Mirror (Part IV)

As Simon approached the breach, a suffocating tension coiled around him like a noose. The ground beneath his feet pulsed with malignant energy, each beat syncing with the thud of his heart — until it became unclear which was which.

Before him, the breach yawned like a wound torn in the flesh of reality. Its edges bled light and shadow in equal measure, hissing secrets in a language his mind shouldn’t have understood. But he did. He understood all of it.

The wettenbreathen faltered.

It had been his guide, his tether to meaning — but now its form flickered like a dying flame, hesitant and thin. It had spoken of balance. Of duty. But here, at the threshold of something older and crueler than order, such words felt like children’s songs hummed at the mouth of a grave.

The breach spoke, not in words but in pure sensation. Rage. Hunger. Potential.

And Simon listened.

Something deep inside him answered — a part that had always been there, quiet, waiting. A part that wasn’t content to guard the world.

He stepped closer.

Power poured into him like hot metal — pure, undiluted, agonising. It scorched his veins, rewired his neurocircuitry, and dissolved the man he had been. He didn’t resist. He succumbed.

Let it burn.

Pain detonated behind his eyes as they ignited with lightless fire. His thoughts warped. His name, his past, even the image of his own face — all of it peeled away like rotting skin. What remained was something monstrous, something pure.

The realms unfolded before him like tissue paper. Fragile. Flammable.

And he — he was the match.

The breach sang louder now, its voices a choir of madness. They didn’t offer him salvation. They promised dominion. Not over balance. Over entropy.

The wettenbreathen staggered back, sensing the shift. Its breath hitched. Its form flickered violently.

It had seen the stain on Simon’s soul before — but this… this was not what it had prepared for. It had thought him uncertain. Malformed. Corruptible, perhaps. But not this. Not a breachwalker. Not a being of the breach.

Simon turned.

His gaze — no longer human — fixed on the creature that had led him through the forest, through memory, through choice.

It quivered.

With a single, effortless motion, Simon raised his hand. Darkness erupted outward — vicious and absolute.

The wettenbreathen screamed, a sound not meant for mortal ears. It splintered. Folded inward. Shredded by the force of the void that now answered to Simon alone.

What remained was absence.

Simon stood alone, his body flickering with the ruinous power of a god unshackled. Behind him, the breach widened, no longer a wound —

— now, a doorway.

And he would be the first to walk through it.