The Extra's Transcension

"Someone New"

The shard vanished the moment he spoke, the echo of "Someone" new still trembling in the silence it left behind.

For a moment, he stood in nothing.

No stars.

No glass.

Just air.

Breathable, calm, not heavy with history or soaked in guilt.

And then the world blinked again.

He landed hard, knees digging into dirt.

Real dirt.

Warm, sun-drenched.

He looked up.

A road stretched ahead, lined by whispering trees, golden leaves trembling like they, too, remembered him.

But the air was different here.

Not the sulfur-stink of ruins.

Not the sterile chill of memory.

It smelled of life.

Dust.

Bread baking far off.

Woodsmoke.

"You're late,"

Said a voice behind him.

Lyrium turned sharply, instinctively raising a hand, only to realize it sparked with no glyphs, no power.

Just a hand.

The woman who stood there was old, but not fragile.

Her back was straight, eyes bright, voice clipped with the precision of someone who'd lived long enough to expect answers.

"I—"

He began, faltering.

"Do I know you?"

"No,"

She said, brushing past him with a sack of vegetables slung over one shoulder.

"But I know what you are."

He hesitated.

"And what's that?"

"Unfinished."

Lyrium stood there in stunned silence as she walked up the path toward a small house nestled under crooked pines.

She didn't turn back to explain.

She didn't have to.

The weight of her words followed him like a second shadow.

*****

Later, inside the house, over soup that tasted of thyme and smoke, she spoke again.

"You're not the first to fall through the mirror," she said, not looking up from her bowl. But most don't remember. Not like you."

"How do you know what I remember?"

She finally looked at him then.

Not with pity.

With precision.

"Because I did too,"

She said.

"Not the same way. Not the same story. But I saw the shards. I saw myself in every wrong version I could have become. That kind of seeing never fades."

He swallowed.

The heat of the soup sat heavy in his chest, as if trying to coax something alive again.

"Then what is this?"

He asked softly.

"A reward? A trick?"

The woman laughed, short and sharp.

"It's not anything. That's the point. There's no prophecy here. No fate. You're not special anymore."

"I don't want to be,"

He whispered.

"Good,"

She said, sipping.

"Then maybe you have a chance."

They sat in silence after that, but it wasn't empty.

It was comfortable.

New.

And for the first time in… maybe ever, Lyrium felt like he wasn't bracing for pain.

*****

That night, he stood outside under a sky unmarred by war or stars screaming judgment.

The air was cold, clean.

A single moth fluttered around a lantern on the porch.

And from inside the house, her voice drifted out.

"You'll have to choose eventually."

He didn't turn.

"I did."

"No,"

She said.

"You chose to change. Now you have to choose how."

He closed his eyes.

And in the quiet, he heard again the voices, dozens of them, fragments of versions he could have been, watching him still, waiting.

"I'll Show you."

And the final shard, the empty one, flared gold.

It did not shatter. It did not speak.

It opened.

Not like a door.

Like a wound.

And Lyrium stepped through it.

The world didn't welcome him this time.

It seized him.

Dragged him like a storm swallowing a scream.

Light and memory and heat and cold clashed in a chaos that tore through the fabric of who he was.

Not pain, but pressure.

As if the multiverse was holding its breath, waiting for him to collapse again.

But he didn't.

He screamed through it.

Not in fear.

In defiance.

Not this time.

And then,

Silence.

Not the hush of death.

Not the stillness of peace.

But the breathless, infinite quiet of beginning.

His body hit earth.

Real earth.

Damp.

Solid.

Living.

He choked, rolled to his side, and vomited starlight, silver ichor melting into the soil like it had no place left in him.

The sky above was violet.

Not burned.

Not broken.

The horizon glowed faintly with a dawn still deciding whether to rise.

And for the first time in too long, Lyrium felt.

Not just pain.

Not just guilt.

But gravity.

Hunger.

Cold.

Self.

He sat up, coughing hard, eyes adjusting to the dim glow of this new place.

It wasn't the Academy.

It wasn't the battlefield.

It wasn't a grave or a throne.

It was a forest.

Alive.

Leaves rustled in a wind that didn't judge him.

Birds sang songs they'd never stopped singing.

And somewhere in the distance, water rushed over rocks, unconcerned with who he'd been.

Lyrium touched his chest.

No glyphs.

No blood.

No curse stitched into his ribs.

Just a heartbeat.

Fast.

Real.

A twig snapped behind him.

He turned, every instinct braced to summon, except there was nothing to summon.

No mana.

No stored spells.

Just him.

A figure stepped through the trees.

A young man.

Dark hair.

Wary eyes.

Not a mage, at least, not a trained one.

He held a staff like a weapon and wore robes a little too clean for someone from the wilds.

"Who are you?"

The boy asked.

Lyrium opened his mouth, and realized he didn't know what name to give.

Not Lyrium Blackwood.

Not the Godbinder.

Not the Fallen.

Not the King of Chains.

Just…

"…Ash,"

He said.

The boy tilted his head.

"You look like you fell out of the sky."

