The City of Forgotten Faces lay still beneath the twilight veil, its towers no longer gleaming but humming softly, as if remembering a song it had once known. The golden river that once ran through its heart was no longer gold. It shimmered with alternating hues—pale silver, deep black, and soft amber—light and shadow weaving together in endless flux.
At the river's edge, Liora stood barefoot. Her reflection no longer matched her completely; it shifted, sometimes older, sometimes younger, sometimes not her at all. The mark upon her arm—the spiral of shadow-light—glowed faintly beneath her skin.
She had not slept in days, though days had lost meaning here. The City existed outside the rhythm of the sun. Time itself moved differently—slow as a memory, fast as a dream.
She bent down and touched the river's surface. It was cool, impossibly smooth, as if time had been frozen within it.
"You're changing," she murmured. "Or maybe… I am."
A ripple spread outward, distorting her reflection. And within that ripple, she saw movement—another figure beneath the surface.
Not her reflection.
Someone else entirely.
He rose from the water like smoke given form, the liquid parting silently. He was tall, his face obscured by a hood of molten glass that shifted and flowed like living flame. His voice was a murmur carried by the current itself.
"You touch the river and it answers," he said. "Do you remember its name?"
Liora stepped back, wary. "No one remembers names here."
"Not no one." The figure lifted his head slightly, and through the translucent glass, faint golden eyes flickered. "I remember yours."
Her heart froze. "Who are you?"
"I am what remained when Auren crossed the threshold. The echo of his intent, trapped in the current that bound the worlds." His hand lifted, fingers dripping liquid gold. "You carry what he could not. You are the dream continued."
Liora's breath caught in her throat. "Auren's… echo."
The figure nodded once. "When he sealed the Shape, he used more than light. He gave part of himself to the river to ensure it flowed even when the worlds forgot. But his memory was divided—scattered. I am that fragment."
Liora stared at him, her heart trembling with something too complex for joy or fear. "Then… Auren still lives, somewhere within the dream?"
"He lives in everything that remembers him. In this city, in the river, in you."
Her hands clenched. "Then help me. The seed still grows beneath the city. The Shape's root lingers. I can't hold it back forever."
The echo tilted his head. "You misunderstand. You are not meant to hold it back. You are meant to guide it."
Liora blinked. "Guide it? The Shape nearly unmade the world—"
"Because it had no direction. No will. It was hunger given form. You, Liora, are the bridge between what devours and what endures."
He stepped closer, and the river rose with him, swirling around her legs, light and shadow mingling in rhythmic patterns.
"If you destroy the seed," he continued softly, "you destroy balance. The world will sleep again, empty. But if you let it grow under your hand… something new might awaken."
She stared down at her reflection—one eye gold, one black as night. "And what if what awakens isn't kind?"
"Then it will be true," the echo said. "And truth is the only thing that survives memory."
The river surged suddenly, breaking between them. The vision fractured; the echo dissolved into mist, his voice fading like a song fading into silence.
"Follow the current beneath time," he whispered. "There you'll find the beginning again."
Then he was gone.
Liora stood alone. The spiral on her arm pulsed once, and the river responded with a low hum that reverberated through the City's bones. She looked up. The towers seemed to tilt toward her, as if listening.
"Beneath time," she said softly.
There was only one place that phrase could mean—the origin vault, the City's deepest chamber, where memories that predated the first dream were locked away. No living soul had entered it since the First Shape's rebellion.
Until now.
She descended for hours—or days. The stairway spiraled downward through translucent stone, glowing faintly from veins of gold that pulsed with her heartbeat. With every step, whispers followed her. Voices of the forgotten—names, songs, fragments of old prayers.
At last, she reached a gate of obsidian. It was etched with countless overlapping runes, each one both language and silence.
She pressed her hand to it.
The mark on her arm flared.
The gate sighed open.
Beyond it lay a vast cavern, lit not by flame or light but by memory itself. Wisps of color drifted through the air, forming scenes that vanished as soon as they appeared—children playing in a courtyard, a woman laughing, a storm swallowing a mountain.
And at the center of it all was the River Beneath Time.
It was not water. It was a current of suspended moments, each droplet a shard of what once was, flowing both forward and backward. The sound it made was like wind in a dream—gentle and endless.
Liora stepped to the edge.
She could see faces moving in the current. Corren. The Shaper. Auren, smiling faintly, light spilling from his eyes.
She reached out—and the surface broke.
A hand shot up and grabbed hers.
She gasped, trying to pull back, but the grip was unyielding. From the river rose a figure—her reflection again, only darker, sharper. Its skin gleamed with glass-like fractures, and where its heart should have been was a hole filled with swirling mist.
"Don't," the reflection said. "Don't open it. You'll lose everything you are."
Liora stared. "You again. You're not real."
"I'm the you that stayed behind when you first woke. The you that believed this world could still be saved without breaking it."
"I can't save it without breaking something," Liora said softly. "That's what creation is."
The reflection's fingers tightened. "And when you break the river, what replaces it? You don't know what you'll become."
"Then let me find out."
The reflection's black eyes narrowed. "You're not strong enough."
Liora's own golden eyes burned in answer. "I am what's left after every failure. Strength is the only thing I have left."
She pulled hard, dragging her reflection free of the current. The two collided, mirror and maker, shadow and light. The cavern trembled, the river churning around them.
The reflection's voice turned to a hiss. "You think you can contain both? You'll dissolve."
"Maybe," Liora said, pressing her forehead to her twin's. "But maybe I'll become whole."
Then, with a final breath, she drew her reflection into herself.
The mark on her arm flared bright, blindingly so. The spiral expanded, climbing up her shoulder, across her throat, etching patterns of living gold and black across her skin. The air rippled, the current stopped moving, and for a single heartbeat, time itself ceased.
Then the river began to flow backward.
Every light in the cavern flickered. Memories unspooled. The world outside the City—the mountains, the sky, the endless plains—blurred and rewound. Ages passed in moments, entire civilizations crumbling to dust, then reforming.
Liora stood unmoving in the center of it all, her hair rising in the timeless wind.
The River Beneath Time had accepted her.
In her veins now flowed its current—half shadow, half memory. She could feel every thread of the world's past and future twisting within her, fragile yet infinite.
From deep within the current, a familiar voice whispered.
Liora.
She turned slowly. Auren's echo stood once more at the edge of the river, faint but smiling.
"You found it," he said. "You became what the world needed."
Tears stung her eyes. "And what am I now?"
"The river itself," he murmured. "Time's memory given form. The world won't forget again."
He stepped closer, fading as he did. "But even rivers need banks, Liora. Even memory needs rest. Don't lose yourself in what you protect."
"I won't," she whispered. "Not this time."
The echo's hand brushed her cheek, weightless, and then he was gone.
When the City woke the next dawn, the towers gleamed once more—this time not silver, not gold, but both at once. The river ran clear, reflecting light and shadow perfectly.
At its heart stood Liora, her eyes calm, her body aglow with a soft luminescence. She no longer felt the divide within her. The seed had rooted not in corruption, but in balance.
She smiled faintly.
The dream would continue—not unbroken, not perfect, but aware.
And as she turned to face the horizon, the first light of a new sun touched the city's spires, scattering a thousand reflections into the air—each one a different world, a different story.
The river flowed on, and time with it.