The world had shrunk to the small, muddy clearing. The thump-thump-thump of the Order skiffs was a monstrous heartbeat overhead, their spotlights creating stark, panicked pools of light in the misty dawn. Agents formed a tightening circle, sun-metal blades held ready. But they didn't advance. This wasn't their fight anymore.
It was a family affair.
The white-haired hunter took another step forward, the blue-black shadows around his feet hissing like serpents. The single, visible eye behind his mask was fixed on Barry with a hatred so pure it felt like a physical force.
Barry pushed Belinda and Leo further behind him, his own body coiling like a spring. The calculus of survival was screaming at him to fight, to run, to do anything. But something else, a deep, unsettling pull, held him in place. That voice, that face half-hidden by the mask… it was a ghost from a life he couldn't remember.
"Who are you?" Barry demanded, his voice cutting through the mechanical whine of the skiffs.
The hunter let out a low, humorless chuckle. "He doesn't even know. Of course he doesn't. The prized son, kept in the dark." He reached up with a slow, deliberate motion and unclasped the mask.
It fell to the mud with a soft thud.
Barry's breath caught in his throat. The world tilted on its axis.
Staring back at him was his own face. Sharpened by bitterness, twisted by envy, and framed by hair the colour of fresh snow, but undeniably his. The right eye was a royal, eerie purple, swirling with a power that was both familiar and alien. It was like looking into a fractured mirror.
"Jaden…" The name fell from Barry's lips, a whisper from a locked-away memory. A twin. A brother. A life before the alley, before the curse, before the loneliness. A life he'd been made to forget.
"Hello, brother," Jaden said, his smile a sharp, painful thing. "Miss me?"
The revelation hit Barry with the force of a gravity blast. Pieces of a puzzle he never knew existed began to click into place with terrifying speed. The familiar feeling. The mirrored power. The personal hatred.
"Greimore," Barry breathed, the pieces connecting. "He took you. After our parents… after the fire. He told me I was alone."
"He told me you were dead!" Jaden's jovial facade cracked, his voice rising with raw, years-old pain. "He told me the 'curse' had consumed you! But he was wrong. He found out you lived. And he found out what you could do. He's been waiting. We've all been waiting."
Barry's mind raced, recontextualizing his entire life. The mysterious fire that killed their parents, an event that had always felt like a blurry nightmare. Greimore's appearance afterward, a supposed benefactor who'd hidden Barry away, telling him his unique eyes made him a target. It was all a lie. A manipulation to keep them apart, to keep them controllable.
"He's using you, Jaden," Barry said, his voice urgent, trying to break through the wall of envy. "Whatever he promised you—the power, my blood magic—it's a trick! He doesn't want you to have it. He wants you to neutralize me so he can take it for himself! He wants both of our powers!"
Jaden's expression didn't change. The shadows around him writhed more violently. "You think I don't know that?" he spat. "You think I'm a fool? I know the old man's greed is bottomless. But his greed and my goals are aligned for now. He gets his weapon… and I get the key to bringing her back."
The raw, desperate pain in Jaden's voice when he said "her" was a shocking contrast to his manic energy.
"Her? Who?" Barry asked, confusion cutting through his own shock.
"ANNIE!" Jaden roared, the name a tortured scream that seemed to shake the leaves from the trees. The shadows flared around him. "She was everything! And she was sick. A disease eating her from the inside. I watched her fade for three years! I held her hand as she promised me she'd fight! And I swore to her… I swore I would burn down the entire universe if it meant I could bring her back!"
Tears, real and anguished, welled in Jaden's eerie purple eye, cutting through the maddened glee. "Greimore offered me a solution. The only solution. Your power. Blood magic can rewrite life itself! It can pull her soul back from wherever it went!"
Barry stared, horror dawning on him. "Jaden, no… even if that were true, using blood magic that way… it wouldn't be her. It would be an empty shell. A puppet made of flesh and memory. You can't—"
"DON'T YOU TELL ME WHAT I CAN'T DO!" Jaden shrieked, a tendril of shadow lashing out like a whip, forcing Barry to duck. "You have no idea! You have your second chance right there!" He pointed a trembling, accusatory finger at Belinda. "Why do you get to have everything? The power? The girl? Why do I get nothing but loss?! Why do you get to be the special one?!"
