The Extra's Transcension

Lyrium didn't move. Neither did Ren.

The figure's words didn't just echo, they reverberated, coiling around their spines like invisible tendrils.

Awaken… or run.

The ultimatum lingered in the space between them like a loaded weapon.

Lyrium took a step forward, shadows flickering around his heels, drawn unnaturally to him now.

His voice came out low, taut as a pulled bowstring.

"You speak of awakening as if I've merely been asleep. But I've seen beyond the walls, felt something older than mana, older than any circle or sigil. I tore through layers they told me were absolute, and what I found wasn't chaos… it was clarity."

The figure tilted its head again.

A gesture too calm to be human.

"Clarity is dangerous when filtered through youth and pride. Many glimpsed the same truths. Few returned intact."

Ren narrowed his eyes.

"You're not denying it. This 'Void Energy', or whatever name you bastards gave it, is real. And you've been hiding it."

The cloaked being didn't answer immediately.

When it did, its tone was sharper, weightier, like iron scraping against stone.

"There was a time when it was not hidden, not forbidden. When scholars walked the Breathless Path and kings bowed before Vessels. But knowledge, like fire, consumes when left unbridled. The last one to awaken without guidance turned mountains to glass and oceans to ash."

Lyrium clenched his jaw.

"And yet… you're here, offering the same choice."

"We offer it because of what you've already done,"

The figure replied.

"You cracked the Veil without aid. You drew the breathless tide into this world through sheer will and instinct. That alone makes you either a herald… or a threat."

There was a silence, longer than before.

Then Ren asked, voice tinged with unease,

"So what happens if he chooses to run?"

The figure's response was colder than the grave.

"The Gate remembers who opened it. There is no running. Only delay. And the longer he resists it… the more the world around him will fracture."

Lyrium inhaled sharply, as if the truth had just been burned into his lungs.

"I knew something changed when I touched it,"

He murmured.

"The spells stopped obeying normal laws. My mana core twitched. Not like it was resisting, but like it was being rewritten."

The figure nodded once.

"You are not becoming something greater than a mage, Blackwood. You are becoming something other."

That word struck deeper than it should have.

Lyrium stared into the figure's hood, into the void where a face should've been.

His voice dropped to a whisper.

"Why me?"

And for the first time… the cloaked figure sounded almost human.

"Because the Gate does not choose the worthy. It chooses the necessary."

That line tore through every defense in Lyrium's mind.

He looked down at his hand, the one that sparked with fragments of something ancient, unnameable.

His fingers trembled.

Ren broke the moment.

"You can't just throw some cryptic prophecy crap at us and expect him to blindly obey. If he awakens… what does that even mean?"

The figure turned toward Ren, slower this time, almost in warning.

"Awakening is not power. It is not prestige. It is unraveling. Piece by piece. Memory by memory. To awaken is to burn away the name the world gave you… and be reborn under the name it forgot."

Lyrium felt the edges of himself peel inward at those words.

"You mean I'll lose myself."

"No,"

The figure said softly.

"You will become what you were always meant to be, when the world is stripped away and only essence remains."

Another pause.

Then, in a voice as ancient as the force that stirred within him, the figure extended a pale, unnatural hand.

"Do you accept?"

The air shifted.

Like the room itself was waiting.

Ren glanced at Lyrium, shaking his head slightly.

"You don't have to do this. We can keep digging. We can find a way that doesn't turn you into some cosmic… ghost."

But Lyrium didn't move.

Not yet.

He looked at Ren, his voice firm but distant.

"If they're watching me… if this energy already seeped into my soul… then whether I run or fight, I'm already on the Path."

He turned back to the figure.

"What happens… if I say yes?"

The figure stepped back and slowly opened a book, not one from the shelves, but one it carried.

Pages glowed faintly with an eerie silver hue. It spoke as if reading scripture:

The Vessel must kneel.

The Vessel must bleed.

The Vessel must remember.

Lyrium blinked.

"Remember what?"

The figure looked up, and for the first time, there was a faint flicker of light beneath the hood.

"Your true name. The one you buried to survive this world."

"…"

Silence.

Then, slowly… Lyrium stepped forward.

He extended his hand.

