The void held its breath.
Lucian and his double stood across from one another, two figures cut from the same cloth but stitched by different hands. The air between them rippled, bending as though it couldn't decide who was real.
The other Lucian—taller, sharper, radiating pressure so heavy it cracked the glass plains under his boots—moved first.
A flick of his hand.
The battlefield split.
Time folded into jagged fragments, seconds stuttering like broken gears. Glass islands floated upward, reversing gravity, shards slicing the air in frozen arcs.
Lucian blurred away just as a slab of stone imploded where he'd stood. Fold Step cracked space around him, snapping him onto another fragment. His jaw clenched. So this is me without limits.
The mirror raised his palm. A ripple tore through the void—[Rift Rend], amplified. The slash screamed forward, a wound in reality aimed straight at Lucian.
Lucian thrust his hand out, his own Rift Rend colliding with it midair.