The accusation hung in the air, charged with a lifetime of perceived injustice. The battle was no longer about magic or Orders; it was a desperate, screaming argument between two broken halves of a whole.
"It's not a gift, Jaden!" Barry yelled back, his own composure finally shattering. "It's a curse! It's a monster I have to fight every single day! It's the reason I lost her in the first place!" He gestured to Belinda. "This power only brings pain!"
"Then you're too weak to wield it!" Jaden snarled. "You don't deserve it! I would have used it! I would have saved her! I wouldn't have hidden it away like a shameful secret!"
With a cry of pure rage and grief, Jaden attacked in earnest.
The clearing became a storm of conflicting shadows. Jaden's blue-black tendrils struck with the precision of a scorpion's tail, seeking to pierce and corrupt. Barry's crimson-and-midnight waves rose to meet them, howling with a protective fury, deflecting and absorbing the blows. The air crackled with their clashing energies, a symphony of despair.
Barry fought defensively, using his Graviola to create barriers and disrupt Jaden's footing, all while trying to get through to him. "He's lying to you, Jaden! Greimore is manipulating your grief!"
"I DON'T CARE!" Jaden screamed, tears streaming down his face as he launched another ferocious assault. "It's the only hope I have left! And you… you're standing in my way!"
Jaden's attack intensified, becoming wilder, more reckless. His envy and pain were making him stronger, but also sloppier. Barry saw an opening, a break in his brother's defense. He could end this. A focused gravity spike to the chest. A blood-shadow to the heart.
But he couldn't. This was his brother. This was a boy mourning his lost love.
His hesitation cost him. A blue-black tendril, sharp as a razor, slipped through his defenses and sliced across his chest.
Barry grunted in pain, stumbling back. Crimson blood welled from the cut, soaking his shirt.
Drip.
The scent of his own blood was the final trigger. The fifteen-minute countdown began in his mind, but the pain and the emotional turmoil were too much. The monster didn't need a full minute.
The shadows around Barry exploded. His right eye blazed with a hellish crimson light, the sclera drowning in void black. The air grew thick and heavy. He lost all pretense of defense.
The fight changed. It was no longer a battle. It was an eruption.
Barry moved with feral speed, his blood-shadows moving as an extension of his rage. He wasn't trying to reason anymore. He was trying to survive. He was trying to protect Belinda from the tortured, enraged twin who saw her as a symbol of everything he'd lost.
The agents surrounding them backed away, fearful of the raw, destructive power on display. The very forest seemed to recoil.
Jaden, for all his power, was suddenly on the defensive against the unleashed fury of the blood magic he so coveted. He was being driven back, his blue-black shadows flickering under the onslaught.
Barry saw his chance. With a final, tremendous surge of power, he unleashed a concussive wave of pure force—a combination of Graviola and blood-shadow—that slammed into Jaden, throwing him backward through the air to crash against the fallen tree.
In that moment of respite, Barry didn't press the attack. He turned, his body trembling with the effort of control. He grabbed Belinda's hand and Leo's arm.
"Now!" he gasped, his voice ragged.
He poured every ounce of his remaining strength into one, massive gravitational leap, launching the three of them up and over the circle of stunned agents, over the treetops, and into the deep, uncharted heart of the Whispering Woods.
As they vanished into the green gloom, Jaden slowly pushed himself up from the splintered wood. He watched them go, his purple eye burning with a mixture of fury, pain, and undeniable hunger. He touched the spot on his chest where Barry's shadow had struck, a faint smile touching his lips.
"Soon, brother," he whispered to the empty air. "Your power will be mine. And I will get her back."
He turned to the waiting Order agents, his expression shifting back to the cold, amused mask. "Tell Lord Greimore the Curse remains elusive… for now. But the hunt is more intoxicating than ever. I have him under my watch."
High above, in the command skiff, Lord Greimore observed the feed, a slow, satisfied smile spreading across his face. Everything was going exactly according to plan.