The gate pulsed again, its edges flickering between what was and what might have been. Selena stood frozen, heart hammering, torn between the familiar echo and the dread curling in her chest. The two voices lingered in the air like oil over flame—one grieving, one exacting. Her twin stepped to her side, blade lowered, eyes sharp.Calem looked between them, his voice low and steady. “Whichever of you spoke just now—what do you want from her?” But there was no answer, only that unbearable stillness before a storm. The symbols drifting through the air began to rearrange, forming not letters, but runes that pulsed with intent. The gate widened with a sound like splitting bone.From the fractured light emerged a child-shaped silhouette, limping slightly, face obscured by smoke. It wore a tattered version of Selena’s old training cloak, frayed and stained with something darker than blood. Around its neck hung the broken chain of her first locket, long thought lost in the fire. And in its sm
The question didn’t echo. It landed—soft, final, like snow on a grave. Now… which of us will wear it?Selena didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Her lips were parted, breath caught halfway between denial and recognition. The figure standing before her wasn’t a threat in the usual sense—it didn’t lunge or rage. But it was her. Not a twin, not a reflection. It was the part she had discarded to survive the Spiral. The one who remembered too much.The smoke around it pulsed with every emotion she had buried: the weight of the deaths she’d witnessed, the betrayals she had forgiven too easily, the flame she’d let devour her name so she wouldn’t feel the cold anymore. This wasn't memory—it was residue. It was soul.Behind her, Calem hovered protectively, his blade trembling not with fear, but indecision. Her twin didn’t speak, only watched, eyes darting between Selena and the smoke-figure, calculating.Selena took a step forward. Her legs were shaky, the world too loud, but she didn’t falter. “If you’r
The figure did not breathe, but its presence throbbed through the ruined gate like the memory of thunder. Selena’s lungs burned, not from suffocation, but from sheer stillness—everything inside her was being unraveled thread by thread. Her name, her purpose, her fire—it all began to blur.Calem rushed forward, only to be knocked backward by an unseen force that didn't harm, only removed. He landed hard, his blade clattering beside him, his eyes wide in helpless terror. Her twin didn’t flinch, but even she took a step back, fingers tightening around her mirrored sword.The being stepped closer. It was tall, impossibly so, yet it bent as if gravity pulled harder around Selena alone. Its threads reached out—not physically, but spiritually—searching for the core of what she had become. And they found it, pulsing like an ancient scar that had never healed.“You are the rebirth of a cycle you never agreed to,” the being said, though its mouth never moved. “You are not the flame. You are its
The light of the Spiral dimmed as Selena stepped into the new plane, her breath catching at the sheer stillness around her. It was not darkness that greeted her, but a silence too ancient to speak. Time no longer flowed forward here—it simply waited.The sky above was colorless, neither night nor day, a pale haze that pulsed in rhythm with her heartbeat. Beneath her feet, the ground shimmered like molten glass, reflecting nothing of the world above. The locket in her palm throbbed as though alive, its thread loosening by degrees.Her twin walked beside her, silver blade sheathed but hands still tense at her sides. Calem followed closely, his footsteps heavier than before, each step weighted by unspoken fear. They were past the Spiral now—beyond memory, beyond prophecy.A shape waited at the horizon, blurred and shifting, cloaked in roiling fire that did not burn. It bore no face, no name, only a center that pulsed like a wound. Selena’s chest tightened, her thoughts drawn to every ver
The door groaned as the smoke-hand pressed into its frame, not forcing it open, but caressing it—like it knew it belonged there. Selena stepped in front of her younger self instinctively, shielding the girl whose locket still pulsed with silver fire. Her twin moved as well, blade drawn, her stance matching Selena’s with a synchronicity that startled even now.The spiral beneath their feet trembled, its shimmer losing shape, becoming liquid memory. Threads of past moments bled through the mist—her first battle cry, her final goodbye, the place where she buried hope and called it strength. Calem pulled her closer, jaw clenched, the dagger in his hand humming as if sensing something older than blades approaching.The faceless form paused. It didn’t push past the threshold, but neither did it vanish. Instead, it tilted its non-existent head, as though listening. The child near the spiral knelt, touching the stone again, her fingers tracing a shape Selena couldn’t quite see. “They weren’t
The spiral gleamed beneath the child’s feet, no longer a symbol of fate, but a living, breathing path that twisted with memory and consequence. Selena’s heart pounded as she stared into the chasm, where fragments of her past flickered like shattered glass. The child stood at its edge, the braid of silver-and-shadowed hair still in her small hands. “Not all of you made it across the fire,” she said again, her voice softer now, touched by something ancient. “Some parts stayed behind. Some names, too.”Selena stepped closer, each motion trembling with the weight of what might resurface. Her twin didn’t speak—only watched, eyes narrowed, posture guarded—as if sensing this choice went deeper than any trial before. The air thickened, not with fear, but with the ache of nearing something she’d long forgotten how to hold. As she looked down into the spiral’s glimmering path, visions rose like mist: a girl screaming under a moonless sky, hands raw from digging graves that weren’t yet empty. A