Kael pulled himself up from the crumbling edge of the ravine, boots slipping against loose gravel as the wind howled behind him. Blood soaked the left side of his tunic, a gash from the battle with the twin-faced wraith still oozing despite Lira’s healing efforts. The path ahead was narrow, carved into the edge of the mountains like a forgotten scar. Below, the drop was endless.He didn’t look back. Nyra limped behind him, her breaths shallow. She hadn’t spoken since the fight. Her hands trembled, not from fear but something colder. Guilt. Maybe that was why she had kept silent when the creature had whispered to her in the dark. Maybe that was why Kael had spared her.Lira caught up beside him. Her fingers brushed his arm before pulling back. She had been distant ever since they left the archive ruins. The vision she had seen in the blade—he could still see it in her eyes, the weight of prophecy pressing down like a yoke of stone.“You’re bleeding again,” she said.“It’ll stop.” He gl

The chamber twisted.Kael staggered back from the mirror, his breath caught in his throat as the copy of himself within vanished. Not with a scream, not with a struggle, but as if the reflection had never been real. Only silence remained. Behind him, Nyra’s footsteps were hesitant, and even the Archive itself seemed to hold its breath.“What was that?” Nyra whispered. Her hand hovered over her blade. “That wasn’t just illusion. I felt it. I felt you vanish.”“I don’t know,” Kael said, but he was lying. Deep down he knew exactly what that thing was. The same force that had haunted his dreams, the same presence that lived in the curse twisting inside his veins. It had a voice now, a face. His.The mirror rippled again, but this time, it was not Kael’s reflection that returned. A new figure appeared, cloaked in silver light and shadow. The shape flickered like dying embers, but the eyes were clear. The same as Kael’s. Not similar. Identical.“Who are you?” Kael asked, stepping forward de

Kael stood frozen in the corridor, the torches lining the wall flickering wildly as if reacting to the storm building inside him. The mirror ahead no longer showed his reflection. It showed someone else. Someone who wore his face but not his soul. The man inside the glass grinned with bloodstained teeth and eyes that gleamed like a predator waiting to pounce.Kael’s hand clenched around the hilt of his sword.Nyra stepped up behind him, her eyes fixed on the same uncanny image. “That is not you,” she whispered.He did not respond. He stepped forward instead. The air grew colder with each step, and his breath steamed. The ground beneath his boots felt thinner than stone, as if the castle itself did not trust him here.Inside the mirror, the other Kael turned away from him and walked deeper into a reflection of the corridor. But that world was darker. The walls bled shadow, and the torches were nothing but tongues of green flame. Kael hesitated, then reached out and touched the surface.

The wind tore through the ravine like a living thing, carrying with it a low howl that sounded too much like a scream. Kael stood on the jagged ridge, his cloak snapped by the wind, eyes locked on the shimmering plain beyond.The glass sea was no longer still.What had once gleamed with unnatural serenity now writhed. Waves of brittle crystal surged and broke as if a storm churned beneath its surface. But it was no storm. The blood-red light threading through the glass grew brighter by the second, pulsing in rhythm with a distant, echoing thud.A heartbeat.Kael’s jaw clenched. He had felt it before, far from here, long before the Archive had spoken its name aloud.The Wyrm was waking.Behind him, Nyra approached slowly, her boots crunching over dead stones. “The tremors are getting worse. I counted four in the last hour.” She stopped beside him, eyes on the corrupted sea. “We need to move before it decides to rise.”Kael nodded, but his gaze did not shift. “Do you feel that?”She til

The storm above had passed, but the one inside Kael had only grown.He stood on the edge of the clearing, blood trickling down his temple, the cold wind sweeping his cloak back like wings carved from smoke. Across from him, the man who looked exactly like him still held that twisted smile. Same silver hair. Same burn mark on his palm. Same eyes, but where Kael’s carried weariness and fury, this one’s glinted with amusement.Nyra stepped to Kael’s side, her blade drawn and humming with light.“I don’t like this,” she whispered. “He smells like you. But he feels wrong.”Kael said nothing. He was too busy staring at the figure who moved like his reflection, standing in perfect rhythm as though mocking him.“You want to say it,” the double said, voice smooth and calm. “That I am not real. That I am just some illusion. But you can feel it, can’t you? I bleed like you. I burn like you. I remember what you remember.”Kael’s grip tightened on his sword. “Where did you come from?”The figure t