The void rippled as the doppelgängers advanced, each step echoing like thunder in Kaelen's chest. Their faces were almost identical—Kaelen's same sharp jaw, Lyra's same storm-lit eyes—yet warped by a hunger that didn't belong to them.
The Watcher's voice thrummed in their skulls:
"Threads resist. Threads must break. Which will unravel first?"
Lyra raised her blaster and fired. The bolt seared across the void, striking her mirror-self square in the chest. For a breath, the shadow staggered—then absorbed the shot, its hollow grin widening as the wound sealed over with liquid dark.
"Not good," Lyra muttered.
Kaelen's doppelgänger lunged forward, swinging a blade of pure shadow. Instinct screamed through Kaelen's veins, and the alien relic in his hand flared to life. When the weapons collided, sparks of violet fire scattered into the void, each one a memory not his own—battlefields, cities burning, screams swallowed by silence.
Kaelen gasped, struggling against the weight of his own reflection. "It… it knows everything I know. Every weakness."
Lyra fired again, diving aside as her double moved with the same fluid grace, predicting her every motion. The fight was a nightmare of mirrors, each strike countered by its echo.
"Kaelen," she shouted, breath ragged, "if they're us… we'll never win fighting the way we usually do."
The Watcher pulsed brighter, amused by their struggle.
"Yes. Break them. Break yourselves. Choose survival, or choose loss."
Kaelen's mind reeled. Every instinct told him to fight harder, to outmatch his double's blade—but Lyra's words cut deeper. They are us.
He shifted suddenly, lowering his relic just as his reflection swung. The shadow blade sank through Kaelen's side—not blood, but light spilling out in fractured streams. Pain seared him, but his double faltered, its grin twitching with confusion.
Lyra saw it. "They feed on symmetry! Break the reflection!"
With a cry, she holstered her blaster and charged, slamming into her double bare-handed, tackling it off-balance. The shadow hissed, struggling in disbelief as Lyra pressed her forehead to its own.
"I'm not afraid of what I've been," she snarled. "I already survived it."
The shadow fractured—shards of light and dark spinning away like shattered glass. Kaelen followed her lead, staggering forward and plunging his relic into his double's chest. Instead of a killing blow, he whispered:
"I am more than my scars."
The shadow screamed—not in anger, but in denial—and then dissolved into nothingness.
The void fell silent.
The Watcher's vast eye narrowed, storming with violent colors.
"Unexpected. Threads resist breaking. Threads… evolve."
Lyra steadied Kaelen, blood on her hands glowing faintly with alien light. He winced but managed a smile. "Guess we broke your pattern."
The Watcher's voice shifted, lower, darker.
"Then perhaps you are worth keeping. But to keep you… you must be tested deeper."
The void tore open beneath them, and Kaelen and Lyra fell—spiraling into a world of shattered constellations, where dead planets drifted like bones.
And somewhere in the depths, something even older than the Watcher waited.