"Some reflections don't show who you are, but who you've avoided becoming."
The doorway wasn't carved.
It wasn't built.
It wasn't summoned.
It was **remembered** into existence.
Lines of gold traced themselves into the air like a hand drawing in dust, forming an archway of pure resonance. The edges flickered with old symbols—ones Aarav didn't recognize, but older Aarav's breath hitched the second they appeared.
"You know this place," Aarav said quietly.
Older Aarav didn't answer immediately.
His eyes were locked on the doorway, trembling with something between dread and longing.
"This is where it began," he whispered.
"And where it ends."
Aarav frowned. "Where what ends?"
"Us."
Older Aarav swallowed.
"Or him. Or all of this. The Vale… it's finally showing you the truth it denied me."
Aarav studied him. "Why deny _you_?"
The older version laughed once—a harsh, broken sound.
"Because I had already become what it feared."
The golden door pulsed, drawing them closer.
The chamber behind them dissolved into transparent layers of light, leaving only the path ahead. No walls. No echoes. No familiar shapes. Just the faint curve of a world trying to guide them toward something it had never entrusted to anyone else.
Older Aarav nodded toward the archway.
"You go first."
Aarav stepped through—
—and the world snapped into silence.
Not emptiness.
**Memory.**
A vast hall stretched before him.
White stone floor.
Vaulted ceiling.
Pillars etched with threads of resonance that pulsed like veins.
A wide window overlooking a broken horizon that didn't belong to this world.
Aarav breathed in sharply.
He'd seen this place.
Not here.
Not fully.
But in glimpses the Vale had fed him.
The King's Hall.
The place where the first Anchor stood.
The place where the world changed.
He turned just as older Aarav stepped through, wincing as the doorway sealed behind them with a soft hum.
Aarav whispered, "This is… his memory."
"No," older Aarav said.
"This is _ours._ The part of resonance that remembers everything an Anchor ever felt."
Aarav walked to the center of the hall.
His steps echoed even though the air felt too heavy to carry sound.
A figure stood at the far end.
Not a shadow.
Not an Echo.
Not the King.
A man.
Back turned.
Tall, steady, calm.
Draped in pale robes of woven resonance.
His silhouette bled familiarity.
Aarav froze. "…who is that?"
Older Aarav walked past him slowly, quietly.
"That," he said, voice cracking,
"is the first Anchor."
The man turned.
For a heartbeat, Aarav thought he was looking at himself.
Not identical.
Not an Echo.
But the resemblance was undeniable—
like someone had taken the blueprint of Aarav's existence and sculpted an older, sharper, more ancient silhouette.
His eyes were gentle.
His face worn.
His presence steady enough to still the air.
"Aarav," the man said softly.
"I've been waiting."
Aarav's breath stilled.
"Are you… alive?"
"No."
The man smiled sadly.
"But memory is never dead. Not here."
Older Aarav stood behind Aarav, every muscle tense.
"He wouldn't speak to me."
The first Anchor's eyes flicked to him with sorrow. "Because you carried too much hate."
Older Aarav looked away, jaw tight.
Aarav stepped closer.
"You're the one the King lost."
The man nodded.
"And the one who lost him."
Aarav frowned. "Why did you leave him?"
For the first time, grief flashed across the Anchor's eyes—so raw it made Aarav step back.
"Because I loved him," the man whispered.
"And he could not understand why that hurt."
Aarav felt that like a blade.
The first Anchor walked toward him, placing a hand over Aarav's chest where the hum lived.
"You feel the pull now, don't you?" the man said quietly.
"The way your resonance stretches when he reaches for you."
Aarav didn't speak.
He didn't need to.
The man nodded in understanding.
"That bond is not control," the first Anchor said.
"It is connection. Born of purpose. Born of meaning."
His expression darkened.
"But when purpose breaks… connection can become chains."
Aarav swallowed hard. "So you ran."
"No. I fled."
His voice cracked.
"Because I believed staying would kill us both."
Aarav whispered, "And did it?"
The first Anchor's eyes dimmed.
"Eventually."
He reached out, placing something in Aarav's hands.
Warm.
Small.
Light.
A fragment of crystal—
not the shard from the corridor,
but something older,
purer,
still humming with a bond long severed.
"This," the Anchor said, "is what remains of my choice."
Aarav stared at it.
It pulsed faintly to his touch.
"Why give it to me?"
The Anchor stepped back, his form flickering at the edges.
"Because you stand where I stood," he said softly.
"And you are about to face the choice that shattered a world."
The hall shook.
Light cracked along the walls.
The memory trembled.
Older Aarav stepped forward. "We have to go. The King is pushing in."
The first Anchor placed a hand on Aarav's shoulder.
"Remember," he said.
"An Anchor is not chosen by power.
An Anchor is chosen by the meaning he gives to the world."
His form flickered again—
turning translucent.
"And that meaning," he whispered,
"is why the King fears you."
The hall shattered.
Light consumed the world.
Aarav felt older Aarav's grip pulling him out of the collapsing memory—
—and the two of them fell backward into darkness.
The Vale was changing again.
The next trial was coming.
And this one would not be gentle.
"He held the reflection longer than he wanted, and it didn't break him."