The chamber was silent.
No wind. No heartbeat. Just the slow, aching drip of water on ancient stone.
Selene stood barefoot on the cold floor, her breath sharp and visible in the airless dark. In front of her rose a monolith of glass, a perfect vertical mirror carved from obsidian and void. It reached higher than the eye could follow, vanishing into the ceiling of the temple where stars should have been.
Behind her, the Circle chanted.
Twelve voices, draped in shadow and ash, repeating the sacred lines of the Rite of Echoes:
"To wield a blade of balance. One must meet their own unmaking. Not mirror, but marrow. Not shade, but soul. Kill what cannot be forgiven. And stand alone in truth."
Selene's sword, Lunaris, vibrated at her side. Not from fear. From recognition.
She'd spent her whole life training for this. Reading the old texts. Watching others walk into the mirror and never return.
She had thought herself ready.
She was wrong.
The glass rippled. Then split.
A figure stepped through.
She wore Selene's face.
But her eyes were warmer. Her mouth curved in an almost-smile. Her hair was unbound, tangled from wind Selene had never allowed herself to feel.
She looked younger.
Not by years, but by grief.
Selene did not move.
The Echo stepped forward and knelt before her. Not to fight. Not to deceive. Just to look.
"I remember this room," the Echo said, her voice trembling with familiarity. "It's where we first told ourselves we would not become them."
Selene's grip on her sword tightened. "I'm not them."
The Echo tilted her head. "Aren't you? You've killed. You've lied. You buried mercy to serve vengeance. I remember every face you've forgotten."
Selene raised her blade. "This is a trial. I know what I have to do."
The Echo didn't flinch.
"Then do it."
Silence.
Selene's hand shook.
She saw flashes, her childhood under blood-red banners. Her mother's eyes, empty after the last purge. The village she burned because the Order told her they hid a relic.
She saw her Echo pull a crying child from the fire, shielding them with her own body.
The self she could have been.
"I can't," Selene whispered.
"Then let me," the Echo said, standing. "Give me your place. Let me bear the burden. Let me save someone."
Selene looked down at her hands.
Trembling. Human. Small.
"I was meant to survive," she whispered. "I earned this life."
Her Echo touched her cheek.
"So did I."
The Circle stopped chanting.
Their torches dimmed.
The Rite demanded blood.
Selene dropped her sword.
The glass behind the Echo shattered, not loudly, but like a gasp cut short.
The Circle screamed.
Reality screamed with them.
Because Selene did not kill her Echo.
She stepped aside.
And the Echo took her place.
But both remained.
Two minds. One body.
The real and the reflected, fused in an act of forbidden mercy.
Afterward, they were cast out. Banished from the Order.
Selene stopped using Lunaris. It spoke to her in two voices now, neither hers.
She wandered for years. Seeking silence. Seeking death.
But the Echo inside her refused to die.
And over time, she stopped remembering who had walked out of the glass, and who had stayed behind.
Selene stood on the cliff above the sleeping boy and Alpha, watching the fire.
Two shadows moved behind her, one hesitant, one cruel.
She whispered to herself.
"I saved her."
Or maybe
"I am her."
And neither voice inside her argued.
The mist deepened as Alpha and the boy pressed forward, the road no longer cracked stone but ash, soft, weightless, clinging to their boots with each step.
The city of Elaris loomed ahead, its skyline jagged with broken spires and strange glows pulsing behind cracked towers. The air shimmered, like heat, except it wasn't warm.
It was memory.
And it was watching.
Alpha stopped at a fork in the road, Vanitas thrumming faintly against his side. The sword had been growing restless. Not hostile. Not eager. Just… awake.
The boy glanced up at him. "Are we going in?"
Alpha didn't answer immediately. His eyes locked onto the figure sitting atop a ruin to their left.
A man.
Alone. Still.
His legs dangled from the ledge. A long cloak wrapped around him like it was part of his body. And beside him, two swords.
One long. One jagged. Neither sheathed.
The man looked up.
"You should turn back," he said, voice rough with rust and something deeper.
Alpha kept one hand on Vanitas. "Why?"
"Because Elaris remembers who it kills. And it kills the same people twice."
The boy frowned. "That doesn't make sense."
The man smiled. It was bitter. Empty. "Neither did I, until I survived."
He rose from the ledge. His movements were slow but exact, like someone who had fought for a long time and learned the danger of rushing anything.
