The Dark Blade: Return Of The General.

Chapter 24: The Imposter

Jacob stared at the woman wearing Anna's face, his mind struggling to process what he was witnessing. "Who are you?"

The imposter smiled—a cold, predatory expression that looked completely wrong on features Jacob had come to love. Her hands moved to her neck, finding an edge Jacob had never noticed before. With one smooth motion, she peeled away what he had thought was skin.

It was not skin. It was a mask—incredibly realistic, made from materials that moved and breathed like living flesh. As it came away, it revealed a different face beneath. A face Jacob recognized immediately.

"Roseline," he breathed.

"Surprise," Roseline said, her real voice replacing the careful imitation she had been performing. She tossed the mask aside and shook out her hair, which had been compressed beneath the disguise. "We switched places at the hospital after the mansion explosion."

Jacob's exhausted brain tried to catch up with this revelation. "You have been pretending to be Anna this entire time? The pregnancy, the hospital, everything?"

"Everything since the explosion was theater designed to draw out traitors and gather intelligence," Roseline confirmed. She moved toward Keaton with the fluid grace of a trained assassin—nothing like Anna's gentler movements. "We needed to know who was truly behind the conspiracy. So we set a trap using the one thing we knew would make enemies reveal themselves."

"Me," Jacob realized. "You used me as bait while I was unconscious in their Neural Prison."

"You were already captured. We had to make the best use of a bad situation." Roseline's expression showed no remorse for the deception. "The real Anna is hidden somewhere safe, far from here. We could not risk her being captured by the people who want her blood for their ritual."

Henry Keaton had backed against the concrete wall, his earlier confidence evaporating in the face of Roseline's cold fury. He lunged for the door, moving with surprising speed for a man his age.

Roseline was faster.

She crossed the distance in three strides and delivered a brutal kick to Keaton's knee. The joint buckled with a sickening crack, and he collapsed to the floor screaming. Before he could recover, Roseline grabbed his throat and slammed him against the wall hard enough to crack the concrete.

"Where is Elijah Krigg?" Roseline demanded, her voice calm despite the violence. "Where is Jacob's brother?"

Keaton laughed—a wet, pained sound that brought blood to his lips. "Elijah? You think Elijah is real?" He laughed harder, the sound echoing madly in the empty room. "Elijah Krigg has been dead for three years!"

Jacob felt his world tilt again. "That is impossible. I saw him. The Mirror of Souls showed me—"

"The Mirror showed you what you feared most," Keaton interrupted, still laughing despite Roseline's hand crushing his windpipe. "Family betrayal. The fear that your own blood had destroyed your family. That is how we manipulated you, Jacob. We fed that fear through carefully crafted deceptions."

Roseline tightened her grip. "Explain. Now. Or I crush your throat and we find answers elsewhere."

Keaton gasped for air as Roseline loosened her hold just enough to let him speak. "There was a twin brother once. Birth records show it. But Elijah died in the facility fire years before the Krigg massacre. We used that dead brother as a psychological weapon."

"Marcus Nico," Jacob whispered, understanding flooding through him like ice water. "The man I saw at the mansion, the one wearing my mask—that was Marcus Nico the entire time."

"Marcus is a talented actor and nearly identical in build to you," Keaton confirmed. "Add prosthetic scars, voice modulation, and knowledge about your family extracted from old records, and suddenly he becomes a very convincing evil twin. The Mirror artifact amplified your fears, showing you what your subconscious dreaded most—that family had betrayed family."

Jacob's rage at being manipulated warred with crushing relief that his brother had not actually murdered their family. But if Elijah was dead and had been dead for years, then who had orchestrated the massacre?

Roseline grabbed Keaton's hair and yanked his head back. "Where is Anna? Where is the real Anna Tate?"

"You mean you do not know?" Keaton's bloody smile was triumphant despite his broken leg and imminent death. "Your carefully hidden safe house was not as safe as you thought. Marcus found her yesterday. By now, she is at the old auction house where this all began. Marcus is using her as bait to lure Jacob into a final trap."

