Chapter Twelve: Reckoning

My lungs burned like I’d been drowning. I shot upright, gasping, my heart hammering against my ribs like it was trying to break free. Everything around me was dark—too dark. The air was heavy, thick with the scent of ash and iron. My head throbbed in rhythm with the pounding in my chest.

Then I heard it. That voice.

“Welcome home, Carter.”

The words slid through the air like smoke, soft but suffocating. I turned toward the sound, every instinct screaming at me to run, to fight. But when my eyes landed on him, my stomach turned to stone. The Wicked stood just feet away, his crimson cloak rippling in a wind that didn’t exist. The glow of his red eye cut through the shadows, and the faint smirk twisting his lips made something inside me crawl.

For a moment, I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Because staring at him felt like staring into a mirror warped by time and cruelty.

“What—what the hell is this?” My voice came out rough, unsteady. I looked around for anything familiar—a doorway, an exit—but the walls were black stone, pulsing faintly, like the place itself was alive. “Where am I?”

The Wicked tilted his head, as if amused by my confusion. “You’re where you’ve always been,” he said calmly.

“Right where you belong.”

My hands clenched at my sides. “Stop talking in riddles. Where’s Snow? Charlie? What did you do to them?”

A low chuckle echoed from him, dark and knowing. “Ah, Snow. Always the first thing on your mind.” He took a slow step forward, the sound of his boots against the stone making my pulse spike. “She’s safe… for now.”

Every nerve in my body went rigid. I didn’t know whether to believe him, but the way he said it—soft, deliberate—made me hate that a part of me did.

“What do you want from me?” I demanded, forcing the tremor out of my voice.

The Wicked smiled faintly, though there was no warmth in it. “Want? Oh, Carter…” He lifted a gloved hand and pointed directly at my chest. “You already know what I want. You are what I want.”

My stomach twisted. That burning sensation in my arm flared again beneath my sleeve, hot and alive. And when I looked down, the mark pulsed faintly—red and black, in sync with the glow in his eyes.

I stumbled back a step, shaking my head. “No. No, I’m not you. I’ll never be you.”

The Wicked’s smirk only deepened, and in the dim light, I saw the faintest trace of pity in his expression—like he’d heard those words before. Like he’d once believed them too.

“You say that,” he murmured. “But you already are me.”

I stumbled backward, crashing into a tall end table. The candelabra toppled, clattering to the stone floor in a spray of sparks and molten wax.

“No,” I rasped, shaking my head. “I’m not you.”

The Wicked moved before I could breathe. He lunged forward, slamming me into the wall so hard the air ripped from my lungs. His breath was cold against my cheek, his voice a snarl of smoke and fury.

“You are me,” he hissed, his crimson eyes burning brighter, twin infernos in the dark. “The sooner you accept that truth, the sooner you can save us both.”

He raised a trembling hand, and a mirror burst to life from the shadows—its silver frame humming like it was alive. He shoved it inches from my face. “What do you see, Carter?”

My stomach dropped like a stone. The reflection staring back at me wasn’t mine—or maybe it was, in some horrifying in-between. One eye burned crimson, the other as black as midnight. My hair had darkened, strands flickering like smoldering embers at their tips. I tore my gaze away, but when I looked back—

It wasn’t a reflection anymore.

The Wicked stood where my image should’ve been, grinning with the same face I wore. The same eyes. The same twisted, broken expression.

And that realization terrified me more than anything else ever could.

My breathing turned ragged, every inhale scraping like glass down my throat. “No,” I whispered, but the word came out weak—fragile. The mirror still hovered before me, shimmering with red light that pulsed like a heartbeat. My heartbeat.

The Wicked tilted his head, studying me with something between pity and amusement. “You can lie to yourself all you want, boy. But the truth doesn’t care what you believe.”

I shook my head, but the air around me had begun to shift—thickening, humming with energy that felt too alive, too aware. The reflection—my reflection—moved when I didn’t. A cruel smile twisted on its lips, and crimson light bled through the cracks in the glass.

“Stop it,” I said through gritted teeth. “Stop it!”

“Face it,” the Wicked whispered. “Look closer.”

The mirror cracked with a sound like thunder. Then another. And another. Fractures spread across the surface until the entire thing shattered, shards scattering like falling stars. Each fragment caught my reflection—hundreds of me, each one more twisted, more corrupted than the last. Their eyes glowed red, their mouths curled in wicked grins.

I stumbled back, heart pounding. “You’re not real,” I whispered.

The Wicked only smiled. “Neither are you. Not for long.”

And as the last shard fell to the floor, I felt it—the darkness creeping beneath my skin, coiling around my veins like smoke, whispering my name in a voice that sounded all too familiar.

A jagged thunderclap ripped through my skull, forcing me to double over. The sigil on my arm flared like molten fire, sending white-hot agony spiraling through my veins. My fingers dug into my skin until my knuckles ached and turned ghostly pale. I sank to my knees, teeth grinding against each other, every nerve in my body ablaze, as if the pain itself was alive—hungry, relentless, inescapable.

“Make it stop!” I screamed, tears carving molten trails down my cheeks. Memories crashed into me, but they weren’t memories—they were shattered, jagged fragments of a past I had thought I could leave behind. Charlie and Snow flickered across my mind, mocking me, twisting reality into something unrecognizable. Nothing felt real anymore. Pain, memories, and torment hammered my body like a relentless earthquake, each wave threatening to shatter me completely.

Through the haze of agony, I finally lifted my eyes. The Wicked knelt before me, clutching his own arm, teeth bared as he fought against a pain mirrored in mine—a shared torment that made the air between us tremble.

I stumbled forward, every muscle screaming in rebellion, until I was barely breathing, barely holding myself upright. The sigil on my arm flared again, hotter this time, as if it had a mind of its own—drawing out every secret, every wound, every memory I thought I had buried. And then, just for a heartbeat, the world went still.

The Wicked’s gaze locked onto mine, raw and unflinching, and in that frozen moment, I could feel it: a storm brewing not just around us, but inside us both. A dark, furious energy that neither of us could control. And as my knees buckled beneath me, I realized with sick clarity that this was far from over—this pain, this chaos, was only the beginning.