The battlefield buckled, then shattered.
Streets of broken stone, towers of smoke, rivers of blood—all of it dissolved into pale fragments that drifted upward like burning ash. The blank page beneath Lio's feet twisted and tore, birthing new lines of script that clawed into the air.
The doppelgängers came with it.
They rose from fissures in the page, crawling on all fours before standing upright, each one wearing his face. Dozens. Hundreds. Their hollow eyes glowed with fire-etched sentences:
Lio belongs to silence.
Lio is already theirs.
Lio never existed.
The whispers came not from mouths but from the lines carved across their skin. Every word cut into his bones. Every syllable throbbed in his skull like a hammer.
He lunged forward with a roar, smashing his fist into the chest of the nearest duplicate. Its body split apart—not blood, not bone, but jagged letters that spiraled into dust. The ashes clung to his skin, burning into fresh scars.
