The Dark Blade: Return Of The General.

Chapter 16: Unknown Brother

"I do not have a brother," Jacob said, but his voice trembled with uncertainty. His hands shook as he stared at the fading vision. "My entire family died that night. Everyone. There were no survivors except me."

Anna's glowing eyes fixed on him with unsettling intensity. The sixth artifact continued to pulse in her hand, its light slowly dimming but not disappearing completely. "Then who did we just see? That man in the vision had your face, Jacob. Your exact face."

Jacob forced himself to think through the shock. "Describe everything you saw. Every detail."

Anna closed her white eyes, and when she spoke, her voice took on a strange, distant quality, as if she were reading from a script written in her mind. "The man wore black armor covered in symbols I do not recognize. He moved with the same fluid grace you have—trained combat movements, efficient and deadly. His build matched yours exactly. Same height, same broad shoulders, same way of holding himself."

"But?" Jacob pressed, sensing there was more.

Anna's glowing eyes opened again. "But he had a scar. A terrible scar running from his left temple down to his jaw. You do not have that scar, Jacob. And his eyes were different. Colder. Like looking into a frozen lake with something dark swimming beneath the ice."

Before Jacob could respond, he heard the sound of an engine approaching at high speed. His combat instincts flared, and he moved to shield Anna, but a familiar voice called out through the smoke.

"Jacob! Anna! Where are you?"

Roseline burst through the warehouse entrance, her elegant dress torn and covered in soot. She had clearly fought her way past whoever was outside. Blood dripped from a cut on her arm, and her hair had come loose from its careful styling.

"Roseline, over here!" Jacob called.

The assassin ran to them, her trained eyes immediately assessing the situation—the collapsed building, Ben Tate's crushed body, the unconscious and dead assassins scattered around them. But when her gaze fell on the artifact in Anna's hand, she stopped dead in her tracks.

All color drained from Roseline's face. "Where did you get that?"

"Anna's mother left it for her," Jacob explained. "Inside a sealed box. Why? What is it?"

Roseline approached slowly, like someone approaching a dangerous animal. "That is the Mirror of Souls. One of the most powerful Guardian artifacts ever created. I thought it was destroyed centuries ago during the Great Purge."

Anna looked down at the crystal pendant with new fear. "What does it do?"

"It shows truth," Roseline whispered, her voice filled with awe and terror. "Not the truth people want to see, but the truth that exists whether we acknowledge it or not. Hidden secrets, buried memories, lies we tell ourselves—the Mirror reveals everything."

Jacob felt ice spreading through his chest. "If it showed us a man claiming to be a Krigg heir, then that man actually exists?"

"The Mirror cannot lie," Roseline confirmed. She turned to Jacob with concern etched on her beautiful face. "If someone is out there claiming to be your brother, claiming to be the true Krigg heir, this changes everything. Your entire revenge plan, your claim to your family's legacy—all of it could be undermined."

Jacob's phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out to see Leo's number flashing on the screen. "Leo, what is it?"

Leo's voice came through tense and urgent. "Sir, you need to see this. Someone just posted a message on the dark web, specifically targeting you. It is spreading through every criminal network in Seron."

"What does it say?"

"I am sending you a screenshot now."

Jacob's phone chimed with an incoming image. He opened it, and his blood ran cold. The message was short, written in stark white text against a black background:

"THE FALSE BLADE WILL FALL. THE TRUE KRIGG RISES. TOMORROW, THE STREETS WILL RUN RED WITH THE BLOOD OF PRETENDERS. THE CRIMSON DAWN IS COMING."

Below the message was an image—the same masked figure from Anna's vision, standing with arms crossed before an army of thousands.

"Someone is using your family's name against you," Roseline observed, reading over Jacob's shoulder. "They are trying to turn your identity into a weakness."

Jacob's mind raced through implications. "Marcus Nico. He said he knew people who could find out who I really am. This is bigger than I thought. The Nico family, the Crimson Dawn, this supposed brother—they are all connected."

Anna suddenly gasped, her body going rigid. The Mirror of Souls blazed bright again, its light intensifying until Jacob had to shield his eyes. When he could see again, Anna was staring into the crystal with an expression of absolute horror.

"Anna? What is it? What are you seeing?"

"The Mirror is showing me more," Anna whispered, tears streaming down her face. "About the night of the fire. About what really happened." Her voice broke. "Jacob, you were not the only child who escaped that night."

Jacob grabbed her shoulders gently. "What do you mean?"

Anna looked up at him, and the anguish in her glowing eyes made his heart break. "You had a twin brother, Jacob. An identical twin. The records were hidden, the memories suppressed, but the Mirror is showing me the truth."

"That is impossible," Jacob breathed, but even as he said it, fragments of buried memory began surfacing. A child's laughter identical to his own. Playing with wooden swords against someone who moved exactly like him. His mother's worried face as she looked at two boys instead of one.

"The Mirror does not lie," Roseline reminded him quietly.

Anna's grip on Jacob's arm tightened painfully. "Jacob, there is more. Something terrible." She was shaking now, the artifact's light flickering with her distress. "Your brother did not just survive the fire. He started it."

The world seemed to stop spinning. Jacob could not breathe, could not think, could not process what Anna had just said.

"No," he whispered. "That cannot be true."

"The Mirror is showing me everything," Anna continued, sobbing openly now. "Your brother was different from you. Darker. Your parents tried to help him, tried to save him from whatever was wrong inside him, but it did not work. And on that night fifteen years ago, he made a choice."

Anna looked up at Jacob with absolute certainty and absolute horror.

"He set the fire that killed your family, Jacob. He murdered your parents, your siblings, everyone. And then he walked away and let everyone believe you were the only survivor. He has been hiding all these years, waiting for the right moment to return and claim what he thinks is rightfully his."

Jacob sank to his knees as the truth crashed over him like a tidal wave. His brother—a twin he had not even remembered existed—had murdered their entire family and framed it as an enemy conspiracy. Everything Jacob had believed about that night, everyone he had blamed, all of it was based on a lie.

The true monster had not been some external enemy.

The true monster had been family all along.