the Pane itself flickering, as though uncertain whether it had just gained strength—or swallowed its own doom.