The mist did not lift after they left.
It clung to the land like a warning, thick and heavy, swallowing sound and distance alike. The figures in ash-colored cloaks vanished as suddenly as they had appeared, leaving behind a silence that felt deliberate—like the pause before a question no one wanted answered.
I was shaking.
Not from fear.
From restraint.
Rowan's hand hovered near my shoulder, unsure whether grounding me would steady the power or ignite it. Elara stood a few steps away, arms wrapped around herself, eyes fixed on the place where the woman had stood.
"They didn't attack," I said slowly. "They came to see."
"To confirm," Rowan replied. "That you're real."
"And if they're right?" I asked.
No one answered.
We moved again, deeper into the pale woods, the trees bending unnaturally as if pulled by an unseen tide. With every step, the sensation inside me sharpened—like something trying to align, to settle into a shape it had been denied.
That was when I felt it.
Someone else.
Not behind us.
Inside the space I occupied.
I stopped abruptly. Rowan nearly collided with me.
"Ariana—"
"Do you feel that?" I whispered.
The air shifted. My reflection flickered in the surface of a dark pool beside the path, the water unnaturally still. I knelt, drawn by instinct rather than choice.
The girl staring back at me blinked.
A heartbeat too late.
She smiled when I didn't.
I staggered backward, breath tearing from my chest.
"That's not—" Elara's voice broke. "That's not possible."
The reflection rose.
Not from the water—but from the world itself.
She stood where I had been kneeling, identical in every way—same face, same eyes, same fear sharpened into something colder. Power clung to her like a second skin, visible now, no longer hiding.
"I wondered how long it would take you to notice," she said. Her voice was mine—without doubt, without hesitation.
Rowan stepped in front of me, blade raised. "Stay back."
The other me laughed softly. "You always do that," she said to him. "Stand between her and what she is."
My pulse roared in my ears. "What are you?"
She tilted her head, studying me with unsettling intimacy. "I'm the part they couldn't erase."
Nyxara's presence surged—hot, sharp, approving.
The world reacted violently. The trees shuddered, bark splitting as if breathing became difficult. The ground rippled beneath our feet.
Elara dropped to her knees. "I tried to save you," she whispered. "I split the truth so it wouldn't destroy her."
The other me turned to her slowly.
"And in doing so," she said, "you made her incomplete."
Her gaze returned to me.
"You are not becoming something new, Ariana," she continued softly. "You are remembering."
She reached out—not to touch me, but to the space between us.
The air tore open.
Power rushed through me, not wild—familiar. Like something returning home. Images flooded my mind: fire shaped by will, lands rewritten, a woman standing alone as the world chose fear over understanding.
Nyxara.
Me.
The double began to fade, her edges dissolving into light and shadow.
"We don't have much time," she said. "They will come again. And next time, they won't be watching."
"Wait," I pleaded. "Are you… me?"
She smiled—sad, fierce, knowing.
"I am who you were before the lies," she answered. "And who you will be if you survive the truth."
She vanished.
The woods exhaled.
I collapsed to my knees, breath ragged, hands glowing faintly before the light slowly dimmed. Rowan knelt beside me, grounding, solid. Elara wept openly now.
I stared at my trembling hands, understanding settling in with terrifying clarity.
My identity hadn't just been hidden.
It had been divided.
And somewhere in the dark, the world was already preparing for what would happen when I became whole.