There were three of us in the void—Aaliah, me, and the thing that wore my face but wasn't me.
The Dark Nexus.
It looked like me in the same way a reflection looks like the ocean—close enough to fool you, but wrong once you notice the depth.
Aaliah stood a few feet away, her eyes wide, unsure which of us was real.
"Kaleb," she whispered, her voice echoing like it had nowhere to land. "How are there two of you?"
Before I could answer, the other me turned. The motion wasn't human—it was sharp, animal, deliberate. He looked at me and roared. The sound wasn't sound—it was power, tearing through the air like broken glass.
Aaliah vanished.
The world folded inward, collapsing into shadow until it was just the two of us—me and the monster that was supposed to be a part of me.
I stood my ground. My fists trembled, not with fear, but with something heavier. Recognition.
"I'm not you," I said.
He smiled—a slow, cruel curve that looked better on him than it ever would on me. "You don't even believe that," he said softly. "And that's the problem."
He circled me like a predator in slow motion. "I'm not a simulation, Kaleb. I'm not one of your fears wrapped in poetic guilt. I'm the part that kept you alive when you should've died."
"You're a parasite."
"I'm you," he said, stopping. "You act like you can wield this power without me. But we both know that's a lie. I am us."
"I never needed you," I snapped, taking a step closer. "Why did you choose me?"
His grin vanished. The air dropped ten degrees.
"I didn't," he said. "You came to me."
The words cut deeper than I expected.
"You're lying," I said. "I would never—"
He cut me off by pointing behind me.
The void shifted.
A projection formed in the distance—hazy at first, then painfully clear.
It was me.
Standing at the edge of a lake under a night sky. Music thumping. Laughter echoing. A party. That night. The night before everything changed.
"You must've lost your mind, Kaleb," he said, his tone mocking.
I walked closer to the image. It was like stepping into an old photograph that didn't want me back. The party played out in silence at first—people drinking, dancing, living like time didn't exist. Then, the sky split open.
A streak of red light tore across the heavens.
Everyone froze.
It wasn't a meteor. It wasn't anything human.
The orb screamed as it fell—pure energy wrapped in flame and hunger—and slammed into the lake. The impact sent water and panic everywhere.
People scattered. The music stopped. The night went feral.
I remembered that part.
I remembered the chaos, the shouting. I remembered falling.
Someone ran past, dragging a speaker. The edge of it slammed into my skull. The world went black.
When I opened my eyes, the memory had changed. The party was gone. Everyone was gone.
Just me. And the lake.
The surface was still. Quiet. Waiting.
"Reminds you of something, doesn't it?" he said. "The moment you stopped being just a boy."
"Shut up."
I walked toward the water. Every step rippled through the memory. The air smelled like ozone and iron.
At the center of the lake, the water began to glow. The orb rose again—no longer burning, but pulsing with rhythm. It spoke, and its voice wasn't a sound, it was presence.
Who are you?
I watched myself answer. Kaleb Young.
What are you? I asked it.
The Nexus, it said. The convergence. The equation that binds.
It told me it had come here searching for a host—someone capable of containing what it was. Not mastering it. Containing.
And without hesitation, I said the words that sealed everything that came after.
"I'll do it."
The memory froze. The fusion began. The light consumed me. Then—darkness.
When the projection ended, we were back in the void.
The Dark Nexus tilted his head, studying me with that infuriating calm.
"Now do you believe me?" he asked.
I shook my head. "This isn't real. You're showing me what you want me to see."
"What?" he said, sounding almost offended.
"You're not memory," I said. "You're manipulation."
He laughed once—dry and humorless. "You think this is some illusion? You think you're that important?" He stepped closer, his expression hardening. "You didn't even know what you were before that night. You didn't know your mother stripped your powers. You didn't know you were already chosen before you ever touched the water. I haven't lied to you once, Kaleb."
He leaned in until I could feel the heat radiating from his skin. "And still, you believe I would lie about this?"
Anger coiled in my chest like static.
"Get out of my head," I said quietly.
He tilted his head. "You think this is your head?"
I stepped forward until we were almost nose-to-nose. "I don't need you. I don't want you. Leave."
His face darkened. The smile died.
"You think you can handle this power on your own?" he hissed. "You think you're anything without me?"
He stepped back, spreading his arms. "You little brat."
The void shook.
Before I could move, he slashed his hand through the air. My shirt tore away as if gravity had forgotten me.
He grabbed my wrist and slammed his palm against my chest.
The heat that followed wasn't pain—it was annihilation. Like being rewritten from the inside out.
I screamed and dropped to my knees. My skin glowed red through the cracks of his handprint.
He crouched in front of me, voice low and venomous.
"You're going to see why you need me, child."
The floor beneath us splintered, reality curling inward like paper in flame.
"You can't cage a storm and call it yours," he said. "You are the storm. But storms don't think. They destroy."
He stood, towering over me.
"You want to save her? You can't even save yourself."
"Stop," I gasped.
"Every time you fight me, you make me stronger."
"Stop!"
"Every time you deny what you are, I take more of you."
The darkness crawled up my arms like smoke. My veins burned with light.
"Let me show you the truth," he whispered.
And then everything shattered.
The void collapsed inward, folding me into a spiral of color and sound until there was nothing left but static.
When I opened my eyes again, I was standing at the center of a fractured landscape—half lake, half sky, all broken memory.
He stood opposite me. No words now. No more taunting.
We fought.
Not with fists. With will.
Every thought I had turned into light. Every instinct into impact. He moved like inevitability, a perfect mirror of everything I'd learned to hate about myself.
For every blow I landed, he answered with ten truths I didn't want to hear.
You'll never save her.You're addicted to guilt.You need pain to feel alive.
Each word hit harder than his strikes.
I countered with silence.
The kind that hurts more than shouting.
When the light finally broke, when the echoes stopped shaking the edges of this place, I stood over him, trembling, half-blind from the effort.
He looked up at me—not angry. Not defeated. Just… knowing.
"This was never about control," he said. "It was about surrender."
Then he faded—slowly, quietly—like a thought leaving mid-sentence.
I stood alone in the dark.
The Nexus inside me stirred, silent now. Not roaring. Not hungry. Just waiting.
And in that silence, I understood what he meant.
The hard part wasn't learning to fight the darkness.
It was learning to live beside it.