Chapter 3: The First Key

By dawn, they were running.

Aeryn and Lior moved like shadows through the crumbling alleyways of the lower districts, where the Queen’s light barely touched. Here, the neon glow faded. The air thickened with dust and forgotten stories. Graffiti covered the walls—messages left by rebels, lovers, and those who dared to hope. Most were painted over, but one still bled through in cracked red paint:

“Pag-ibig ang ating huling sandata.”

Love is our final weapon.

The phrase struck Aeryn like a chord in her chest.

They arrived at the train tunnel entrance just before the patrol cycles roared past. Lior grabbed her hand without thinking, pulling her into a crawlspace beneath a collapsed billboard.

They waited. Silent. Close.

She could feel his heartbeat—racing like hers.

When the hum of the engines faded, Lior exhaled. “They’re increasing patrols.”

“They know someone’s searching the archives,” Aeryn said.

“They probably think it’s just a rogue collector. Not the daughter of the Governor herself.”

Aeryn managed a smirk. “Let’s keep it that way.”

They boarded an underground freight train—unregistered, slow, and illegal. No tickets. No seats. Just crates, rust, and danger. It would take them halfway across the island, toward the forgotten town of San Regina in old Cebu, where the ruined chapel stood.

As the train rumbled forward, Lior leaned against the wall, his eyes half-closed.

“You look exhausted,” she said.

“I haven’t slept in three days,” he replied. “They’ve been running tests on us. Emotional resistance thresholds. Pain triggers. Loyalty inhibitors.”

Aeryn clenched her fists. “I’m going to destroy all of it.”

“You’re one girl,” he said softly.

“I’m not just one girl anymore.”

She reached into her satchel and held out the mirror shard. Its light flickered in the dimness, casting ghostly shapes on the metal walls.

“What is that thing?” Lior asked.

“It’s a piece of the other world,” she said. “A place where love still lives. I saw you there.”

He met her gaze. “Was I happy?”

She nodded.

His lips curved slightly. “Then maybe this war is worth it.”

The train stopped miles from San Regina. They walked the rest of the way, following a dirt path overgrown with vines and silence.

When they reached the outskirts of the town, Aeryn froze.

San Regina was now ghost town.

The buildings were collapsed, moss-covered. The windows shattered. Jungle vines swallowed stone and steel alike. Yet in the center of the ruin stood the chapel—weathered, blackened by fire, but still standing.

Aeryn’s feet moved on their own.

She stepped through the ruined archway.

Inside, sunlight poured through holes in the ceiling, illuminating cracked pews and a shattered altar. Ash coated everything. But beneath the dust, a faint red glow pulsed from the center of the altar.

Lior watched the door. “I’ll keep guard.”

Aeryn approached the altar slowly. Her fingers brushed aside the ash.

And there it was.

A fragment of a heart-shaped pendant, split in two. Embedded within was a glowing Baybayin character: Alaala — memory.

As soon as her skin touched it, a jolt of energy surged through her.

She saw a memory not her own.

A girl knelt in this same chapel, once pristine and full of lilies. She wore a wedding dress and clutched the hands of a boy with a scar along his jaw.

They laughed. Whispered. Kissed.

And then—the door burst open.

Soldiers stormed in. The Queen herself followed, younger, her eyes wild with betrayal. She raised her blade and struck.

The scene froze as the girl screamed.

And Aeryn saw Queen Xrydia weeping afterward, holding the broken pendant in her bloodied hands.

Aeryn gasped and fell back.

The pendant fragment glowed brightly now, absorbed into her shard.

The first key was hers.

She ran to Lior. “I have it! The first fragment.”

But before he could respond, a voice crackled through the chapel:

“TARGET CONFIRMED. FEMALE. PRIORITY CAPTURE.”

Drones.

Dozens.

Black, humming, armed.

Aeryn’s eyes widened. “They tracked us!”

Lior grabbed her arm. “Run!”

