The night cracked.
Not with sound, but with memory.
The moment Alpha stepped out of the cathedral, Vanitas, now twin-bladed, humming with quiet dissonance ,the city of Elaris remembered what it had been built to forget.
And memory, unlike ruin, doesn't stay buried.
Not forever.
She followed him down the cathedral steps, the air thick with psionic dust.The boy waited at the bottom. But… something in him was wrong.
Too still.Too calm.
His eyes were normal again, but Selene noticed the faint shimmer in the whites—like oil over water.
Alpha spoke without looking at her.
"You've been here before."
Selene nodded. Once.
"This city... was a vault. Built atop a battlefield where no one could die properly."
She paused.
"They called it the Cradle of Mirrors."
Long ago, before swords were named, before kingdoms bled banners, the world cracked.
Wielders were rare then. Chosen not by blood, but by reflection.
Each chosen warrior bore a mirror-self, a version born from their psyche, the blade they carried forcing them to confront it.
But one among them refused the ritual.He spared his double.
And in that defiance, two souls became one curse.
The Reflection War followed.Twin wielders, unanchored to identity, shattered cities with mindscapes that leaked into reality.
Vanitas was the last sword of that war.
A blade forged to end it.
But Vanitas didn't end things.
It waited.
As they walked deeper into the broken streets of Elaris, the boy lagged behind.
Then he stopped.
"Alpha?" His voice was light.
But something inside it trembled.
Alpha turned.
The boy pointed at the sky.
There were no stars.
Just a flat black sheet… rippling.
"Why does the sky look like water?"
And then
His eyes shifted. Just for a second. But Alpha saw it.
His reflection… blinked before he did.
Alpha knelt. "When did you last sleep?"
The boy shook his head.
"I don't know."
Selene stepped forward. "He needs to be tested."
Alpha's eyes darkened. "He's not a weapon."
But Selene wasn't looking at the boy.
She was looking at the shadow behind him.
It wasn't connected to his feet.
"You were in the chamber," Selene said slowly.
The boy's face went still.
Alpha froze. "He didn't step inside"
But Selene whispered: "The chamber doesn't need steps. It needs eyes."
"He saw it, Alpha. The ritual. The fusion. That's all it takes."
The boy flinched. "I'm me. I'm me. I'm"
But his voice was overlapping now.Two tones. One just half a breath behind.
"I'm me I'm me I'm me"
His shadow broke away.
Alpha drew one blade of Vanitas.
But his hands shook.
Not from fear.
From uncertainty.
The boy stepped backward, then flickered.
One moment he was whole
The next, two boys stood side by side.
One blinked. The other smiled.
Selene cursed beneath her breath. "We need to stabilize him, before the reflection takes root."
Alpha stepped forward.
"How do we know which is the real one?"
Vanitas pulsed against his hand, cold and uncertain.
And both boys said, perfectly in sync:
"You don't."
The two boys stood before him.
Identical in every curve of cheek, flicker of breath, glance of fear.
But only one was real.
And the other?
An echo ,a mirror born of the Vanitas ritual. A phantom pulled from memory, sharpened into life by the ancient curse that now whispered through Elaris like smoke in stone.
Alpha had faced monsters.He had fought things with teeth.But this
This was different.
This was the kind of war you bled inward.
Selene didn't move. She stood a step behind, arms folded, face expressionless, but her eyes watched Alpha with clinical precision.
"The Trial of Mirrors is older than war," she said quietly. "Two souls. One choice. If you pick wrong…"
She didn't finish.
She didn't have to.
The air crackled around Vanitas.
Alpha felt it stir inside him, like a second heartbeat, colder and crueler than the first.
One of the boys stepped forward. "You know me," he said.
The other matched him. "You think you know me."
Alpha gritted his teeth.
"This is a mind game."
Selene nodded. "Exactly. And the sword will not help you."
The boy on the left, let's call him A, tilted his head. "Ask me something only I would know."
The boy on the right, B, smiled. "He'ive the same answer I do. He remembers everything I do. He is me."
Alpha hesitated.
Selene whispered, "Then you don't ask facts. You ask feelings."
Alpha exhaled. Then turned to A.
"What did you feel when you saw the well?"
His eyes dimmed. "Like something had been pulled out of me. Like I was a ghost walking over my own grave."
He turned to B.
"What did you feel?"
B blinked. "Like I'd been born there."
Alpha's heart thudded. That answer was… off.
Selene's breath hitched.
"Again," she said.
"What did you feel when I touched your shoulder, the day we left the ravine?"
A: "Safe."
B: "Tense."
Alpha's eyes narrowed.
Vanitas pulsed.
A whisper scraped the inside of his skull:
"That one is afraid of you."
Suddenly, Selene stepped forward.
She knelt before the boys.
And spoke not to them, but to Alpha.
