The world splintered.
Stone cracked under the force of Lian's aura as he shoved Amelia behind him, the creature colliding with his power like a swallowed star fighting to be reborn. A shockwave rippled outward, sending dust spiraling into a furious halo.
Amelia hit the ground hard, breath knocking out of her lungs. Her vision blurred, but not enough to miss what stood before Lian now that the dust had peeled away.
The creature… had changed.
The burnt, half-formed shell it wore split open, shedding like the husk of something that refused to die. Light bled through the cracks, and the figure inside straightened with agonizing slowness.
Not a monster.
Not entirely.
A shadow-reflection of Lian emerged, features warped but hauntingly familiar. A twisted echo of his face. His body. His presence.
Amelia's blood went cold.
It was like looking at the memory of him through shattered glass.
Lian didn't breathe for a heartbeat. Or two.
"…You," he whispered, a fragment of something ancient and wounded slicing through the single syllable.
The echo raised its head, hollow eyes locking on Lian — then Amelia — then back to Lian.
"Taken," it rasped, voice layered with too many lives. "She was taken."
Amelia staggered to her feet. "I wasn't— I didn't—"
Lian's arm shot out, keeping her behind him without a glance.
The echo tilted its head, something like longing curving its ruined expression.
"Yours," it repeated, voice breaking as it reached toward Amelia again.
Lian stepped forward with a lethal stillness. "She is not yours to address."
A ripple of cold shot through the courtyard.
Amelia felt it in her teeth.
The echo's voice cracked, strained, desperate. "She was meant— meant for me. Before the split. Before—"
Lian's power snapped like thunder.
A fracture opened in the air itself, a warning that quivered with restrained devastation.
"You were never meant for anything," Lian said quietly. Too quietly. "You are a wound given form."
The echo snarled, the sound warped with grief. Its hand lunged again, not toward Lian this time, but toward Amelia's chest, fingers reaching for the space where the bond thrummed like an invisible heartbeat.
Lian's composure shattered.
"Touch her," he breathed, "and I will erase you from existence."
The echo hesitated.
Then smiled — a broken, tragic twist of something that might have been sorrow once.
"She completes what you ruined."
The courtyard fell into absolute silence.
Lian's power sank low, deep, deadly.
Amelia felt the world lean away from him.
"Amelia," he said without looking back, "close your eyes."
She did.
The night erupted.
A flash of white seared through her eyelids, a sound like stars being torn apart ripping through the air. Heat and cold collided in a single violent surge.
Then—
Silence again.
Heavy. Final.A silence that tasted like endings.
Amelia blinked her eyes open.
The echo was gone.The ash around them had settled.And Lian stood perfectly still, shoulders tight, head bowed as if bracing against a storm inside himself.
She stepped toward him. "Lian… what was that?"
His voice cracked on the answer.
"A piece of me that should have died a long time ago."