The stairway from Section 0 opened into a twilight that did not belong to any dawn.
It was the color of glass burned by time—half transparent, half ash.
Wind moaned through the ruins as Reiji emerged, every breath cutting against his throat.
The city above had changed.
Buildings that once reached for the clouds were now reduced to mirrored skeletons. Each wall reflected fragments of him—thousands of Reijis walking in silence, none of them whole.
In the distance, the Glass Spire stood.
A tower of fractured mirrors, rising from the center of the Capital like the spine of a god that had died standing. It shimmered faintly, bending the dying light into pale blue waves that rippled across the horizon.
Reiji took one step toward it. The ground beneath him responded with echoes—like footsteps returning from a future that hadn't happened yet.
---
He walked through streets that remembered everything.
Shattered signs still carried the insignia of the Court of Shadows. Posters of the Tribunal peeled from the walls. Somewhere, an abandoned loudspeaker still repeated the same message over and over in a voice corroded by static:
> "Judgment is salvation. Memory is sin."
He stopped, listening. The phrase had haunted him once; now it sounded like a joke whispered by a dying machine.
A flicker caught his eye—someone watching from a broken window.
He drew his blade in silence, but the figure didn't move.
"Rin," he said softly.
She stepped into the dim light. Her coat was torn, her eyes the same silver-grey as the city around them. "You came back," she whispered. "They said Section 0 ate everything that entered."
"It tried," Reiji replied. "It failed."
Rin studied him for a moment. "Then you saw the archives?"
He nodded. "Every face we erased."
Her lips trembled. "Then you know what they made us do."
Reiji sheathed his weapon. "I already knew. I just refused to remember."
They stood in silence, the wind carrying the faint hum of the Spire in the distance.
---
As they walked together toward the center, Rin spoke in fragments—about survivors hiding beneath the city, about the Mirror Division taking control of what remained of the Court. She said the Spire was their new headquarters, a monument to control memory itself.
"They're rewriting records," she said. "Not just names or crimes—entire histories. Soon, the world will forget the trials ever happened."
Reiji's expression didn't change, but the scar on his hand pulsed faintly.
"So this is what replacing silence with lies looks like."
Rin nodded. "And Kaede—she's somewhere in there. They call her the 'Mirror Heart.'"
The words cut through him. He had heard her name whispered by the machines below, but hearing it from a living mouth made it real again.
"She survived?"
"She leads them now. Or maybe they lead her. It's hard to tell."
The wind howled, scattering shards of glass across the street.
---
They reached the plaza beneath the Spire. It was a wasteland of reflections—every step revealed another angle of themselves, distorted and reversed. Above, the tower groaned, its mirrored panels shifting like scales of a sleeping beast.
Rin touched the surface of one mirror. "They say the Spire shows the truth."
Reiji looked at his own reflection. It stared back, fragmented, bleeding light from the cracks.
"No," he said. "It shows what's left after truth dies."
He pressed his palm against the glass. It responded with warmth—then a voice whispered from within:
> "Welcome back, Judge."
Rin stepped back. "It recognized you."
"I built it," Reiji said quietly. "Back when I still believed in salvation."
The mirror rippled like water. An entrance formed—spiral stairs leading upward, glowing faintly blue.
---
Inside, the Spire was alive.
Mirrors pulsed on every wall, displaying scenes from the past: trials, confessions, executions. Every reflection carried voices, arguing in endless loops.
As Reiji climbed, he felt them watching—thousands of judgments frozen in time.
Rin whispered, "This place is a graveyard of decisions."
He didn't answer. He could feel Kaede's presence somewhere above, faint but undeniable, like a heartbeat echoing through glass.
At the fifth level, they found a corridor lined with crystal statues—figures of former judges and soldiers, preserved mid-motion, their eyes empty. The plaque beneath read:
> "Those who broke the mirror cannot leave the reflection."
Rin's voice trembled. "They turned them into… this?"
Reiji's hand tightened on his blade. "Punishment for remembering. The Court calls it mercy."
---
When they reached the core chamber, the air turned cold enough to bleed.
A circular platform floated above an abyss of light, and in its center stood a figure draped in white.
Kaede.
Her hair glowed faintly in the mirrored light, her eyes calm yet empty—like she'd seen too much truth and survived only by forgetting it.
"Reiji," she said softly. "You shouldn't have come."
He took a step forward. "Then tell me what you've become."
"I am the silence that keeps the world from collapsing," she answered. "The Mirror Division gave me that purpose. The past must stay buried. You of all people should understand."
Reiji's voice broke slightly. "I've seen what burying it does. It doesn't erase the pain—it multiplies it."
Kaede's expression didn't change. "Pain is irrelevant if the world remains stable."
He drew his blade, its edge catching the light of the mirrors. "Then stability is just another name for fear."
The chamber began to vibrate. Reflections around them blurred into chaos, showing versions of themselves—Reiji with blood on his hands, Kaede weeping over a burning city, Rin standing among corpses.
Kaede's eyes softened for a moment. "You think you can save me?"
"No," he whispered. "I can only remember you."
Then the mirrors shattered.
Light exploded, swallowing the chamber in a storm of images and voices.
Reiji's mind fractured into fragments of his own memories—each one pulling him toward a different truth. He heard Kaede's scream, Rin's cry, the echo of his own oath as a Judge.
Through the chaos, one image remained clear: the first day he joined the Court, swearing to protect truth even if it destroyed him.
He raised his blade and stepped through the storm.
"Then let the world break," he said. "I'll remember what it was."
The Spire answered with a sound like glass screaming.
---
When the light faded, the chamber was silent.
Kaede was gone.
Only shards of the mirrors remained, reflecting the city outside—a sky fractured, yet real.
Reiji stood alone, his blade dim but unbroken.
Rin's voice echoed faintly from somewhere below. "Reiji… what happened?"
He looked up at the sky, where the first faint color of dawn tried to bleed through the glass.
"She remembered," he whispered. "That's enough."
The tower groaned, cracks spreading across its surface.
Reiji turned away as the Glass Spire began to collapse behind him, scattering a thousand reflections into the wind.