The Doppelgänger struck first, and it struck hard.
Royce barely raised the bloodied dagger in time to deflect the blow—a searing, invisible force that cracked the marble floor beneath him.
Each clash of their blades was a scream, a memory, a failure made flesh.
His twin's blade moved like guilt itself—fast, venomous, unstoppable.
Royce stumbled, the chain dragging Eryndra ever closer to the abyss behind the throne of broken mirrors.
Her blindfolded face twisted in silent agony.
She was slipping, inch by inch.
"You can't save her," the Doppelgänger sneered, slashing wide.
"You never could."
---
Royce fought back, his body battered, his spirit unraveling.
Every strike he landed felt wrong, as if he were tearing apart himself.
The labyrinth laughed.
The portraits on the walls shifted, showing new scenes—Royce losing.
Over and over.
In one, he was too slow to catch Eryndra's hand as she fell.
In another, he turned his back on her cries.
The walls whispered in a deafening chorus:
"You are the monster in her story."
"You are the villain of your own blood."
---
Blow after blow rained down.
Royce fell to one knee, his dagger clattering across the stones.
The Doppelgänger loomed over him, a twisted smile splitting its face.
"Yield," it commanded.
Royce looked up—and saw himself.
Broken.
Cowardly.
Alone.
It wasn't a monster standing above him.
It was everything he had let himself become.
And in that moment... something inside him snapped.
---
Royce didn't reach for the dagger.
He charged.
Barehanded, bleeding, broken—but burning.
He slammed into the Doppelgänger, driving them both across the Hall.
They crashed into the throne of shattered mirrors, the glass exploding around them like dying stars.
Royce pinned the creature beneath him, fists hammering down.
Each punch was a memory defied:
"I was there for her."
"I tried to save her."
"I am not the end of her story."
The Doppelgänger screamed—a high, inhuman sound—as cracks spread across its form.
It fought back savagely, gouging deep into Royce's flesh.
But he did not yield.
He refused.
---
At the edge of the abyss, Eryndra slipped.
Her foot found nothing but air.
The chain snapped taut.
She would fall.
Royce, bloody and gasping, ripped the chain from the Doppelgänger's hand.
He hurled his other self into the pit without a final word.
The mirror-image Royce plummeted into the endless dark, its scream swallowed by the void.
Royce threw himself forward, chain in hand, and seized Eryndra's wrist an instant before she vanished.
Their hands locked, her weight dragging at him, pulling him toward the abyss.
---
The labyrinth held its breath.
Royce's muscles screamed in protest.
The edge of the pit crumbled under his weight.
Tears blurred his vision.
"I won't lose you again," he whispered through gritted teeth.
"Not this time."
With a roar that ripped from the bottom of his soul, he pulled.
Eryndra collapsed into his arms, broken but alive.
---
The Hall shuddered.
The portraits shattered.
The labyrinth screamed in fury.
Darkness swallowed the walls.
The world twisted and folded in on itself.
---
When Royce next opened his eyes, he was kneeling in the snow.
The labyrinth had vanished.
Eryndra lay cradled against him, her breathing shallow but steady.
Around them, the dead forest loomed once more, but something had changed.
A single black feather drifted from the sky and landed in Royce's hand.
The boy's voice echoed in the cold wind:
> "One truth earned.
Many lies remain."
Ahead, in the mist, the crooked path continued.
The deeper horrors of the Deadroot awaited.
And somewhere in its heart... the boy in the red cloak waited too.
--