And touched the figure's palm.

*****

Darkness.

Then metal.

Cold.

Wet.

A faint hum, not unlike a mechanical lullaby that sang of suffering and sterilization.

The sound of electricity crawling through arteries of iron.

Lyrium opened his eyes, or tried to.

One wouldn't open, the lid torn and stitched unevenly.

The other burned.

He gasped, and pain came first, not air.

It crawled up his throat like broken glass soaked in acid.

Subject 0321: Neural override remains incomplete; initiating the re-synchronization sequence to recalibrate cognitive pathways and reassert systemic command integrity.

Flat.

Synthetic.

Mocking.

He tried to scream, but his vocal cords didn't respond.

Only a rasp came out, like a dying dog under wheels.

Then came the memories.

Not his memories.

Not yet.

But they clung to his mind like leeches, disjointed flashes of this version of himself.

He had no name.

Only a barcode.

No mother.

Only white-coated gods who never blinked.

No magic.

Only wires.

No hope.

Only tests.

And worst of all? He remembered not wanting to die, even in this place.

Even when they peeled the skin from his back to see how pain affected spell-suppressed humans.

They called him Lyrium only once.

On accident.

Then they beat it out of him.

The door hissed open.

Bright light poured in like acid.

Three figures entered, white robes, clipboards, masks.

They looked at him the way men might look at a specimen pinned beneath glass.

Not with cruelty.

That would be too human. With indifference.

"Subject 0321 is exhibiting persistent traces of cognitive anomaly, indicative of unresolved neural interference and potential subroutine contamination."

Said the first.

"We shall proceed with the ether-excision procedure once more, this time executing a thorough dismantling of the cortical layer, ensuring that every synaptic lattice and cognitive imprint is meticulously stripped away. Caution must be exercised, however, to preserve the sanctity of the core soul pattern; it must remain untouched and inviolate, for any disruption to its metaphysical architecture could result in catastrophic identity fragmentation and irreversible existential decay."

The second said.

"No... wait."

The third leaned in.

And Lyrium saw himself.

Himself.

Eyes like mirrors, too calm.

Too composed.

Dressed like a researcher.

A version of him that had become them.

"Let it feel the loop,"

He said quietly.

"Allow it to recall the totality of its existences, each fragmented life, every bitter failure etched into the marrow of its being, every scream reverberating through the void of memory. Let the weight of remembrance crush him until he pleads for the mercy of oblivion, until the act of forgetting becomes his final, desperate prayer."

And the pain came again.

Not physical.

Not anymore.

Visions.

A thousand fractured iterations of himself, screaming in unison, clawing at the confines of their realities, burning in endless pyres of consequence, slaughtering with blood-soaked hands, and dying again and again in a ceaseless loop of torment.

Each echo a testament to his unraveling, each death a hymn in the cacophony of his damnation.

A child torn from his mother's corpse.

A sage flayed alive by nobles.

A god who ended the world for peace.

A coward who watched as everyone burned.

And then, Lyrium spoke.

Not because he wanted to. But because the loop made him.

And when he did, the words came slow. Cracked. Broken.

"You... are me,"

He whispered.

"You became them. You forgot. You fucking forgot."

The mirrored version smiled.

Empty.

Efficient.

"I did not forget, I transcended. You still cling to the delusion that there's purpose in agony, that suffering refines the soul and forges strength from torment. But you're mistaken. Pain doesn't elevate you; it chains you, molds you into something expected, something easily read. It makes you predictable. And that predictability is your flaw, one I've come to extinguish, along with the weakness it breeds."

Lyrium's hands trembled.

He looked down. They weren't hands.

Just metal stumps.

Shackled.

"Then erase me,"

Lyrium said.

"But you'll never kill all of me. Not in a billion lives."

He chuckled, blood gurgling up his throat.

"But you'll never erase all that I am, not even across a billion lifetimes. No matter how many versions you burn, fragment, or bury, something of me will always remain, whispering, watching, waiting."

"Maybe,"

Mirror Lyrium murmured, a faint smile curving his lips.

"But until then…"

He turned toward the humming monolith of machinery, fingers brushing the control panel with practiced ease before pulling the switch with finality.

"Welcome back to the loop."