The Eruption of Reflections
Part II — The Twin Fires
The False City of Halveth was still burning when the heavens split again.
The first rupture had been soundless, a break in the sky that spilled echoes of streets and people until the city was crowded with its own reflections. But the second came with a groan so deep it shook the ribs of those who heard it. Out of that widening wound, a new light dragged itself into being.
At first, the citizens thought it another dawn. For a heartbeat, their battered spirits lifted—two suns meant longer days, more harvest, a divine sign that ruin would not be the end. But the cheer withered as quickly as it rose. The old sun burned gold, soft and warm. The new one blazed white-blue, merciless, its light stripping shadows into needle-thin darkness. Under its cold fire, colors drained, voices warped, and the rhythm of time itself began to falter.
Within hours, Halveth became two cities. One lived by the golden sun—merchants opening stalls, children running to school, bakers tending bread. The other followed the pale blaze—lamplighters extinguished flames at what they swore was morning, gamblers declared midnight, healers dosed medicines meant for sleep while neighbors insisted it was breakfast. The two orders existed side by side, but not in peace. Each swore the other mad.
Then the reflections deepened.
Lyra, on the mirrored steps of the Twin Archives, saw it first. From a weaver's shadow, a second weaver climbed into being—identical but marked by a faint silver seam down the spine. The twin snatched thread from the loom and fled. In moments the plaza seethed with doubled people, some staring at their counterparts in awe, others clawing at them in terror.
A few embraced their other selves. Two children laughed as they touched hands with their doubles. For a heartbeat their bodies shimmered in golden-blue light. Then their forms melted into one, twisted and screaming, until only glassy shards remained where they had stood.
Lyra staggered. The glyphs of her Codex flared in her blood, torn between the two suns' discordant rhythms. She clutched the Archive steps, whispering lines from her Mirror Codex: "A world may hold more than one truth, but the body is not a world." Yet even she felt her mind fray. This was not the fracture of records, nor the error of memory. It was something greater—something meddling with the very frame of existence. And though she did not name it, a shadow of fear told her some higher hand had set dice against them.
At sea, Veyra's storm-fleet buckled under waters that no longer agreed with themselves. Waves advanced and retreated at once, anchors bit into seabeds that vanished mid-breath. Lightning split the sky in double strikes: one bolt froze half-descended, while its twin plunged into the sea, boiling it white. Sailors bound themselves to masts, muttering half-prayers, half-curses. Some called it the work of jealous gods. Others spoke of the Gambler of the Sky, a half-remembered myth whispered in coastal taverns.
Veyra stood on the prow, her hair whipped into twin streams by contrary winds. The storm-light in her eyes danced wildly, one gold, one pale. She tasted the air, and her lips curved into a grim smile. "Two fires upon one sea," she murmured. "Only one can rule the tide." Her crew thought she spoke to them, but in truth she spoke to the storm itself.
In the Choral Fortress, Orrin's priests sang. Their hymns, meant to knit fractures into harmony, split instead into clashing verses. Half sang dawn, half dusk. Voices broke, throats tore. Yet a stubborn few endured, weaving the dissonance into something new. The fortress walls trembled to the rhythm, leaning like listeners. A rumor passed through the choirs: this was no natural trial. A hand unseen was tuning their song, forcing mortals to play a game they could not win. Some cursed that name, others worshipped it, but none dared speak it aloud.
In the Fractured Cities, Kael walked alone. Stolen glyphs blazed across his skin; Paradox engines throbbed in his chest. Each step forced reality to settle, if only for a breath. Doubled citizens fused into one or crumbled into dust. The strong endured, the weak vanished. Mothers wept over children who remained only in memory. Crowds followed Kael, some hailing him as savior, others screaming murderer. He did not pause. Certainty, however cruel, was better than fracture. And if some power above had set the board, Kael intended to rule it, not serve.
Above all, the sky bore its doubled suns—one gold, one pale, both wrong. And beneath them, in a quiet market of Halveth where the echoes had grown too thick to count, silence fell.
A child sat alone by an overturned stall. None remembered him arriving. None noticed that while doubles around him screamed and fought, none touched him. He lifted his head slowly, eyes catching both suns at once. Unlike the others, he saw not two, but three lights. The gold, the pale, and a third—black, smoldering, at the edge of sight.
The boy—Yuu—breathed in, and every reflection in the market froze. Merchants mid-shout, thieves mid-lunge, children mid-tear—all stilled like statues. For a heartbeat, even the suns above faltered.
No one yet knew his name. No one yet understood his gift. But those who stood near would later speak of that moment as the instant the noise of the world bowed to silence. A silence that did not comfort, but promised an ending yet to come.
The Eruption of Reflections had only just begun. And already, under three suns, the game shifted.