Chapter Seventeen: The Mirrorborn
The wind changed the night Aria left the forest.
It didn't howl.
It whispered.
A voice in the breeze, low and twisted, carried a single warning:
> "He is coming."
Kael froze mid-step.
Aria looked at him. "Who?"
His jaw clenched. "The Mirrorborn."
---
They camped near the eastern ley rift, where time stuttered and stars refused to stay still. Aria sat by the fire, the orb's mark on her collarbone still hot, glowing softly through her shirt.
Kael didn't sleep. He hadn't for days.
"You're different," Aria said, watching him.
"So are you."
"But you… it's like something's chasing you."
He didn't speak.
So she said it for him. "You knew they'd send him."
Kael's eyes flicked to hers—haunted. "He's not a him. Not anymore. He's me… without the part that chose you."
Aria's breath caught. "They made another?"
Kael nodded. "No. They reconstructed me. From the version that existed before I disobeyed. He has no memories of you. No questions. Just a command."
"To kill me?"
"To kill both of us," Kael whispered.
---
The Mirrorborn came at dusk.
He didn't walk.
He rippled—like a reflection crawling out of a cracked mirror. His movements were smooth, elegant, inhuman. His face was identical to Kael's—but colder, eyes silver without soul, a blade already drawn in one hand.
Aria stepped forward. "If you're here for a fight, at least look me in the eye."
He did.
And when he spoke, his voice was Kael's—but hollow. "Aria Valen. Unwritten. Classified Omega."
Kael moved between them. "Don't."
"You failed," the Mirrorborn said to him. "You deviated. You became emotional. Weak."
Kael didn't flinch. "I became real."
The Mirrorborn lunged.
---
The fight was blinding.
Steel on steel, spell on spell. Trees split, fire hissed, shadows bled into air. Aria tried to intervene, but the moment she stepped forward, the Mirrorborn turned on her, and the mark on her wrist flared in defense, repelling him with a shockwave of violet light.
He staggered for only a moment—then smiled.
"You've barely unlocked a fraction of it," he said.
Aria's heartbeat thundered. "Then let me unlock the rest."
---
Her power answered like a storm long held back.
Light spilled from her skin—moonlight and fire fused, twisting the earth beneath her into silver veins. The wind lifted her hair. The mark on her wrist spiraled down her arm in living ink.
But the Mirrorborn was fast.
Too fast.
And when Kael dove between them again, blade in hand, Aria felt it—
> The shift.
The break.
The tether snapping between soul and command.
Kael screamed—not from pain.
But from freedom.
---
He struck the Mirrorborn with everything he had—no magic, no binding. Just a heart that had finally, fully chosen.
Chosen her.
And it was enough to drive the Mirrorborn back into the shadows from which he came, his form flickering—unstable now.
He fled into the night.
---
Kael collapsed to his knees, gasping.
Aria knelt beside him, hands trembling.
"Why did you do that?" she whispered. "He could have killed you."
Kael's voice cracked. "Then let him try. At least I'd die as myself."
She didn't speak.
She just leaned into him—and for a moment, they were only two souls in the quiet, in the dark, in the wreckage of what was once written.
---
But far away, the Council watched through broken mirrors.
"He falters," one said.
"She rises," another whispered.
The High Seer turned to the others.
> "Then send the last weapon."
"Awaken the girl from Pact Three."
"Let her hunt her sister."
---