"There were once two wielders who refused the trial. Twins, perfect reflections. They chose to live together."
She looked up. Her voice cracked.
"They both faded. Memory unraveled them. They forgot who was who. In the end, they both turned on each other."
Alpha stared at her. "How do you know?"
Selene touched the chain around her neck.
Revealing a shard of a broken mirror.
"Because I was one of them."
Alpha turned back to the boys.
Both were crying now. Soft, confused tears.
But only one cast a shadow that moved wrong.
Only one blinked out of rhythm.
He raised Vanitas, both blades now whispering.
The boy on the right (B) stepped forward.
"Please… I'm real."
Alpha's eyes narrowed. "You were born at the well."
Slash.
The blade didn't cut flesh.
It shattered illusion.
The echo screamed in a voice that wasn't human. A ripple burst through the air like glass breaking across a field.
And then it was gone.
The remaining boy collapsed into Alpha's arms, shaking uncontrollably.
"Was it really him?" he whispered.
Alpha held him tighter.
"You're still here. That's all that matters."
Beneath Elaris, something shifted.
A ripple. A breath.
A throne that had long been silent, awoke.
And far off, across the city, a set of silver eyes opened behind glass.
Selene stiffened.
"The Echo King stirs."
Alpha looked up from the boy, his voice low.
"Then let him wake. We're not afraid of ghosts anymore."
The scream echoed long after the echo was gone.
The silence that followed wasn't peace.
It was anticipation.
Alpha sat near the edge of a broken fountain, arms resting on his knees, breath steady, but eyes distant. The boy had curled into sleep not far from him, exhaustion overtaking fear. But Alpha's own mind was awake, too awake.
And Vanitas was humming again.
Not out loud. Not in the air.
Inside.
You chose correctly, the sword whispered, a low rumble beneath his ribs. This time.
Selene didn't speak until the fire was low.
She sat with her back to the light, face wrapped in shadow. Her fingers absently traced the edge of the mirror shard around her neck, over and over, like a memory trying to reassemble itself.
"My twin's name was Calen."
Her voice was quiet.
"He was faster. Stronger. Smarter, even. Everyone thought he'd be the one to survive the Rite. Even me."
Alpha didn't interrupt.
"But I didn't kill him," she said. "I… let him fade."
She finally looked at Alpha.
"I chose myself. And Vanitas accepted it."
Alpha frowned. "You have a sword too?"
Selene shook her head.
"No. Only one can carry the Blade of Memory. The other… becomes its echo."
Alpha tensed.
She nodded slowly.
"He still speaks to me. In dreams. In reflections. Sometimes I don't know if I'm still Selene or just what he left behind."
The curse of the twin wielders wasn't just myth.
In the Age of Shattered Moons, twin souls were thought to be divine, two halves of a cosmic truth. The Ritual of Reflection was not punishment.
It was refinement.
One must carry the burden of reality. The other, dissolve into thought.
But over time, too many wielders refused to choose. Echoes bled into the world. Shadows twisted into kings. And from this
The Mirror Court was born.
Phantoms who called themselves real. Souls without anchors. Faces without names.
"They say the Echo King sits on a throne made of polished bone," Selene murmured. "Watching us from the edge of every mirror."
Alpha looked at his reflection in the fountain's dark water.
It didn't blink.
"He saw you today," she whispered.
Later that night, Alpha dreamed of blood.
Not spilled, but boiled. Like memory itself had turned feverish.
He stood in a glass corridor. All sides mirrored. All surfaces showing him. Hundreds of Alphas.
But only one bled from the eyes.
And that one moved.
"You still don't know who you are," the reflection hissed. "You think because you swing a cursed blade, you've earned a place in the story?"
Alpha stepped forward. "You're not me."
The reflection laughed. "I'm what's left when you're gone."
Then another voice spoke. Not from the dream, but through it.
Deeper. Colder.
Vanitas.
You've fed me now. Choice. Consequence. Reflection. You've earned a voice. So hear it.
The glass shattered around him.
And Alpha woke, mouth full of blood, hand clenching Vanitas so tightly his fingers ached.
Vanitas now whispered in sentences, not just pulses.
You remember now… don't you? Elaris is not your destination. It is your beginning.
Selene stood at the edge of camp, watching the horizon burn with faint firelight.
"The Mirror Court will know what happened. They'll come to test you."
Alpha stood, brushing ash from his coat.
"Let them."
The boy stirred. His eyes met Alpha's, and for the first time, there was fear for him, not of him.
Beneath the mirror-stained halls of the Echo King's palace, dozens of reflections whispered. Some wept. Some laughed.
And one leaned forward, grinning wide.
A child-shaped echo with Alpha's face and empty, carved-out eyes.
"He's getting closer."
The Echo King did not move. But the surface of the mirror throne rippled.
And it spoke a single word:
"Return."