"Hey. You. You're finally awake."

The voice cut through the fog like a chisel splitting stone. My eyes snapped open to a world that didn't belong to me. Not this time.

The smell came first—wet hay, copper dust, and something that burned faintly sweet, like sap on a hot stove. Then came the creak of wood, the rhythmic churn of wheels against gravel, and the muffled snort of beasts pulling the cart forward.

I sat upright—or rather, the body I was in did. My muscles moved with unfamiliar weight, as though I'd been wearing this form for years I couldn't remember. My back ached from leaning against a wooden rail, my palms were calloused, and my tongue was dry enough to crack.

Across from me sat three strangers.

The world beyond the carriage was a stretch of ochre plains, scattered with ruins that looked like the ribs of dead titans. In the distance, something shone—a broken tower, maybe, or a crystal obelisk catching the light of a too-close sun. The sky above it all was hazy purple, threaded with veins of silver lightning that never struck the ground.

But it wasn't the landscape that unsettled me. It was that this felt real. Too real. The last few visions, the ones that had dragged me through alternate lives, had the soft edges of memory—blurred transitions, fading details, the safety of distance. This was different. The air hurt when I breathed. The sunlight burned my eyes. Every movement made sense, made pain, made consequence.

"You alright?" the man nearest me asked. He was tanned, broad-nosed, with a scar curling from the corner of his lip down to his chin. His tone was friendly, cautious. "We picked you up while you were passed out along the road. You seemed like you needed help."

I blinked at him, still adjusting. My voice came out raw. "Where… where am I?"

He laughed softly. "Now that's the question, ain't it? Closest thing to an answer is 'the Southern Ridge Road,' about half a day from the Imperial City City of Marr."

That name hit me like a drop of ice down my spine. Marr. I knew Marr. I had been born there—or at least, another me had. But this Marr felt wrong. The air wasn't charged with the familiar hum of mana conduits. There were no aerial rails overhead, no traces of technomancy, no Walker insignias on the carts that passed us by. It was… older. Wilder.

The man smiled. "Names Benny," he said finally, offering a hand. "Over there is Jessup, and the quiet one's Wile."

"Shut up, Benny," said the second man—Jessup—without even looking up from the reins. He was taller, leaner, with eyes that darted constantly between the road and the treeline. His clothes were the patched-together sort of mercenary travelers, but he wore them with an ease that suggested competence. "Wile isn't mute. He just can't turn his Arte off."

That caught my attention. "Arte?"

Jessup pointed his thumb toward the third man. "If Wile tells you to do something, and you're weaker than him spiritually, you'll likely do it. Thus, Wile refuses to speak. Makes travel easier."

I turned to look at Wile. He sat at the far end of the carriage, head bowed beneath a hood, hands folded neatly in his lap. He was huge—easily two meters tall, with the calm stillness of someone who could kill and wouldn't need to boast about it. His aura pressed faintly against the edges of perception like a heartbeat too close to the skin.

And that's when I noticed it: their miasmas.

Benny's aura shimmered in my vision, a soft rose-pink, warm and trusting. Jessup's, a muddier brown, grounded and earthy, with a cynical curl around the edges. And Wile's… Wile's was a pure, undiluted crimson—perfectly balanced between serenity and slaughter. It was the kind of aura soldiers had at the height of battle. The kind you saw once and never forgot.

That confirmed it. These men were mercenaries. And if I was here, then I was either their guest—or their burden.

I leaned back, pretending calm while my thoughts raced. The body I was in bore faint scars on the forearms, the kind made by training blades, not real ones. The clothes were simple, traveler's gear. The weight on my hip—a dagger, nothing more. Too light for a soldier. Too plain for a noble.

"Appreciate the rescue," I said, carefully. "What made you stop for me?"

Benny grinned. "You were face-down in the mud, muttering about 'the paradox and the codex,' so we figured you were either a prophet or a scholar. Either way, not the sort to leave for dead."

"Prophet," Jessup muttered. "Sure. More like a half-starved scribe."

They laughed. Even Wile smiled faintly beneath his hood. The sound was human, harmless, but my instincts whispered otherwise. There was something beneath the surface—something off in the way the carriage groaned, as if each turn of the wheel echoed into the distance like a clock ticking toward something inevitable.

"So," Benny said, leaning forward, "what's your name, stranger?"

I hesitated. My mind raced through the possibilities. Giving Alexander Duarte could be dangerous. In any world. "Alex," I said finally. "Just Alex."

"Just Alex," Benny repeated, nodding. "Well, welcome back to the waking world. You've got a long road ahead."

The horses—no, not horses, but creatures with three heads and fur like woven steel—snorted in unison, their breath forming thin ribbons of mist that vanished too quickly. One of the heads turned and looked at me directly. Its eyes glowed with faint, unnatural awareness. It knew me. It…it knew I wasn't me. Then the scene collapsed once more.

***

I was shunted again—violently this time. The fall wasn't graceful or dreamlike; it was an impact. My body slammed into being with a force that rattled through my bones, and before I could even breathe, the world steadied around me like the snap of a lens coming into focus.

