The chamber breathed. Stone walls rippled like water, glyphs crawling with a life that was older than thought itself. Shadows slithered over the carved floors, lengthening and coiling with every pulse of the shard, turning corners where no corner should have been. Leo staggered back, each step devoured in silence, but the shadow warrior moved with him, perfectly mirrored, patient, and patient enough to wait until he faltered.
The shard hovered between them, jagged and veined, a heartbeat given form. Its glow painted the shadow in pale fire, pulling impossible details from nothing: a scarred jawline, broad shoulders, hands calloused by blades he had never held, muscles taut with training and battle he'd never endured. It was him, yet not him. Older. Harder. Stripped of every ounce of boyhood softness that still lingered in his soul.
"You're… me?" His voice trembled, swallowed by the cavernous dark, carried off by the weight of memory and magic alike.
The shadow's faceless head inclined, slow and deliberate. The whisper pressed against his skull, resonant as bone struck by hammers. I am the one who will live, when you fall.
A blade formed in its grip, obsidian streaked with starlight, edges shifting like shards of broken glass floating in darkness. Leo flinched, bare hands trembling, breath condensing in the chill that rose from the carved floor. His heartbeat struggled to match the shard's pulse, but the rhythm had already begun to slip, faster and faster, as if something older, hungrier, tried to seize him from within.
Weakness is death. The shadow's blade lifted, black light crawling along its edge. Do you wish to die as they did,
Images crashed into him. Warriors kneeling, their faces torn away in light, their screams sucked into the shard's hunger. Each memory pressed into him, clawing at every nerve, a chorus of agony that could have broken a lesser mind.
"Stop!" Leo clutched at his temples, teeth grinding. "I don't want this!"
The shadow lunged, fluid as smoke and impossibly fast. Leo's body moved sluggishly, like wading through tar, yet instinct screamed louder than pain. He rolled aside, barely evading the blade that cut through the glyph wall. Red sparks ran like blood along the cracks; the chamber trembled, a great beast stirred from its den, breathing through stone and light.
You can't run from what you are. The whisper slithered inside him, threading through every thought, tightening like a noose.
He scrambled, hands clawing at nothing, until weight pressed into his palms. A weapon. A stone blade, jagged and veined like the shard itself, humming with resonance. His chest caught in a sharp intake of breath.
"Then I'll fight you," he said, voice trembling yet determined, "and I'll win as me, not as you."
Steel met stone. Sparks rained like fireflies caught in a storm. The chamber shook violently, glyphs flaring and screaming with every strike, their lines cracking like lightning through water. Leo's arms burned, muscles screaming against the force that wasn't his own. The shadow leaned closer, faceless, an oppressive presence that pressed like the night sky onto his shoulders.
Win? Or become? There is no difference.
In the shard's glow, for a moment, Leo glimpsed himself, not his reflection, but the shadow wearing his features, eyes molten and terrible. The boy he might have been if he had surrendered, if he had let hunger and fear and blood guide him instead of will.
Outside the vision, Leo's body arched violently. Evelyn screamed, clutching him, tears streaking her soot-streaked cheeks as she forced his body down. The boy at his side whimpered, clutching his sleeve as if to anchor him to the fragile thread of reality. Sofia's sword flashed in the ruin, raiders hesitating, watching, knives and spears poised, unsure which reality to strike against.
Owen muttered, frantic and hoarse, charcoal smudging his hands as he jotted furiously: "He's in a binding trial… if he loses, he won't be the same when he wakes."
Within the vision, Leo bared his teeth. Every strike against the shadow pushed back against the suffocating weight, stone clashing with stone, sparks exploding across the trembling glyphs. The chamber moaned in protest, walls vibrating like stretched skin.
But his voice came steady, defiant, raw:
"I'll never be yours."
The shadow roared, faceless mask twisting into a monstrous mockery of him, half boy, half predator, all hunger.
And the shard pulsed between them, an infernal sun demanding an answer that was his alone. Heat crawled up his chest, into his throat, setting every vein and nerve on fire. The chamber cracked around them, light fracturing into a million sharp diamonds, and for a heartbeat, it seemed the whole world waited, breathless, trembling, for what Leo would choose.
He closed his eyes. And then, as the shard's pulse threatened to devour him completely, he spoke the truth he had clung to in every silent, broken hour of his life:
I am me.
The shard shrieked. The shadow faltered. And the chamber exhaled.
For a single, infinite heartbeat, the darkness recoiled, uncertain.
And Leo, trembling and scorched by the resonance, stood, not shadow, not shard, not vessel, but himself.