The next level of the Veins Beyond didn't resemble a dungeon.
It resembled a memory that had never existed.
Skies hung where there should've been ceilings—colorless but shifting with translucent waves like oil on water. The floor was impossible: long fields of shattered glass that somehow held their footing, bending reflections of the six students walking it.
No walls.
No walls, but endless fragments of lives.
Toji slowed, feeling the pressure first. Not magic. Not weight. But a mental fog that bent perception inward.
"This layer…" Ysra whispered, clutching the twin-mask Echo against her chest. "It's not testing identity anymore. It's stealing it."
Fenn—quiet and small—pointed ahead. "Look."
A pillar rose from the horizon like a tree of light, branches made of echo-chains suspended midair. Dozens—no, hundreds—of them writhed gently in place, each tied to crystalline nodes like frozen hearts.
Niko swore. "Are those… are those memories?"
Kaela narrowed her eyes. "No. They're failed tethers."
Toji's Mnemo-Eye whirred behind him, faster now. It pulsed once, then again—and emitted a strange tone, like a whispering bell.
He didn't speak.
Instead, he stepped closer.
As they neared the pillar, memories began to break off and drift near them—phantasmal images, almost like dreams layered onto reality. A child riding on someone's shoulders. A field of sunflowers. The smell of something burning.
Fenn dropped to his knees suddenly, clutching his head.
"My Echo—my Echo's unraveling—!"
Ysra and Kaela rushed to him, shielding him with their own tethers. Roth stood back, hand glowing with protective glyphs.
Niko looked at Toji. "What do we do?"
Toji didn't answer. He was staring at a new image—a small bedroom, a dying candle, a woman's voice reading from a leather-bound book.
His breath caught.
He didn't know the scene.
But his body remembered it.
The Mnemo-Eye surged with light.
Toji reached toward the image—slowly, deliberately—and the moment his fingers passed through it, the entire Veins layer began to hum.
Kaela shouted, "What are you—!"
But the light collapsed inward, pulling only Toji in.
He didn't fight it.
⸻
When his senses returned, he stood inside a dream constructed from fragments.
A house that wasn't his, but could've been.
A woman who was not his mother, but resembled the memory of warmth.
And her words…
"…You always close off. You think silence is strength. But silence is just another kind of chain, Toji."
He turned.
The woman stood before him—her face indistinct, but her tone filled with recognition.
"This is your burden," she said. "But it is not meant to be carried alone."
Behind her, the Mnemo-Eye floated larger than ever—its pupil dilated into a vortex of swirling memory.
"You've used your tether as a weapon. As a shield. As a means of hiding from what you never want to confront."
Toji's fists clenched.
"I've never run."
"No," she said. "You've walked through fire. But never toward others. Only away."
Toji stared at the floor.
It shimmered, revealing Kaela's face—worried, strained, but reaching toward something in the dark.
And for the first time, the false house began to tremble.
He stepped forward.
And said aloud:
"I'm tired of being alone."
The world responded instantly.
The Mnemo-Eye screamed with color—no longer a cold observer, but something closer to a witness. It compressed and fractured into a smaller shape, etching itself now not as a floating companion but as a seal across his left palm.
He gasped.
And opened his eyes.
⸻
He was back.
Kaela had her hand on his chest.
He blinked.
Her expression turned from shock to relief. "You idiot."
"I know."
She helped him up.
"You saw something?" she asked, voice quiet.
He nodded. "Something I needed to."
Fenn stirred behind them, steadied now. Roth stood guard. Ysra was drawing protection glyphs in the air. Niko looked ready to punch the next illusion that moved.
Kaela placed a hand on Toji's arm.
"What did you see?"
He didn't answer.
Instead, he gently turned his palm upward—revealing the Mnemo-Eye now etched there as a seal, pulsing softly.
She stared.
"Your Echo…"
"Accepted something."
And though Toji didn't say it aloud, Kaela knew what it meant.
It had accepted her, too.
⸻
Ahead, the field of false memories collapsed—revealing a true exit: a tunnel of still water that curved upward like a spiral mirror. One path. No branches.
Toji led the way.
Kaela walked beside him.
This time, closer.
And this time, he didn't pull away.
.
.
.
The spiral tunnel of water didn't wet their bodies as they moved—it distorted them. With every step, Toji felt a pull at his mind, a tug as if some unseen hand was reordering the weight of his thoughts. Kaela walked quietly beside him, one hand resting lightly against the smooth curve of the tunnel wall. Her eyes flicked toward him more often now, less like glances and more like grounding points.
Behind them, the others followed—Roth vigilant, Ysra calm but distant, Niko humming to mask his nerves, and Fenn utterly silent.
Then—
a ripple passed through the tunnel.
The water curved inward.
And suddenly they emerged into a cavern.
A massive hollow chamber, floating above a void of stars.
No floor. No sky. Just hanging platforms of memory-glass, suspended like lily pads across nothing.
A fractured temple loomed in the center, half-formed from echo-stone and crystallized mana. Broken wings of statues lined the outside like fallen seraphs.
And above it pulsed a strange sigil—half eye, half lock—hovering like a celestial gate.
