Jin's breath came in ragged bursts.
Veyla—her Mirrorwing form now shattered—hovered above the battlefield, fragments of her armor cracking like crystal.
"You're stronger than expected," she hissed, black ichor dripping from her mouth. "But you're still… unfinished."
Her wings split apart, shards rearranging, forming a ring of mirror-like glass around her. Each shard showed Jin's face, but twisted—crying, breaking, screaming.
Noctis growled in his mind.
"She's using reflection magic. Illusions fed by your fear."
"I'm not afraid," Jin said aloud.
"Liar," Veyla whispered.
She unleashed her true form—the Mirror Halo.
The shards spun like a cyclone, lashing out in curved patterns. Each strike carried a psychic weight—flashes of memories, visions of loss, of loneliness, of his childhood isolation.
Jin fell to one knee. The pain wasn't physical—it was spiritual. It reached deep, into the core of who he was.
Then—
A voice echoed in the haze.
"You are more than your chains."
Arin.
She'd stepped between them, her own spirit flaring to life. Not a tamer's companion, but a barrier sigil, woven into her skin like a shield of light.
"You want him? You go through me."
Veyla screamed in rage, striking—
Only to be met by a black-and-gold spear, piercing the sky.
Kael had arrived.
"Enough," he said.
The sky shuddered.
Because above them, the herald had fully emerged.
Not armored like the others. Cloaked in flowing robes of smoke and light, six eyes glowing in a vertical line across their hooded face.
The gate behind them pulsed.
"The Vessel resists."
Kael's eyes widened. "No…"
The Herald raised their hand. "Then we begin the Rite of Claiming."
They spoke a name—not in words, but in essence. The sky cracked, the earth trembled.
"Aezra'el."
Jin's heart stopped.
That name…
He'd heard it before.
In his dreams.
In the ruins.
In his own voice.
"Is that… me?"
Noctis's voice was barely a whisper now.
"No… that was the first vessel."
As the Herald raised their staff, a second gate began to open—far larger, pulsing deeper.
Kael grabbed Jin's shoulder. "We have to go. Now. That name means they've found the original soul—the one they've been waiting to reclaim."
Arin gritted her teeth. "But if they complete the Rite—"
"They won't," Jin said, eyes glowing, chains rattling louder than before.
"No more running."
Far away, in the ruins of the Forbidden Archives, a spirit sealed in golden crystal stirred for the first time in a thousand years.
Its eyes opened.
And it smiled.