They bolted through the chapel’s side entrance, scrambling over roots and rubble as the drones opened fire. Red lasers burned the air around them.

Aeryn ducked behind a collapsed statue. “We’ll never outrun them!”

Lior pulled something from his jacket—a pulse grenade.

“Cover your ears.”

He tossed it high into the air.

BOOM.

A shockwave burst outward, disabling the drones in a scream of static.

The jungle went silent.

They ran until their lungs burned and their legs threatened to give way.

They collapsed beneath a cluster of bamboo, gasping.

Aeryn looked at Lior’s arm.

He was bleeding—badly.

“You’re hit,” she said, tearing part of her sleeve to wrap the wound.

“I’ve had worse,” he muttered, gritting his teeth.

She looked at the wound. Her fingers brushed the mirror shard.

Suddenly, light poured from the shard—warm, golden, gentle.

Lior’s cut began to close before her eyes.

He stared at her.

“You can heal now?”

“Not me,” Aeryn said softly. “The Mirror.”

He reached out, cupping her hand.

For a moment, the world stilled.

They were not fugitives. Not enemies. Just a boy and a girl beneath the stars.

“I don’t care if it’s illegal,” Lior whispered. “I love you.”

Aeryn’s breath caught.

And then—

The mirror shard burned red.

Not with warmth.

With warning.

Back at the capital, Queen Xrydia stood before her blackened throne. Her commanders kneeled before her, heads bowed.

One of them trembled. “Your Majesty... the girl retrieved the first key.”

Xrydia’s fingers curled around the hilt of her ceremonial blade.

“I felt it,” she whispered. “The pendant she touched... it was once mine.”

Another commander spoke. “Shall we deploy the Hollow Knights?”

“No,” she said, her voice like a whip. “Send someone she trusts. Someone from her past.”

“Who?”

A long pause.

Then, a cold smile.

“Kael.”

Back in the jungle, Aeryn and Lior reached an abandoned research outpost—a ruin from the old Republic days. They barricaded the doors and collapsed on makeshift beds made from broken stretchers.

Lior dozed off quickly, exhaustion claiming him.

Aeryn couldn’t sleep.

She stared at the glowing shard. The symbol for Alaala burned softly inside it.

She thought of the Queen’s memory—the chapel, the love, the betrayal.

And for the first time, she realized something: Xrydia hadn’t always hated love.

She had once fought for it.

Then she had lost it.

And now... she punished others for having what she could not.

Aeryn whispered to the shard. “What happened to you?”

The shard responded—not with words, but with visions.

Xrydia in a mirror-world gown, dancing with a man beneath a rain of petals.

The same man lying in blood.

A shattered mirror.

A crown forged from grief.

Just as Aeryn was about to drift off, the air shimmered beside her.

A figure stepped from the shadows.

Tall. Graceful. Familiar.

“Kael?” she breathed.

He smiled, stepping into the moonlight.

But something was wrong.

His eyes weren’t mismatched anymore.

Both were silver.

He reached out. “You found the first key. That’s wonderful.”

“How are you here?”

“I followed the connection. The Mirror responds to strong bonds.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You never told me you knew Queen Xrydia.”

His smile faltered.

“I only remembered recently,” he said. “We’re... connected. I was her guardian once. Before she fell.”

Aeryn stood. “Why are you here now?”

“To help you, of course.”

But her instincts screamed.

Something in Kael’s stance. His tone. Too perfect. Too calm.

And then she saw it.

The mark behind his ear—a royal command seal.

Her blood turned to ice.

“You’re not here to help,” she whispered. “You’re here to watch me.”

Kael’s expression darkened.

“I didn’t want it to be this way, Aeryn.”

He stepped forward.

She raised the shard.

Its light flared.

Kael hissed and staggered back, vanishing in a ripple of shadow.

Lior woke with a start. “What happened?”

Aeryn stood shaking, the shard glowing bright in her hand.

“The Queen knows,” she said. “And now she’s using him.”

End of Chapter 3

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