The rain fell, but this time, it made no sound.
I noticed it first when I reached out my hand. The droplets landed on my skin, cold and real, yet the alley remained unnaturally quiet—no splashes against concrete, no rhythm against metal roofs. It was as if the world itself had chosen silence, holding its breath along with me.
EG stood a few steps away, unmoving.
The Hall of Echoes was gone. The tower, the mirrors, the endless reflections—vanished like mist under morning light. Yet the weight of them still pressed against my chest, heavier than fear. The pearl rested warm against my collarbone, its glow subdued but steady, like an ember refusing to die.
"So this is reality now?" I asked softly.
EG turned his head, golden eyes reflecting the muted rain. "Reality is thinner than you think," he replied. "You're standing at the seam."
"The seam between what?" I demanded. "Between lies and truth? Between forgetting and remembering?"
He didn't answer immediately. Instead, he walked past me, his footsteps finally producing sound—soft, deliberate. With each step, the rain began to whisper again, faint taps returning to the ground, as if sound itself were cautiously re-entering the world.
"Between who you were," EG said at last, "and who you can no longer avoid becoming."
My fingers curled instinctively around the pearl. A pulse of warmth spread through my palm, and with it came images—fractured, incomplete. Shadows beneath streetlamps. A mirror cracking long before I ever touched it. A promise spoken in rain, words swallowed before I could hear them clearly.
"You said I chose the rain," I murmured. "But you never told me what that choice cost."
EG stopped.
For the first time since I met him, his composure fractured—just slightly. Not fear. Not anger. Regret.
"It cost you certainty," he said quietly. "And it cost me time."
I laughed bitterly. "That's not an answer."
"No," he admitted. "But it's the truth you're ready for."
The rain around us began to change.
The droplets froze midair, suspended like glass beads. Light bent strangely between them, and I realized with a sharp intake of breath that reflections were forming again—not mirrors this time, but memories projected into the rain itself.
I saw myself at the bus stop.
Not the version I remembered—but another moment, hidden behind it. EG stood across the street, not watching, not stalking, but waiting. In his hand was the pearl, dull and inactive. He looked… uncertain.
"You hesitated," I whispered.
"Yes," he said. "Because you weren't meant to awaken yet."
The image shifted. A different night. A broken mirror already bleeding light. And me—reaching out, desperate, afraid, yet stubbornly alive.
"That wasn't part of the design," EG continued. "But you touched the mirror anyway. And the rain answered."
The suspended droplets shattered, falling all at once.
I staggered as sound and motion returned violently. My heart raced, my breathing uneven. "So I broke something," I said. "Again."
"You completed something," EG corrected. "But prematurely."
Anger surged through me, hot and sharp. "Then why didn't you stop me? If you knew all this—if you knew what I'd face—why let me go through it alone?"
His gaze met mine fully now. "Because interference has consequences. And because you were already marked."
The pearl flared suddenly, burning against my skin.
Marked.
The word echoed painfully.
"What does that mean?" I demanded.
EG took a step closer. The air around him felt heavier, charged. "It means the mirror recognizes you as a threshold. You don't just cross between worlds—you stabilize them. Or tear them apart."
I shook my head. "I never asked for this."
"No one who survives ever does," he said softly.
The rain began to fall normally again, but something had changed. I could feel it in my bones, in the way the shadows clung too closely to my feet. The third reflection—the one that smiled—had not returned, but I knew better now.
She wasn't gone.
She was waiting.
"What happens next?" I asked, my voice quieter.
EG looked up at the darkened sky. "Next, you return to the city. To routine. To things you think are normal."
"And the tower?"
"The tower watches."
"And you?"
A pause.
"I stay close enough to intervene," he said. "But far enough that your choices remain yours."
I swallowed. "If I refuse?"
The pearl pulsed once, sharply.
EG smiled—not reassuringly, but truthfully. "Then the rain will find you anyway."
Thunder rolled in the distance, low and restrained.
As we walked out of the alley together, I realized something that chilled me more than the storm ever could—
The rain no longer felt like an accident.
And neither did I.