CHAPTER 74: CHAPTER 74 – THE SPIRAL WHERE SHE WAITS

The gates shut behind them with a thunderous clang.

Ren didn’t flinch. He kept his blade angled low, his eyes scanning the interior of the spire. The rebellion clustered close, their breaths tight, every shadow around them twitching like it might lunge at any moment.

The tower’s insides weren’t walls or floors. They were mirrors.

Endless planes of glass stacked atop one another, rising higher than the eye could see. Each one reflected not just their bodies, but something else—twisted fragments of memories.

Ren caught sight of his younger self, sitting on the edge of his bed, staring at the moon outside a window. Another pane showed him screaming in silence, as if begging for someone who never came.

The rebellion stirred uneasily, each one locking onto their own reflections.

"Don’t look too long," the silver-haired girl whispered, clutching her shard-wings tight against her back. Her voice trembled. "That’s how the tower eats you."

Ren’s gaze hardened. "So it wants to pull us apart from the inside."

The scarred man spat bitterly. "Figures. No beast, no army—just our own ghosts."

But as they walked deeper, the air grew heavier, almost liquid. Every breath scraped Ren’s throat. He felt the pressure of eyes everywhere, though the mirrors showed only himself and his allies.

Then the floor cracked beneath them.

Glass splintered upward in a sudden bloom, shattering into dozens of jagged corridors. The group stumbled, some nearly falling into pits that opened like gaping mouths.

The tower had split them.

Ren found himself separated with only the silver-haired girl. The rest of the rebellion were swallowed by shifting corridors of glass, their voices muffled, distorted, as if coming from underwater.

"Ren!" the girl cried, reaching for him, but the pathway between them was already dissolving.

Ren grabbed her hand before the gap could widen. He pulled her against him, steadying her. "Stay close. This place wants us alone."

Her eyes lifted to his, fragile yet unwavering. "If it separates us... we may not come back."

Ren nodded once. "Then it won’t."

They moved together, step by step, into the heart of their new corridor.

The mirrors here whispered louder. Ren could hear his own voice repeating words he wished he’d never spoken. Accusations, failures, quiet moments of surrender. He clenched his teeth, forcing his focus ahead, but the girl faltered.

Her wings dimmed. She stopped in front of a pane that reflected not her—but Ren.

Only in this one, Ren stood behind her, holding a blade against her back.

Her lips trembled. "...Why does it show that?"

Ren stared at the reflection, cold fury rising in him. "Because the tower wants you to doubt me."

He stepped forward, raising his blade, and without hesitation shattered the mirror. The glass screamed as it split apart, the reflection dissolving like smoke.

Ren turned to her, firm but calm. "Don’t let this place tell you who I am. You already know."

Her chest heaved, but slowly, the glow in her wings returned. "...I do."

The corridor stretched further, darker now. At its end, a faint pulse of light shimmered. Not warm, not inviting—cold, like the glow of a heartbeat that had already stopped.

Ren gripped her hand tighter.

The descent had only begun.

And the tower was hungry.

The corridor narrowed until Ren and the silver-haired girl could only walk shoulder to shoulder, their reflections crowding them from both sides. Every pane vibrated faintly, as though a muffled heartbeat pulsed behind the glass.

Then the whispers began.

At first they were shapeless—like the wind rustling through hollow reeds. But as Ren strained to ignore them, they sharpened into words. His words.

"I’ll protect you."

"I’ll never leave."

"You can trust me."

Over and over, promises he had made—twisted, looped, mocked. The girl stiffened. Her grip on Ren’s hand faltered.

Ren turned to her. Her silver eyes were wide, glassy, trembling like she was fighting something inside.

"What is it?" he asked.

Her lips parted, but it wasn’t her voice that came out.

"Why didn’t you save me, Ren?"

Ren froze. The sound wasn’t hers. It was another girl’s voice. Clear. Familiar. Painfully familiar.

Airi.

The rebellion’s laughter, the screams of the Mirror World—everything else vanished in that instant. Only her voice filled the corridor.

The glass around him rippled, and suddenly every reflection showed Airi. Her smiling face. Her crying face. Her face twisted in accusation.

The silver-haired girl clutched her chest, as if the whispers were stabbing into her. "Ren... they’re using her. They’re using all of them."

Ren’s jaw locked. His pulse thundered. He swung his blade against the nearest pane, shattering Airi’s reflection into a rain of shards.