"You are lying," Roseline said, but uncertainty flickered across her face.

"Am I?" Keaton coughed more blood. "Check your secure communication channels. I am sure you have been trying to reach your people guarding Anna. How many have responded?"

Roseline's expression confirmed Keaton's words. She had been trying to contact her team and getting only silence.

"Let me go," Jacob demanded, straining against his restraints. "If Anna is in danger, we need to move now!"

Roseline released Keaton, letting him slump to the floor, and moved to free Jacob. Her fingers worked quickly at the leather straps, releasing them with efficiency born of long practice.

"This could be another trap," Roseline warned as she worked. "They could be feeding us false information to lure you exactly where they want you."

"I do not care," Jacob replied. "If there is any chance Anna is truly in danger, I have to go."

The final restraint came free, and Jacob surged to his feet. His legs nearly buckled from three days of being immobilized, but he forced his body to obey through sheer willpower. He would deal with physical weakness later. Right now, Anna needed him.

They moved toward the door together, but Keaton's voice stopped them.

"Wait!" The broken man pushed himself up on his elbows, blood streaming from his mouth. "There is something you need to know about Anna's mother. Something that changes everything."

Jacob turned back slowly. "Diana Tate is dead. She died in the massacre."

"Did she?" Keaton laughed that terrible laugh again. "That is what everyone was told. That is what Ben Tate believed until the day he died. But it was a lie. Diana Tate survived the massacre."

The words hung in the air like poison. Roseline and Jacob exchanged glances, both trying to determine if this was another manipulation or actual truth.

"Diana did not just survive," Keaton continued, his voice growing weaker as blood loss took its toll. "She orchestrated it. She planned the entire Krigg family massacre from the inside. She was never a Guardian protecting your family, Jacob. She was the spy who sold them out."

Jacob's blood turned to ice. "You are lying."

"Diana Tate is alive and working with Marcus Nico right now," Keaton insisted. His eyes were glazing over, but his voice carried the ring of truth. "Why do you think Marcus knew exactly how to find Anna's safe house? Diana told him. Why do you think they want Anna's blood so badly? Because Diana wants to complete a ritual that requires her daughter's willing sacrifice."

Roseline moved closer to Keaton, checking his vitals with professional efficiency. "He is dying. Internal bleeding from the fight. We have maybe two minutes before he goes into shock."

"Anna's mother is alive," Keaton repeated, each word an effort now. "She is waiting at the auction house with Marcus. And Anna is not just bait for you, Jacob. She is bait for a family reunion Diana has been planning for fifteen years."

His eyes rolled back, and his body went limp. Roseline checked his pulse, then looked up at Jacob.

"He is gone."

Jacob stood frozen, trying to process revelations that kept reshaping everything he thought he understood. Diana Tate alive. Diana working with the conspiracy. Diana planning to sacrifice her own daughter for some unknown ritual.

"We need to go," Roseline said urgently. "If even half of what Keaton said is true, Anna is walking into a trap designed specifically around her relationship with her supposedly dead mother."

They ran from the basement prison, bursting into an abandoned warehouse complex that looked like it had been unused for decades. Outside, night had fallen while Jacob had been unconscious. He had no idea how much time had passed or how far they were from the city.

Roseline pulled out a phone and made a call as they ran. "Leo, we need extraction. Jacob's location... unknown. Track this phone signal."

As they reached the warehouse exit, emergency lights suddenly blazed to life, temporarily blinding them. When Jacob's vision cleared, he saw they were surrounded by armed men—at least twenty soldiers in tactical gear, all with weapons aimed at their heads.

And standing at the front of the group, smiling that terrible smile Jacob had come to recognize, was Marcus Nico wearing Elijah's scarred face once again.

"Going somewhere, brother?" Marcus asked mockingly. "Did you really think we would let you escape so easily? Everything you just learned was meant to drive you exactly where we want you. And now you will come with us willingly."

He gestured, and soldiers dragged forward a bound and gagged figure. Anna—the real Anna this time—struggled against her captors with terror in her eyes.

"Surrender peacefully," Marcus commanded, "or we kill her right now."