"I think I did,"

Ash replied.

Silence stretched between them.

Then the boy lowered his staff.

"Well,"

He said,

"if you're lost, you're not the only one. This forest's been swallowing people for weeks."

Ash blinked.

"Where are we?"

"Border of Nidelan, Near Amazon"

The boy said.

"North of the Academy's influence. Too far from the capital to matter. Magic's wrong here. Wild. Dangerous."

The word Academy hit him like a whisper through time.

He exhaled slowly.

"I know it."

"You a student?"

"I was,"

Ash said.

"A long time ago."

The boy stepped closer, squinting.

"You sure you're okay?"

Ash stood slowly.

"No,"

He said, honestly.

"But I think I'm supposed to be here."

And somewhere deep within him, the mirror echoed softly,

"Pick one."

He had.

Not a god.

Not a tyrant.

Not even a martyr.

Just a man with memory behind him, and something new ahead.

The boy turned.

"Come on, then. There's a village two hours east. We've got questions, you've probably got more. Let's trade."

Ash followed.

The forest didn't protest.

And as the trees closed behind them, the last pieces of every version he'd been… finally stayed behind.

They walked in silence at first.

The boy led confidently, his staff tapping roots, occasionally muttering directions under his breath.

Birds shifted overhead, and the forest deepened, not darker, but stranger.

Trees leaned in too far.

Shadows curved where they shouldn't.

The air shimmered in moments, as if time itself had pockets here, folding in on itself like tired parchment.

Ash kept his gaze ahead, not daring to look back.

"Name's Arya,"

The boy said suddenly, glancing sideways.

"I figure if we're walking through cursed woods together, we might as well not be strangers."

Ash hesitated.

"Ash… Ni…Close"

He repeated.

Eiran gave him a lopsided grin.

"Right. You said that. You always that quiet?"

"Used to be louder,"

Ash murmured.

"Didn't help."

That earned a short chuckle.

"You sound like someone who's seen things."

"I've… been a lot of people,"

Ash said.

"Yeah?"

Arya said, stepping over a twisted root.

"Well, I've only been me. For better or worse. Sometimes I think that makes it harder."

Ash looked at him.

"Harder how?"

"No escape routes,"

Arya replied, eyes on the path.

"No alternate selves to blame. Just me. Screwing up in real time."

Ash actually smiled, small, crooked, but real.

"There's truth in that."

Arya smirked.

"I say a lot of true things. Doesn't stop the gods from throwing shit at me."

And just like that, the wind changed.

The trees went still.

Arya stopped moving.

So did Ash.

It wasn't a sound that warned them.

It was the absence of sound.

No birds.

No rustling.

No breath of breeze.

Just the forest, holding itself like a thing trying not to scream.

Then they saw it.

Up ahead, where the road dipped into a grove, something stood.

A figure.

No face.

No body.

Just shadow held together by old cloth, flickering like a candle underwater.

Its arms were long, too long. Its head bent at an angle that defied spine or sanity.

Ash froze.

Not because of what it was.

But because he knew it.

One of the failed reflections.

A Lyrium that never escaped the mirror.

A husk.

A wraith of unbecome.

Arya's staff lowered instinctively.

"What… is that?"

Ash stepped in front of him.

The creature tilted its head, just slightly, and hissed, not with sound, but memory.

A flood hit Ash like knives:

The Tower falling.

Ren's scream.

His own hands summoning fire too late. Margaret dying in his arms.

The throne.

The mirror.

The scream.

The scream.

The scream.

"Ash—?"

Arya's voice snapped him back.

Ash reached slowly into the air.

No glyphs appeared.

No sigils sparked.

But his fingers moved from memory, ancient, buried, true.

He spoke no words.

And yet the shadow paused.

Recognized something in him.

"Go,"

Ash told Arya quietly.

"Now."

"I'm not leaving—"

"Now."

Something in his voice broke argument.

Arya backed away, reluctant, his eyes wide.

Ash took one step forward.

"I buried you,"

He whispered to the thing.

"You don't belong here."

The shadow twitched violently.

Its cloth cracked like glass.

Its limbs twisted as if resisting some inner command.

Ash breathed deeply.

No magic.

No power.

Just will.

And with that breath, he whispered, not a spell.

But a truth.

"I'm not you."

The shadow flinched.

And cracked.

Light burst from its seams, not golden, not divine.

Just clean.

Pure.

It screamed, not aloud, but inward, folding in on itself like a dying thought.

Then it was gone.

Ash collapsed to his knees.

Arya rushed back.

"What the hell was that?!"

Ash wiped blood from his nose.

"An old version of me,"

He said.

Arya blinked.

"That was you?"

Ash looked up at him.

"No,"

He said softly.

"It was what I could've been. If I never changed."

They sat in silence for a while, just breathing.

The forest slowly returned to motion.

Leaves rustled.

Birds chirped, hesitantly.

Arya exhaled.

"You're a lot more than you say."

Ash didn't answer.

He couldn't.

Because part of him, some shard still lingering, remembered what it felt like to be that thing.

And vowed never to go back.