Kaelen steadied his breath, black fire licking along the blade's edge. The rift-born entity towered over him, its chorus of faces sneering, its limbs weaving like serpents through the void.
It lunged again, and Kaelen met it with a furious strike. Their clash sent shockwaves rippling outward, breaking stone into dust.
But then, something shifted.
As his blade carved into the smoke, one of the creature's countless faces froze. Its features sharpened, no longer a blur of shifting visages. Kaelen stumbled back, his stomach lurching as recognition struck like a hammer.
The face staring at him… was his own.
Not twisted. Not corrupted. Just him—eyes calm, mouth set in a quiet resolve.
The entity's body spasmed violently, voices overlapping in a fractured scream: "Fragment… mirror… keeper…"
Kaelen's grip faltered. "What are you…? Why my face?"
The shard at his chest flared brighter than ever, its pulse syncing with the frozen visage. A surge of memory crashed through him—not from the Abyss, not from fallen Keepers—but from himself. He saw flashes of paths untaken: choices he could have made, victories he could have claimed, lives he might have saved.
The realization clawed through his mind. This was no ordinary beast. It wasn't simply hunger given shape. The entity was possibility. The Abyss had woven fragments of what Kaelen could have become into its fabric.
And now it wanted him back.
The monster lunged again, but Kaelen couldn't move. His own face, multiplied a hundred times, stared back at him from the writhing smoke, whispering: "Join. Complete. Become whole."
The ground quaked. The rift widened further, swallowing stone and air alike. For a heartbeat, Kaelen's fire flickered. Doubt sank in.
What if surrendering didn't mean defeat? What if it meant power—power enough to finally end the Abyss, not just resist it?
The thought struck deeper than any blade.
His knees buckled as the shard burned like molten iron against his chest. He fell to one side, choking, the monster's shadow sweeping over him.
The whispers grew louder. His own voice echoed among them.
And for the first time, Kaelen wasn't sure if he was fighting the Abyss—or himself.
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