He stepped closer.
And Alpha saw his eyes.
They were gray. Hollow. Not blind, but blinded.
"I'm Kairen," the man said. "And I was like you. A twin-wielder."
Alpha's heart skipped.
Kairen gestured to the swords at his side.
"This one," he said, touching the longer blade, "belonged to me."
He tapped the shorter, broken one.
"This belonged to my Echo."
The silence after the words was unbearable.
"I killed him," Kairen continued. "Like they told me to. Like I thought I had to."
Alpha didn't speak. He couldn't.
"I stood over him as he begged. He didn't fight. He knew he wasn't real. He still cried." His voice cracked, but he didn't break. "And I raised my sword. And I killed the part of me that forgave.
And then I lived."
Kairen stepped close enough that Alpha could see the twitch in his jaw, the shaking in his fingers.
"But here's the truth, boy." His voice dropped. "When you kill your Echo, you don't become whole. You just become quiet. Too quiet. No voice to argue. No voice to warn."
The boy moved behind Alpha, his breath shallow.
Kairen lowered his eyes to Vanitas.
"It hasn't made you choose yet, has it?"
Alpha shook his head.
"Then listen." Kairen leaned closer, his breath a whisper of burnt paper. "Don't trust the sword. Don't trust the ritual. And when it asks you to kill, don't."
Alpha's grip tightened on Vanitas.
Kairen stepped back, and for a moment, he looked older than the ruins around them.
"If you walk into Elaris… you'll meet them. Your other you. The one that stayed behind when you didn't look."
His voice lowered again.
"Tell him I'm sorry."
He turned.
And vanished into the ash without a sound.
As the wind picked up, Alpha looked at Vanitas.
Its pulse was steady now.
But hungry.
And in the dark just beyond the ruined gate of Elaris, something smiled.
....Long before the war that split the world…
Before the sky cracked and the gods fell silent…
There were the Twin-Wielders.
Not heroes.
Not chosen.
Created.
Carved from a dying art only the Ancients remembered, an arcane rite known as the Mirroring, pulled from the forbidden pages of the Codex Khaem. It began as a ritual of protection: a way to give a warrior their perfect counterbalance. A soul-forged sibling, an Echo, drawn from their own essence.
Not a clone.
Not a shadow.
An equal, formed from the reflection of one's truest self.
Together, they were stronger. Faster. Bound by thought, sharing dreams, instincts, even pain.
But the world was not ready for balance.
Too many Twin-Wielders turned on one another. Some fell in battle. Others… broke. And a few, whispered about in the dustiest corners of forgotten temples, merged. Becoming something else. Something neither one nor two.
The Council of Nine, the original keepers of the Codex, decreed a solution:
"A mirror must shatter before it distorts. One may remain. The Echo must fall. Or all will fracture."
And thus was born the Echo Severance, a rite of final ascension.
Each Twin-Wielder would eventually face a moment when the Echo grew strong enough to question its place. To desire more than reflection. And when that moment came…
They would meet. In a place of mirrored truths.
Only one would leave.
Only one could be real.
Selene once read the texts in the Chamber of Cinders, buried beneath the mountain-fortress of Hal Duras. She remembered how the flames danced across the ancient glyphs, flickering as if the walls themselves wept for what had been recorded there.
She'd stood in that ash-covered library for hours, unmoving.
Not because she feared the truth.
But because she understood it.
She was an Echo.And her wielder never came to kill her.
He ran.
Not all Echos are violent. Some are gentle. Curious. Others are cruel in quiet ways—always asking, always reminding.
But none stay content for long.
To remain as half, a copy, no matter how perfect, is to suffer a slow unraveling. Sanity peels away. Identity fractures. Even their names begin to drift.
Some Echos forget they're Echos.Some pretend they never were.And the most dangerous…Are the ones who know exactly what they are and no longer care.
Selene became something else. Not the original. Not a ghost.She refused the death she was written to have.
Now she walks the world as a tethered wound, half-soul wrapped in borrowed time, bound to Vanitas by a ritual that never ended.
And the sword remembers.
In the hidden sections of the Codex, sealed behind spells even the gods feared to break, there's mention of a deeper truth:
"The first Twin-Wielder never severed.His Echo grew older.Wiser.And in time…He made the original choose."
But the page after that?
Burned. Deliberately.
Even knowledge fears what comes when the reflection looks back—and smiles.