The tea cup made a delicate clink as the Doppelgänger set it down on a floating book.
Dante—our Dante, the broken, bleeding, silver-jawed mess on the floor—stared at perfection. The man in the chair was him. But it was a version of him that had slept eight hours a night, never missed a meal, and never had to dissolve a human being to survive. He wore their old face like a tailored suit.
"You're hallucinating," Dante rasped. "Basilisk Venom. Neurotoxic side effects."
"You are not hallucinating," the Doppelgänger said. His voice was smooth, lacking the metallic grinding of the Silvergrin. "And you are bleeding on the metaphysics. Please, sit."
The Doppelgänger waved a hand. A chair materialized out of the light—simple, wooden, sturdy.
Dante didn't sit. He pulled himself up, using a bookshelf for support. He kept his daggers drawn.
"Who are you?" Dante demanded. "A simulacrum? A defense mechanism?"
"I am Dante Silvergrin," the man said calmly. "The result of the Zero-Point Experiment. You..." He looked at Dante with a mixture of pity and clinical fascination. "...you are the waste product."
Dante froze.
The man stood up and walked to a blackboard that hovered in the air. He picked up a piece of chalk.
"Let's review the data. Three years ago, we attempted to breach the Origin. We thought we failed because the lab exploded."
He drew a circle.
"We didn't fail. We succeeded. We touched the Origin. But the Law of Conservation is absolute. You cannot enter the domain of God as a singular human. The metaphysical weight is too vast. So, the universe balanced the equation."
He drew a line down the center of the circle.
"It split us," the Doppelgänger explained. "I am the Mind. I retained the intellect, the logic, the memories, and the stability. I was trapped here, inside the Eye of the Storm, preserved in this library of light."
He pointed the chalk at Dante.
"And you... you are the Body. The erratic, emotional, biological sludge that was ejected back into the physical world. You got the fear. You got the guilt. And you got the Entropy—the chaotic residue of the tear we made."
Dante felt the room spin. It wasn't just the blood loss. It was the logic. It made perfect sense. That was why he felt hollow. That was why he couldn't form bonds. He wasn't a whole person. He was the discarded casing of a soul.
"I'm the trash," Dante whispered. The Silvergrin twisted into a snarl. "I'm the afterbirth."
"You are the Anchor," the Doppelgänger corrected. "I cannot leave this place. I have no physical form. I am pure information. You cannot stay here. You have no stability. You are pure decay."
The Doppelgänger walked closer. He didn't smell like ozone or blood. He smelled like old paper and soap.
"But together..." The Doppelgänger extended a hand. "Together, we are the One Above All. We are the synthesis. If we merge, the entropy stabilizes. The hunger stops. The pain ends. We become the God we set out to be."
Dante looked at the hand. It was unblemished. No scars. No blood.
"If we merge," Dante asked, his voice low. "Who drives?"
The Doppelgänger smiled. It was a polite, terrifyingly empty smile. "I am the Mind, Dante. You are the Body. The brain drives the car. You simply... stop hurting. You stop struggling. You become the armor for my intellect."
"I die," Dante realized. "I cease to exist. I become just... meat for you."
"You are already dying," the Doppelgänger countered, his voice hardening. "Look at you. You are held together by mercury and stolen flesh. You are a cannibal ghoul running on fumes. I am offering you dignity. I am offering you completion."
Dante looked down at his own hands. They were trembling. His coat was soaked in blood. He was tired. So incredibly tired.
To just... stop. To let the cold logic take the wheel. To never have to harvest another human being again.
He reached out.
His gloved fingers brushed the Doppelgänger's palm.
Warmth.
A rush of memories flooded Dante's mind—memories he had lost. The smell of his mother's perfume. The exact mathematical formula for the Philosopher's Stone. The feeling of hope.
It was intoxicating.
But then, he felt something else. Or rather, the absence of something.
He looked into the Doppelgänger's eyes.
There was no grief.
When the Doppelgänger talked about the "waste product," he felt nothing. When he looked at Dante's injuries, he felt no empathy, only calculation.
"You didn't just lose the body," Dante whispered, pulling his hand back.
The Doppelgänger frowned. "What?"
"The split," Dante said, stepping back. "It wasn't just Mind and Body. It was Logic and Humanity."
Dante tapped the metal over his heart.
"I got the guilt. I got the fear. But I also got the part of us that gives a damn. You... you're just a calculator. A machine made of soul-stuff."
Dante raised his daggers.
"I'd rather be a rotting monster than a beautiful machine."
The Doppelgänger's face went blank. The politeness evaporated.
"Illogical," the Doppelgänger stated. "Emotional attachment to suffering is inefficient."
"Yeah," Dante grinned, the Silvergrin flashing wildly. "That's what makes us human, you stuck-up ghost."
"Then I will not ask," the Doppelgänger said.
The library shifted. The books of light turned into blades of light. The "Prime" Dante rose into the air, surrounded by a halo of pure geometric mana.
"I will Harvest you," the Doppelgänger announced. "The Body must submit to the Mind."
Dante braced himself. He was exhausted, out of venom, and fighting a god-tier version of himself.
CRASH.
The sound of the massive doors downstairs exploding inward shook the entire Spire.
The Doppelgänger flinched, looking down. "Impossible. The seal..."
Dante laughed. A wet, hacking laugh.
"I didn't close the door to lock you in," Dante wheezed. "I closed it to buy me five minutes."
A voice boom-echoed up the spiral staircase. A voice distorted by rage and time-magic.
"FOUND YOU."
Lady Vespera.
She had breached the Spire.
The Doppelgänger looked at the door, then at Dante. For the first time, the "Prime" looked concerned.
"She is Stasis," the Doppelgänger calculated. "If she reaches this chamber, she will freeze us both. She will turn this library into a tomb and harvest the Origin for herself."
Dante looked at his "perfect" self.
"You have the mana," Dante said. "I have the rot. You can't fight her. You're too clean. She'll pause your logic loops in a second."
"And you are too weak," the Doppelgänger retorted.
"True," Dante admitted. He sheathed his daggers. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his last item.
A simple, rusted coin. He had found it in Chapter 1. The Law of Convergence.
He flipped it.
"We don't merge," Dante proposed. "We cooperate."
The Doppelgänger stared at him. "Explain."
"You channel the Origin's power through me," Dante said. "You act as the battery. I act as the gun. I don't give you my body. You give me your mana. We kill the Witch. Then... we settle this."
The Doppelgänger calculated. The probability of survival against Vespera alone was 12%. The probability of survival if they cooperated was 64%.
"Acceptable," the Doppelgänger said.
He flew down, landing directly behind Dante. He placed his hands on Dante's shoulders.
"Do not burn out my circuit, you primitive ape."
"Just keep the juice flowing, calculator."
Dante felt a surge of power that dwarfed the Resonance Core. Pure, white, unfiltered Origin Mana flowed from the Doppelgänger into his spine.
The library doors blew open.
Lady Vespera floated in. She was a hurricane of white fury. Her dress was torn, her face aged by the entropy Dante had hit her with earlier.
"Mine!" she shrieked. "The Throne is MINE!"
Dante stepped forward. He didn't look tired anymore. He glowed with a terrifying, paradoxical light—black entropy rimmed with white creation.
The Silvergrin split wide, liquid metal dripping like drool.
"Sorry, Lady," Dante roared, his voice now a dual-tone harmonic of himself and his Prime.
"The seat is taken."