The air smelled of static electricity and burnt skin.
Kael ran breathlessly through the tunnels that twisted like veins beneath the world's skin. The walls oozed a black liquid that, when touched, left flashing visions on his fingers:
A man in a silver mask driving a seal into a child's chest.
The silver woman—Lirya?—screaming as an eclipse devoured the sky.
Himself, in another life, strangling someone who wore her face.
A sound made him stop: children's laughter coming from all directions.
"Who...?"
Then he saw it.
The City of Broken Mirrors loomed before him, not as a metropolis, but as an architectural corpse.
Towers of twisted glass bled from their cracks. Streets paved with fragments of memories (children's shoes, rusty keys, human teeth) crunched beneath their feet. And the mirrors...
God, the mirrors.
Each one showed a distorted version of reality:
In one, a Kael in military uniform was shooting at a crowd.
In another, an elderly Kael was hanging himself with his own shadows.
In a third, the silver woman kissed him before plunging a knife into his throat.
A voice called out from the central reflection:
"You have finally arrived, lost brother."
It was him, but with empty eyes and his mouth sewn shut with black thread.
The Other Kael emerged from the mirror, his body dripping reality like molten wax.
"Do you know what the Ways are?" he asked as a shadow rose behind him, taking the form of an open book written on human skin.
Kael stepped back, but the reflection grabbed his wrist. The contact burned like dry ice.
"Look."
The vision hit him:
The Paths are arteries of a dead god. They snake through all realities like veins, each containing a fragment of divine will (a power).
To steal a Path is to bite the flesh of the corpse. The universe notices... and punishes you (forgetting, distortion, existential parasites).
The Eclipse is when an Eclipsed One has stolen so much that their very existence becomes unreadable.
The Other Kael pointed to the symbol on Kael's chest:
"This seal is your chain... and your salvation. It stops the Eclipse, but it also prevents you from remembering. Do you see the problem?"
Kael coughed up black blood.
"And you? What are you?"
The double's smile stretched beyond physical reach.
"I am what remained of the original... after it was torn to pieces."
The attack was instantaneous.
The Other Kael raised a hand, and the mirrors shattered, sending out sharp shards like projectiles. Kael instinctively drew:
"Way of the Bleeding Crystal"
The shards stopped in midair... then turned on their owner.
"HA!" The Other Kael laughed as the shards passed harmlessly through him. "You use my powers against me? Pathetic!"
The shadows on the ground coiled like snakes and bit at Kael's ankles. The pain was secondary to what came next:
He was forgetting his mother's name.
The double lifted him by the neck:
"Tell me, why do you think the universe erases you?" His breath smelled of rotten book pages. "Because you're a mistake. A failed copy. And now..."
The seal on Kael's chest cracked a little more.
At that moment, all the mirrors in the city screamed at once.
Kael saw chaotic scenes:
The original (him?) in a lab, being injected with something that shone like an eclipse.
The silver woman destroying a seal identical to his own.
Something far worse watching from between the folds of reality.
The Other Kael threw him against a mirror, which shattered under his weight.
"Next time you steal a power..." he whispered as he faded away. "...ask yourself WHAT or WHO you're stealing."
Kael collapsed among the broken glass. The seal on his chest was now bleeding.
And then, he heard footsteps.
Someone was approaching through the ruins.
A savior? Another enemy?
No.
It was worse.
It was Lirya, the woman from his visions...
...but her eyes were two black eclipses, and she was smiling like someone who had just found a rare specimen.
"Now the real fun begins," he said, as the ground beneath them began to disintegrate.