They fled.
Not out of fear, but strategy. Fighting the reflection here — in a space shaped by memory and potential — would only empower it.
The Watcher, fading but still present, offered one final warning.
"You chose defiance. Now your shadow walks."
"Where will it go?" Elira asked.
"Where you won't," it replied. "To the path beyond stars — the path that should never exist."
The mirror-being, the False Aran, didn't pursue immediately. It turned instead toward the star corridor, its gaze set on the gates beyond. It would walk the multiverse not to explore — but to correct. To erase weakness, doubt, and love from every version of Aran it could find.
To become the only one.
"We have to stop it," Aran said.
Elira nodded. "But not by becoming it."
Their son looked up at them, eyes full of questions.
Aran knelt beside him. "I made a promise long ago, before you were born — to protect what mattered. Not just from monsters. Sometimes… from myself."
And now, to keep that promise, he would have to chase the version of himself that had forgotten what the promise meant.
They returned through the gate — and the stars shifted, as if aligning for war.