This time, I knew. This was the real me.

I stood in front of a mirror.

It wasn't a reflection in the usual sense. The mirror was warped, made of glass that breathed and rippled like water. Its surface shimmered in colors I couldn't name, hues born between light and thought. My reflection blinked back at me—but not alone. One by one, four more versions of myself stepped out from the edges of the mirror's light, circling me until I was surrounded. Each wore my face, each bore my eyes, but none of them felt like me. They were distorted by choice and circumstance, echoes of what I could have been.

The first wore armor—crimson steel burnished with the sigil of my mother, the Lop-Eared Legion. His eyes were hollow, disciplined, cold. The perfect soldier my mother would have adored. The second was ragged, hands ink-stained, eyes sunken. A scholar—no, a scribe. The man who wrote of other heroes but never became one. The third was wild, hair unkempt, veins pulsing with light—an unrestrained mage whose power hummed through the air like a plague. The fourth… the fourth looked peaceful. Content. But when I met his gaze, I realized he had no light in his eyes at all. The one who gave up. The one who accepted fate without a fight.

And there I was, caught between them—trying to decide which of them was closest to the truth.

The air thickened. I could hear my own heart beating. My voice trembled, but I forced the words out anyway.

"Okay. I get it," I said. "I'm not scared of magic."

The mirror pulsed in response, a low hum like something ancient and alive shifting its attention toward me. My reflections all turned to face me fully, listening.

Stolen story; please report.

"I'm scared of becoming the soldier my mother always wanted me to be," I continued. "I'm scared that one day I'll wake up and realize I've been molded into another cog—trained to fight, to kill, to obey—until there's nothing left that's mine."

The soldier's expression softened, just a fraction. His hand twitched, like he wanted to reach for me, but didn't. His armor gleamed with mother's colors, and the weight of her expectations pressed against my chest like a hand on my throat.

"I'm scared I'll never find the happiness I want," I went on, and my voice cracked. "That it doesn't exist. That maybe I'm just… not made for it."

The scribe gave a faint smile, pitying. His pages fluttered in an invisible wind, covered in words I recognized as my own journal entries, rewritten and repeated until they meant nothing.

"I'm scared I'm weak," I said. "Pathetic. That I'll always be the one crawling in the mud while everyone else rises higher. That I'll be forgotten while the world moves on."

The scholar's ink-stained hands trembled. The reflection that was me—but broken—looked away, unable to meet my eyes.

My breaths came shorter now, faster. I could feel the heat under my skin, the same energy that always built up when I was near mana-heavy spaces. The air rippled with that quiet hum—paper rustling, faint as a heartbeat.

"I'm scared," I whispered, "that I'll wake up one day and no longer be me."

At that, all four of them stopped moving. The mirror's light dimmed.

"I'll be abducted and taken away," I said, the words tumbling out faster, sharper. "Carted off to some lab, or locked in another realm, or torn apart for the way my mana bends the world. I'm scared that I'll be turned into something else. That I'll lose my voice. My choices. My name."

The fourth reflection— the one with no light in his eyes—smiled faintly. It was a smile of surrender, of someone who had already accepted that fate. He looked almost relieved.

I wanted to hit him. To shake him. But I couldn't.

"And I'm scared," I said, my voice barely a whisper now, "that magic will make me lose myself."

The moment the words left my mouth, the air shattered.

The mirror cracked—not splintered, but fractured across every dimension at once. The sound wasn't glass breaking; it was a choral note of light, ringing through the marrow of my bones. Each version of me froze, then began to disintegrate, their forms coming apart into paper, into ink, into drifting threads of light that coiled around me like ribbons of memory.

The soldier was the first to fade, his armor crumbling into crimson dust that clung to my shoulders before vanishing. Then the scholar dissolved into pages that fluttered through the air, wrapping around me before burning away. The wild mage screamed silently as his body exploded into raw energy—brilliant, blinding—and the light of him entered my chest like a spark.

Only the peaceful one remained.

He looked at me with those empty eyes, and for a long moment, I thought he'd vanish too. But instead, he stepped closer, close enough that I could see the faint reflection of myself in his pupils.

"You fear losing yourself," he said quietly, his voice soft but hollow. "But what if the self you cling to isn't whole? What if all you've ever been are fragments pretending to be one man?"

Before I could answer, he reached out and pressed his hand against my chest. His touch was warm. Too warm.

Then he smiled. And stepped forward—into me.

I gasped. The world spun. For an instant, I could see everything—the soldier's strength, the scholar's patience, the mage's hunger, the quitter's peace. Each fragment of me, colliding, folding, and burning into something new. My breath came sharp and ragged as the mirror behind me melted into smoke.

Then, silence.

I was alone again, but not the same. I could still feel them inside me, quiet but present—their echoes humming in rhythm with my heartbeat. I looked up, and my reflection stared back from a smooth wall of ink-dark glass.

This time, it was just one. One self. One truth.

"I'm scared," I said again, softer now. "But I'm still here."

