Faultiness
998 Words
The storm rolled in fast.
Not thunder and rain—but a storm of silence. Heavy. Charged. Thick with everything they weren’t saying.
They found refuge in an abandoned signal tower deep in the forest—stone walls, shattered windows, and a floor covered in forgotten equipment. The Others had been pushed back, but not destroyed. Just delayed.
Lyra sat against the far wall, arms crossed, staring at the cube on the ground like it might bite. Eli paced, bruised and restless, every step sparking tension between them.
“You’re not telling me everything,” she said, breaking the quiet.
Eli didn’t look at her. “Because everything might break you.”
Her voice sharpened. “Don’t decide what I can handle.”
He stopped. Turned. “You think this is just a pattern? That we’re victims of some loop?”
“Aren’t we?” she snapped.
“No,” he said, eyes fierce. “We caused it.”
The words hit like a punch.
Lyra stood slowly, her voice low and dangerous. “What do you mean?”
Eli stepped closer. “In a past life… you and I—we tried to destroy the cycle. To break it. But we failed. You hesitated. I made a deal.”
She stared at him, breath catching.
“With *them*?” she whispered.
He nodded once. “To save you.”
Silence stretched.
Lyra stepped back, fury and pain colliding in her chest. “You sold us out.”
“I loved you.”
“That wasn’t love,” she said. “That was fear.”
Eli looked at her—something breaking behind his eyes. “Maybe. But I’d do it again.”
The words burned between them.
And somewhere outside, the forest shifted.
The Rival’s were moving again.
But now, the greater danger might be what they were becoming—together and apart.
---
The silence between them was colder than the wind creeping through the cracks in the tower walls.
Lyra turned her back to him, trying to steady her breath. Her fingers trembled, and that infuriated her even more. She wasn’t supposed to care. She wasn’t supposed to *feel* this much.
Eli’s voice came low. “I didn’t do it for me.”
She didn’t turn. “Don’t pretend it was noble. You chose control over truth.”
“I chose *you*,” he said, stepping closer.
She spun to face him, eyes blazing. “Then you chose wrong.”
For a second, they were nose to nose—anger burning so hot it bordered on something else. Something dangerous.
“You hate me now?” he asked, jaw clenched.
She laughed—sharp and bitter. “I *wish* I could. It’d be easier.”
A long pause.
Then a sound—a soft, deliberate shift of gravel outside the tower.
They froze.
Not The Rival’s.
Someone else.
Eli grabbed her hand instinctively, pulling her behind him as he moved to the shadows.
A figure stepped through the threshold. Cloaked. Unarmed. Familiar.
It was the woman from Lyra’s dream. The one at the temple.
She looked at them with eyes too old to belong to her face.
“You’re close to the breach,” she said. “But the closer you get, the more the truth will hurt.”
Lyra’s voice shook. “Who are you?”
The woman smiled faintly. “You already know me. You just don’t remember what you did to me.”
The temperature seemed to drop.
Eli stepped forward, guarded. “If you’re here to stop us—”
“I’m not here to stop you,” the woman said softly. “I’m here to remind you what it costs.”
With that, she dropped a pendant onto the floor—one Lyra recognized instantly.
It was hers. From another life.
And it was covered in blood.
The moment Lyra’s fingers touched the blood-stained pendant, the world fractured.
A surge of white light swallowed her, pulling her mind inward—backward—into a life she didn’t remember but felt deep in her bones.
She opened her eyes to sand and fire.
*Somewhere in the Forgotten Cycle — Before the First Reset*
They stood on the edge of a shattered temple, its arches half-buried beneath crimson dunes. The wind carried ash. The sky was sickly gold. Explosions echoed in the distance—distant war drums of a battle already lost.
Lyra—another version of her—wore silver armor, etched with glyphs that glowed faintly. Beside her, Eli—sharper, colder—wore black robes and bore the mark of the resistance.
They weren’t lovers in this memory.
They were something harder. Allies by necessity. Enemies by prophecy.
“You’re hesitating again,” Eli growled, his voice sharper than she’d ever heard it.
“I’m thinking,” she snapped back.
“We don’t have time to think.”
The memory-Lyra held something—a glowing sphere, pulsing wildly.
“The breach will collapse if I use it,” she whispered. “It’ll destroy everything—including us.”
“That’s the point.”
She turned to him, eyes full of pain. “You said you wouldn’t let me die.”
Eli stepped forward, expression unreadable. “I lied.”
And yet, in the same breath, he touched her face—gently. A contradiction. A goodbye.
“I’ll find you in the next life,” he said.
“You might hate me in the next one.”
“I’ll love you anyway.”
She crushed the sphere.
The world collapsed in light and screams.
—
Lyra gasped as she returned to the present, collapsing to her knees in the cold stone tower.
Eli caught her just in time, his arms wrapping around her. But she couldn’t look at him—not yet.
“I remember,” she whispered.
“So do I,” he said softly.
Outside, the shadows stirred.
And the past, it seemed, was only beginning to resurface.
- Writer