But the voice didn’t stop.

The shards hung in the air, spinning, reshaping themselves into a single looming silhouette—a faceless figure that carried the echoes of every promise Ren had ever broken.

"You can’t protect them," it whispered. "Not her. Not me. Not anyone."

The girl stepped in front of Ren, wings spread, her voice sharp despite its tremor. "Don’t listen! This is the tower’s hunger. It feeds on guilt. If you give it yours—it will devour you whole!"

Ren’s chest heaved. His vision blurred red. For one fleeting heartbeat, the voice almost pulled him under.

Then he grinned. A sharp, defiant grin.

"Good," Ren muttered. His blade ignited with reflection-light. "Then it can choke on me."

He struck forward, cleaving the faceless echo apart in one devastating arc. The tower howled, every mirror around them splintering but not breaking—like the whole structure had felt the cut.

The silver-haired girl stumbled back, stunned. His words, his defiance, had shaken her more than the echo itself.

Ren lowered his blade, his eyes burning. "I don’t care if it twists my past. I don’t care if it throws every ghost at me. None of them get to decide who I am."

The girl stared at him, chest rising and falling, her wings flickering with uncertain light. Slowly, she nodded. "...Then I’ll stand with you. Even if the tower swallows everything."

The corridor groaned, stretching open. At its end, a staircase spiraled downward into a pit of shadow.

And in that shadow—just for a second—Ren heard the faintest laugh.

Not the tower.

Not an echo.

The Shard-Keeper.

She was waiting for them.

The staircase yawned beneath them, spiraling down like a serpent coiled into infinity. Each step glowed faintly, as if lit from within by veins of trapped moonlight. Ren placed his foot on the first step—and felt it move. Not stone. Not glass. Something alive, shivering beneath his weight.

The silver-haired girl flinched but followed close behind, her hand brushing the wall for balance. The wall wasn’t solid, either—it rippled at her touch, showing flashes of memories, half-formed faces, fragments of lives erased.

Ren’s knuckles whitened around his blade. "She’s making us walk on the bones of the ones she’s taken."

The girl’s wings twitched uneasily. "Not bones. Promises." Her voice was hushed, reverent, as though she feared the stairwell could hear. "Every step is someone who swore to resist her. They walked down... and never came back."

Ren glanced at her. "Then we’re not like them."

But as he said it, the staircase trembled, and the air grew heavy. The Pane itself seemed to listen—and then laugh.

The shadows at the bottom stirred. A figure emerged, walking up toward them, her form swaying like a candle-flame in the wind.

Ren froze.

It was him.

Not the twisted double from before—not the grinning reflection. This one was worse. This one carried himself like Ren should have. Upright. Composed. His blade polished, his eyes steady and merciless.

The silver-haired girl stiffened, whispering: "...A Ren that never faltered."

The apparition stopped a few steps below, gazing up at Ren with quiet disdain. His voice was low, calm, deadly certain.

"You fight like a child clinging to scraps of rebellion. I fight as the Pane’s chosen."

Ren spat to the side. "Chosen by what? The thing that wants to turn us into glass puppets?"

The double didn’t flinch. "Chosen by inevitability. Look at yourself. You burn, you scream, you bleed for the people you couldn’t save. But me... I accepted it. I don’t waste myself on what’s already lost. That’s why I’m stronger."

The girl gasped. The apparition’s aura was suffocating, pressing against her chest like invisible chains. Even her wings dimmed, feathers dropping one by one into the spiraling void.

Ren lifted his blade. "You’re not me."

The apparition tilted his head. "No. I’m the you that should have been. The savior without the guilt. The blade without the weakness of a heart."

Then, as if the staircase itself willed it, the space between them collapsed.

Steel clashed against steel—Ren against his perfected reflection. Sparks rained in the spiral, scattering into the abyss. Each strike shook the steps, threatening to hurl both of them into the void.

The silver-haired girl reached forward, crying out, "Ren—!"

But before she could descend to help, the Pane’s wall of glass surged up between them, cutting her off. She struck it with her fists, her wings flaring, but the mirror swallowed her blows with cruel silence.

Now it was just Ren.

Ren versus the Ren who had abandoned his heart.

And far below, unseen, a ripple of cloth brushed against the void as the Shard-Keeper finally revealed her silhouette—watching, smiling faintly, as the spiral narrowed toward its inevitable breaking point.