(Arc 2: Echoes of the Forgotten)
The rain had not stopped for three days.
Zephyr-gray clouds drifted endlessly above the broken skyline of Sector 8, drowning the world beneath a curtain of silence. The streets were flooded with reflections — not of people, but of memories. Each ripple in the water carried fragments of voices that once belonged to the living.
Reiji walked through it, coat torn, collar raised. The sound of his steps was swallowed by the rain, like the world itself refused to acknowledge his presence. The Court had fallen quiet since the Glass Spire incident. But silence, Reiji had learned, was never peace — it was only the moment before the next storm.
He stopped under a shattered sign — "MIRROR RESEARCH UNIT – SECTION 13".
The door was half-open, rusted, and breathing the scent of dust and iron. Inside, the remnants of the past lingered like ghosts refusing to leave.
He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a fragment — a thin, transparent shard etched with veins of black light. One of the last surviving pieces of The Spire's core. It pulsed faintly in his hand, responding to something unseen.
> "You're still awake…" Reiji whispered.
"Even after all this time."
He could feel it — a heartbeat. Not human, but close enough to disturb him.
This fragment was a witness, too. It remembered everything.
---
He stepped deeper into the lab.
The walls were lined with broken mirrors — each one fractured differently, each reflecting a version of himself that didn't exist. One smiled faintly. One bled from the eyes. Another had no face at all.
> Memory anomalies detected.
Subject: Shinomiya Reiji.
Classification: Mirrorbound Entity.
The old system voice buzzed from a broken terminal. He ignored it.
His attention fixed on a message carved into the wall by hand, written in the same ink as his old Court insignia:
> "We tried to forget… but forgetting became the sin itself."
— R.K.
He stared at the initials.
Rin Kaede.
Her name surfaced like a wound reopening.
The last time he saw her, she was swallowed by the collapsing mirror field in the Spire — smiling faintly, telling him that truth was heavier than any weapon.
He clenched the shard tighter.
> "If you're still somewhere in this city," he muttered, "I'll find you… even if the world denies it."
---
A sound broke through the silence.
Metal scraping against concrete.
Reiji turned — his hand instantly reaching for the pistol at his belt.
From the corner of the corridor, a silhouette appeared — thin, trembling, wrapped in a white containment suit stained with ash. The figure raised its hands slowly.
> "Wait— don't shoot," a voice rasped. "You… you're Shinomiya Reiji, right?"
The voice was hoarse, human, terrified.
Reiji's eyes narrowed.
> "Who sent you?"
"No one. I… I worked here. Before Section 13 was purged."
"Purged?"
"They said our research went too far. We built a system that could resonate with memory. But when the Court realized it could expose their lies, they—"
The man coughed violently, collapsing against the wall. His helmet cracked, revealing half a face burned by radiation scars. He tried to lift a small data drive.
> "Take it. Everything's inside… Project Echo. You'll understand."
Before Reiji could move, a sound pierced the air — a high-pitched, electronic whine.
The man's eyes widened in terror.
> "They found me—"
A flash.
Then silence.
The body fell limp, headless, smoke rising from the cauterized wound.
Reiji spun, weapon ready, scanning the darkness.
Through the flickering light, a shape emerged — black, fluid, moving like liquid shadow. A humanoid, but faceless, its body stitched from broken mirror fragments.
> Target confirmed.
Reconstruction Directive: Neutralize anomaly.
The creature's voice wasn't heard — it was felt, vibrating directly into Reiji's skull.
He fired once. Twice. Bullets tore through the air, shattering glass and metal, but the thing didn't fall. It absorbed the impact, twisting its body unnaturally as if mocking the laws of motion.
Reiji dove sideways, sliding behind a console as the creature's arm morphed into a blade of liquid glass. The strike cut through the wall beside him, leaving trails of molten light.
> "You're one of them," Reiji hissed. "A Mirrorborn."
No response — only movement, fast and relentless.
He rolled, grabbed a loose cable from the floor, and jammed it into a sparking panel. Electricity burst across the room. The creature convulsed, its shape flickering between shadow and reflection.
Reiji didn't waste the moment.
He kicked the data drive from the corpse's hand, snatched it mid-motion, and ran.
Behind him, the creature screamed — a sound like glass screaming against itself.
---
He burst out into the rain-soaked alley. The cold hit him like knives, but he kept running until the building collapsed behind him, engulfed in static fire.
Panting, he leaned against a wall, staring at the drive clutched in his palm. The label read:
PROJECT ECHO — Subject: Shinomiya, R.
The rain washed the blood from his fingers.
He laughed quietly — a hollow, bitter sound.
> "Of course," he murmured. "It always comes back to me."
---
That night, Reiji took refuge in an abandoned train station. The power still flickered faintly from the emergency grid. He connected the drive to a portable terminal and waited.
A voice came through the static — female, calm, and painfully familiar.
> "If you're hearing this… it means you survived. I told you once, Reiji — truth is heavier than weapons. Don't let it crush you."
"The Court erased more than memories. They erased selves. Project Echo was built to restore what they took. But the moment we activated it, the system recognized you — as the origin point."
"You're not just a survivor. You're the reflection that refused to die."
The recording ended abruptly.
Reiji sat in silence. His reflection shimmered faintly on the cracked terminal screen — but the eyes looking back were not the same color.
---
Outside, thunder rolled over the horizon.
And from the ruins of Section 13, the Mirrorborn began to move — hundreds of them, rising from the broken earth, drawn toward the same pulse that beat inside the fragment he carried.
The storm was only beginning.