The reflection smiled—my smile. And for the first time, the fear didn't consume me.

In its place, a blank mirror, with new words appeared.

<I AM UNAFRAID.>

The words were carved into the mirror in harsh, jagged strokes, as though gouged into the glass by someone desperate to believe them. They pulsed faintly with light, each letter bleeding gold before fading back to black.

A lie.

I am very much afraid.

My reflection wavered, its edges trembling like the surface of water. The room was silent except for my breathing, slow and uneven, the kind that felt like dragging air through cracked ribs. Behind me, I could feel Charazade's presence before he spoke — calm, ancient, coiled like a serpent watching its pupil shed another skin.

"That's what you've been guiding me toward this whole time," I said quietly, not turning to face him. "The escape. The way out. You wanted me to form my Providence more completely."

There was the sound of movement — not footsteps, exactly, but the subtle shift of something vast changing posture.

"Yes," Charazade said at last. His voice had the texture of silk drawn across steel. "And have you, then? Has your Truth grown?"

I closed my eyes. I didn't need to look inward to know. I could feel it pulsing in the air around me — like a second heartbeat thrumming through the space between my ribs and soul.

"It has," I answered. "It's not what it was before. It's become something clearer, more… inevitable."

I opened my eyes again, and the mirror glowed faintly in response, as though it, too, recognized the words that rose to my lips.

"Everything has a price. Every debt must be paid."

The phrase came out of me without hesitation, like a creed I'd known all my life but never spoken aloud. The moment I said it, I felt a shift — something heavy but right — anchoring deep within me. It was terrifying and liberating in equal measure.

Charazade smiled, faint and knowing, as his reflection appeared beside mine in the glass. His form was still indistinct — more suggestion than substance, a shape of dark robes and radiant eyes that burned like dying stars.

"What price have you paid," he asked, "to become unafraid?"

There was amusement in his tone, but also curiosity. He knew I understood now that Providence was no gift. It was a transaction.

I laughed, though it came out hollow. "Obviously, I just faced every inadequacy I have," I said. "I looked every quiet part of myself in the eye — all the doubt, all the self-loathing, all the things I've been pretending not to feel. I watched them move and breathe and talk back. I saw every version of me that wasn't enough."

My hand brushed against the glass. It was warm. I didn't know if it was the mirror or me.

"So tell me," I continued softly. "If that's not a price, what is?"

Charazade tilted his head, regarding me with something that might've been admiration — or pity.

"Some would say that's not a price at all," he mused. "Some would say it's a reward. To be stripped bare before your own truth — to see yourself without disguise. To know what you are, and still remain standing."

I felt a bitter smile tug at the corner of my mouth. "Those who don't know who they are," I said, "wish to find the answer. Those who do… wish they could forget."

Charazade's smile widened. "J.J. Nullun," he said approvingly. "You quote well."

"I don't quote," I said. "I remember."

The silence between us stretched, heavy and charged. The light in the mirror flickered, the carved words dimming to a faint, ember-like glow.

<I AM UNAFRAID.>

I stared at them again, and this time, I didn't see a lie. I saw an aspiration — a promise carved by a version of me that wanted to believe in his own courage. Maybe that was enough.

"You've begun to understand," Charazade said. "Providence isn't about power, or even understanding. It's about acceptance. You can't shape what you deny. You can't control what you refuse to name."

His voice grew softer, almost reverent. "You've named your fear, Alexander. Now it becomes your offering."

I turned then, finally meeting his gaze. "And what does that make me?"

He smiled, and the room darkened as though his expression drew the light inward. "It makes you a debtor," he said simply. "To yourself. To your truth. And to the cost that comes next."

My throat went dry. "And what's the cost?"

Charazade's eyes gleamed. "Continuing."

The word struck deeper than I expected. I didn't understand it at first, but then I felt it — the weight of persistence, the exhaustion of not surrendering even when every fiber of you wants to stop.

"You mean—"

"Yes," he interrupted softly. "To keep walking. To keep choosing. To live in the full awareness of what you've seen, and not let it unmake you. That is the price of being unafraid."

The mirror rippled. The letters began to shift, gold rearranging itself, until the phrase no longer read I AM UNAFRAID but something new:

<I AM NOT YET AFRAID ENOUGH TO STOP.>

A strange peace settled over me then — not relief, not triumph, but something quieter. Resolve, maybe. I could feel my Providence swelling, unfolding through my body like a map being drawn from within. Every nerve, every thought, every scar aligned with the truth I'd spoken.

"Everything has a price," Charazade murmured again, his voice fading like mist. "And every debt must be paid. Remember, Alexander — fear is not your enemy. It is your currency."

I reached out to the mirror once more, fingertips pressing into the glass. The surface yielded like liquid, and for an instant I saw my reflection clearly: the same eyes, but older; the same face, but tempered.

And as I stepped forward, through that golden threshold, I felt it — the sum of all I was, all I feared, all I owed — collapsing and reforming into a single truth.

I wasn't unafraid.

But I was ready to pay.

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