"Every reflection is a question is this who you are, or who you've learned to pretend to be?"
The voice shouldn't have been possible. It wasn't just unlikely—it was the kind of impossibility that stories warned you about in soft shadows and campfire whispers. Aarav knew that. Amar knew that. Meera absolutely knew that. And yet the fracture glowed like it had swallowed sunlight, the earth shimmering with a hungry radiance that made the air feel thinner, stretched. That whisper—raw, weightless, ancient—slipped through the air as if the boundary between now and something older had thinned to nothing. For a moment, everything around them felt paused, listening, as though the world had turned its face toward a memory too old to name.
_Aarav. Anchor._
Aarav staggered back a step, pulse racing so violently it felt like his heart was trying to escape. The hum inside his chest surged until it felt like a living thread pulling him forward—tugging at something deep inside him, something that felt older than his own breath. His bones vibrated, his veins thrummed, and his lungs locked in a half-breath he couldn't complete. It felt like recognition, like someone calling not his name but the shape of his existence.
"No," Amar barked, grabbing him by the shoulders, holding him in place with a force shaped from fear rather than strength. "Don't move toward it." His grip dug into Aarav's arms, grounding him in the world they still understood.
Aarav dug his fingers into Amar's forearm. "I'm not—trying—" His voice cracked under the pressure building inside him, every syllable warping under the resonance that wasn't listening to reason.
But the resonance wasn't listening.
It was aligning. Pulling. Choosing.
Arin slammed the base of his staff into the earth. The ground shuddered, the glow dimmed for a heartbeat, the trembling slowed, the air steadied—but not fully. It was like pushing back a tide with your bare hands: temporary, fragile, an act of desperation disguised as control. Arin's jaw tightened, and for the first time since they met him, his composure cracked enough to reveal the thin layer of dread beneath.
"Everyone stay behind me," Arin said, voice sharp, stripped of the calm he had pretended to wear earlier. "Whatever is crossing that layer isn't meant to be here." His staff glowed faintly, responding to the strain in his voice.
Meera stepped beside Aarav, one hand gripping his sleeve, the other pressed against her notebook as if grounding herself with the one thing in her life that always made sense—observations and logic. "If something comes through—what do we do?" She wasn't panicking, but the tremor in her voice betrayed the weight of the unknown pressing against her rational mind.
Arin didn't look back. "Pray it doesn't notice him." There was no humor in the statement. No exaggeration. Just truth, delivered like a warning carved into stone.
A thin crackling sound rose from the fracture—like old paper tearing, like bone grinding, like memory unraveling. It crawled into the air like the static before lightning. A faint shape flickered in the light below, shifting like a shadow searching for a body, pressing at the gap between worlds with a sense of slow, deliberate hunger.
Aarav shivered. "It's… looking at us." The words weren't just fear—they were certainty.
"You can't know that," Meera whispered—but her voice didn't sound confident. Her eyes were wide, reflecting the shifting glow.
"I can feel it." And he could—deep in the marrow of his bones.
The shape grew clearer—still formless, still impossible, but pressing upward, distorting the air above it. The temperature dropped an instant later, a chill sweeping across the field as though the fracture was inhaling the heat around them. The ground vibrated so sharply that even Amar braced himself, lifting his blade halfway.
Arin stepped forward and raised his staff. "I said stay back." Power built around him, circling his feet like thin ribbons of smoke.
A pulse of energy radiated from the staff, rippling outward in a circle that reshaped the very air it touched. The fracture reacted instantly—the glow shrinking, then flaring, fighting against the pressure with an ancient will that felt older than forests and temples. The air warped, shimmering like heat above desert stone.
The voice rose again—
louder this time,
fractured and broken,
like a memory trying to speak through shattered glass.
_Anchor…_
Aarav felt his knees weaken. The hum in his chest roared, slamming into him with the force of a memory trying to fit itself into a body that wasn't ready for it. His vision flickered, and he had to grip Amar harder to keep from collapsing.
"It's calling me," he whispered, barely audible over the sound of the ground cracking.
Arin snapped his attention toward him, eyes sharp with urgency. "Ignore it."
"I can't." His voice broke. "It feels like—like it knows me."
"You must."
The fracture surged open for a split second—bright enough to burn white across Aarav's vision—and something pushed against it from below, not fully forming, not truly emerging, but pressing at the seam between worlds with intent. Aarav felt the pressure in his head spike, his heartbeat stuttering.
