The first reflection struck him, Its claws dug into Jason’s chest, cold and sharp. Its face, his face, twisted in a scream of hatred. Jason staggered back, golden fire bursting instinctively to throw it away. But three more took its place. Then ten. Then a hundred.They poured out of the cracks, endless, writhing, a sea of Jason Millers, each one more grotesque than the last. Some had empty sockets where eyes should be, bleeding violet fire.Some had skin that peeled away in ribbons, revealing bones charred black. Some dragged their chains behind them, others clutched weapons forged of their own broken ribs.Every mouth moved the same way. “You are nothing.”Jason’s knees threatened to buckle. He could barely breathe. His chest was still split from the abyssal blade, blood running in rivers down his ribs. His arms shook violently as he summoned fire to his hands again. The first wave hit.Jason roared, fire blasting outward in a sweeping arc. Dozens of them disintegrated instantly, th

The blade drove deeper.Jason’s breath hitched, frozen in his throat. His chest tore open as the abyssal edge carved through flesh and bone. Heat and cold slammed into him all at once, his fire sputtering violently as if suffocating in its own blood.The reflection’s eyes burned gold, perfect and unyielding. Its voice was calm, merciless.“Do you feel it? The end of you. The beginning of me.”Jason tried to speak. Blood bubbled from his lips. He coughed violently, the sound wet and broken. His knees gave way, but the blade held him upright, speared like prey on a hunter’s pike. The reflection leaned close, whispering in his ear.“This is mercy. No more scars. No more failure. No more pain. Just perfection.”Jason’s vision swam. Elias’s voice echoed faintly in the distance, but it felt so far away now, muffled, like it belonged to another world. His fire, his stubborn, raging fire, flickered weakly, gasping for air.The abyss pressed closer. Shadows crawled up the blade and into his ch

The claw struck.Jason’s hand, once outstretched in desperate yearning, slashed forward with a violence that wasn’t his own. Violet fire ripped from his arm, screaming across the void like a scythe of annihilation.Elias’s eyes widened, but he didn’t retreat. Golden threads burst from his palm, weaving into a shield of pure radiance. Jason’s claw struck it dead-on, the collision shattering the air with a thunderous crack.The explosion flung Jason backward. He tumbled across the void, violet wings flaring, his body writhing under forces that were no longer his to command. His scream tore from his throat, but even that wasn’t his voice anymore. It was doubled, his own, and a deeper, hungering resonance.“Elias—!” he cried.“KILL HIM,” the shard roared through his mouth.Jason’s hands clutched at his head, fire exploding from his body in violent bursts. His gold and violet flames collided, ripping at one another. Each surge tore his skin open, glowing fissures carving across his chest,

The battlefield froze. Jason’s violet spear, drawn back for the killing blow, trembled mid-air as if chained by an unseen hand. The shard’s voice snarled through his mouth, its fury crackling in the air, yet it did not strike. Because something else had spoken.From the cracked abyss below, shadows rose like a tide. A colossal silhouette emerged, its form shifting between smoke, stone, and fire, too vast to be bound by shape.Eyes, no, abysses masquerading as eyes, opened within its skull, glowing with a darkness so pure it devoured even the violet flame.Jason’s chest seized. The shard screamed inside him, clawing against its own host. Not here, not THEM!Elias staggered back, shielding his face from the sheer force radiating off the figure. The golden light that had clung to him guttered under its presence, like a candle before a storm.Every instinct in his body screamed to kneel, to run, to vanish. Yet he stayed standing, battered chest heaving, eyes locked on Jason.The figure’s

Jason’s eyes opened to silence. Not the storm, not the endless screams, not even the whisper of violet flame. Just silence.He lay on a surface he could not name. It wasn’t stone, wasn’t earth, wasn’t void, it was everything and nothing, stretching infinitely in every direction. The horizon glowed faintly, as though dawn was about to break but never did.Jason pushed himself up, groaning. His body felt heavy, fractured. His arms shook as he looked at them, still glowing faintly gold, but riddled with cracks that pulsed violet.His veins glimmered like lightning beneath thin glass, ready to shatter at the slightest touch. His chest throbbed where the shard had fused.“Where… am I?” His voice cracked, echoing unnaturally in the still air.A voice answered. “Nowhere. Everywhere. Between.”Jason turned sharply. A figure sat a few paces away, cross-legged as if in meditation. Their face was shrouded, features shifting like smoke.Yet their presence was undeniable, it pressed down like grav