Kaela whispered, "This is the heart."
Toji narrowed his eyes. "Of what?"
"The Veins Beyond," she said. "We've reached the dungeon's Core Layer."
Ysra turned slowly. "There's… something watching us."
Roth raised a hand. "Echo entities?"
Toji didn't respond. His eye burned—the Mnemo-Eye embedded on his palm tingled with heat. It didn't blink or hum this time. It pulsed. A warning. Or an invitation.
A shadow stepped forward from the temple gate.
It wasn't human.
It looked like a memory drawn wrong—its form fluid, pieces missing, like a watercolor with the ink still bleeding. But it moved with the confidence of something ancient.
And it spoke.
"Six entered," it said, voice echoing like it came from behind them. "Only one may touch the Core."
Roth stepped forward. "What Core?"
The entity didn't answer. Instead, six paths of light shot from its body—each attaching to one student's shadow.
Toji didn't flinch.
The link pulsed once.
Then the world shifted.
Each student stood alone—on their own shard of the memory-glass platforms, separated by illusions that bent light and distance. And on each platform appeared a figure.
Toji's wasn't a demon.
It was him.
But older.
Scarred. Weathered. Paler eyes. A deeper frown. And a blade across his back that looked suspiciously like a fully awakened Phantom Edge.
The older Toji tilted his head.
"I remember this," he said. "This is the layer where we begin lying to ourselves."
Toji blinked. "You're not real."
"No. I'm who you think you'll become. Cold. Alone. Dead on the inside."
Toji's hand twitched near his hip.
"You're not me," he repeated.
"Not yet," the echo said. "But you could be. You almost were."
The older version drew his blade.
Toji drew his.
And the duel began.
⸻
Kaela, elsewhere, stared at her own challenger.
It was a woman—taller, in a shimmering coat of soul-threaded armor, wings of iridescent shadow and glass rising from her back.
Not her mother. Not her future.
Herself.
But fully bound to the Echo that had always watched over her.
"You're afraid of what you'll become," her double said.
Kaela kept her stance low, cautious. "No. I'm afraid of forgetting who I was."
Her mirror-self smiled faintly. "Then remember this."
The wings flared, and light poured out.
Kaela raised her arm, shielding herself—and saw something new forming within her Echo's glyphs: a spiral sigil overlapping her own memories.
It had begun to merge with her.
And that terrified her.
⸻
Meanwhile, Toji parried, ducked, and countered—his older double fought without excess, without breath, without anger. It was clean, mechanical violence, efficient and heartless.
"You're weaker now," the echo said. "Tethered to emotion. Dragged down by connection."
Toji slashed upward. "And you're dead."
A spark flew from the strike.
The Mnemo-Eye on his palm opened fully—and poured out a ripple of echo-energy that cut through the illusion's chest.
The false Toji staggered.
"Connection is power," Toji said flatly. "Not weight."
He stepped forward—and bisected the shade cleanly.
It shattered into memory shards and dissolved.
⸻
Elsewhere, Kaela screamed—not in pain, but in defiance.
Her wings—half-formed echoes—solidified, then exploded outward in a burst of anti-light that shattered her own reflection. She fell to her knees, breathing hard, hands burning with rune-scripts she hadn't carved.
Her Echo floated behind her now.
But closer.
Almost… linked.
"I won't be shaped," she whispered. "Not by fear. Not by fate."
⸻
One by one, the others finished their trials—some injured, some shaken.
But when the illusions broke, they found themselves back in the center platform again, the Core Gate pulsing gently above them.
And the shadow-entity bowed.
"All six paths converged."
It turned to Toji.
"You were the last to defeat your fear. You may touch the Core."
He stepped forward.
The others didn't stop him.
Kaela gave him a nod—silent, but warm.
Toji reached out—and touched the sigil.
And the world vanished in gold.
⸻
He stood, once again, not in the Veins Beyond, but before a structure—stone and metal, familiar and wrong.
Valemont.
Except older.
Or perhaps earlier.
A different time.
A vision, not a place.
A man stood beside him.
Hair long. Face obscured. But the Mnemo-Eye on his palm glowed like Toji's own.
The man turned to him.
"You're late," he said.
Toji frowned. "Who are you?"
"Someone who once failed to do what you've just done."
He raised his hand.
And placed a glass key into Toji's.
"Let's see if you do better."
The vision broke.
⸻
Toji woke to Kaela shaking him gently.
"You were out for a few seconds," she said. "But the mark on your hand—it changed."
He looked.
The Mnemo-Eye seal now housed a small key shape at its center.
Toji looked up at the others.
"We need to leave," he said.
Ysra nodded. "The exit's forming."
Behind them, the Veins began to collapse.
⸻
Hours later, the six stood on the surface again.
Teachers arrived.
Healers.
Observers.
The Echo Council waited further down the slope, cloaked and silent.
But this time, they did not speak.
They watched Toji.
And this time, Kaela stood directly beside him.
No space between.
Toji didn't look away.
And for the first time since arriving at Valemont, he said quietly—
"I'm not going back to being alone."
Kaela grinned sideways. "Good."