Aarav felt his heartbeat stop.
Not slow.
Not race.
Stop.
Then restart with a violent jolt that almost knocked him down. His breath tore into his lungs like he had been drowning.
Arin cursed under his breath in a language Aarav didn't recognize, the sound harsh and ancient. "It's sensing your resonance. That's why it's rising. It thinks you're a doorway." The staff shuddered beneath his grip, cracks of light crawling along its surface.
Meera tightened her grip. "Then shut the door."
"I'm trying," Arin said through clenched teeth, "but someone is pulling from the other side." His voice trembled—not with fear, but with strain, like he was fighting something immense.
Aarav's breath hitched. "What do you mean—someone?" The thought of a someone on the other end of that crack clawed inside him.
Arin didn't answer.
Because the answer was already taking form.
The fracture split wider.
A tendril of pale light broke through—thin, wavering, reaching like a hand remembering how to move after centuries of stillness. It flexed, curling upward as though tasting the air. The light was sickly and beautiful, trembling with purpose.
Amar dragged Aarav three steps back, planting himself between him and the fracture. "Stay behind me." His stance was solid, as if he could shield Aarav with will alone.
Aarav didn't argue.
He couldn't.
The moment the tendril formed, the resonance inside him surged toward it—like recognition, like gravity, like something deep inside him wanted to answer. It felt as though someone had hooked a thread into his heart and was pulling.
Arin slammed the staff again.
And again.
And again.
Each strike dimmed the glow for a second—then it roared back brighter, pushing harder, as if gaining strength from Aarav's presence.
"It won't close!" Arin shouted. "Something is forcing it open from the other side—something strong." His voice cracked with effort; sweat gathered at his brow.
Meera's voice shook for the first time since dawn. "What is it?"
Arin hesitated, and in that hesitation Aarav heard the truth buried beneath silence:
He knew.
He knew exactly what it was.
Before Aarav could speak, Amar pointed at the widening crack.
"Something's forming." His voice was rigid, steel-bound.
The tendril solidified—then cracked apart in flakes of light, turning into a pattern instead of a shape.
A symbol.
A crown fractured down the center.
Arin froze.
Meera's voice dropped to a whisper. "Wait… that symbol…"
Aarav's breath left his body.
Amar's grip tightened around his knife.
Arin's face drained of color.
"That," Arin said quietly, "is the mark of the Voided King."
The fracture pulsed.
The symbol burned brighter.
Aarav's heart stuttered again, his body swaying under the pressure of recognition he didn't want.
Meera gasped. "The antagonist? Here?" Her logic fractured instantly—this was beyond anything she could classify.
Arin shook his head slowly. "Not him. Not his body."
"Then what?" Amar demanded.
"His warning," Arin whispered. "His reach. His memory." His eyes darkened. "His hunger."
The crown-symbol twisted, flickered, and dissolved into drifting particles of light, like ash rising from a fire. The glow collapsed inward, folding into itself with a low, aching sound of strain.
The fracture sealed shut with a deep, resonant thrum that shivered across the fields like the exhale of something returning to sleep.
Silence followed—heavy, unnatural, unbearable. The kind of silence that didn't fill space but swallowed it.
Aarav couldn't breathe.
Meera stood frozen.
Amar held his knife without realizing he was still gripping it, knuckles white.
Arin lowered his staff with a trembling hand, his breath ragged.
"That," he finally said, "was the first sign."
Aarav's voice cracked. "Sign of what?"
Arin looked at him with old, exhausted eyes—eyes that had watched too many beginnings and too few peaceful endings.
"That the Voided King has noticed you."
Aarav felt the world tilt beneath him, a wave of dizziness crashing through his skull.
Meera reached for him, her fingers trembling.
Amar steadied him with a hand against his back.
Arin closed his eyes for a moment as if bracing himself for what came next.
"This," he said, "is only the beginning. He will come again. And each time, it will be stronger."
Aarav swallowed hard. "Why? What does he want?"
Arin opened his eyes.
"He wants what every broken Anchor wants."
Aarav's chest tightened, breath caught in a snarl of fear and inevitability.
Arin's voice dropped to a whisper that chilled the air.
"He wants you to become him."
"He turned away from the mirror, but its truth followed him like breath."