For a moment, there was only the sound of my own heartbeat — slow, fragile, echoing through the hollow air of the ruined hall.
The silence that followed was not ordinary — it was alive, whispering between the cracks of reality.
And in that silence… it stared at me.
Its eyes glimmered faintly in the dark like shattered moons, reflecting countless faces — not of strangers, but of me.
Each reflection twisted, screaming soundlessly, like broken memories trapped within a pane of glass.
I could feel it peering into my soul, yet I knew, somehow, it could not touch me. Not in this world.
Its essence wasn't bound by matter — it was a thing born from thought, from memory, from the forgotten corners of the mind.
It cannot harm me physically, I thought.
And I cannot harm it either.
We existed on opposite edges of reality — two beings divided by an invisible veil, watching each other through mirrors that shouldn't exist.
The Shadowwrath's voice seeped into my head, cold and venomous, spoken not through sound but through meaning itself.
"This is the end, Chosen One."
That name again.
Chosen One.
My fists clenched.
How did everyone know who I was — when I myself did not?
What was I chosen for?
To save a world I didn't understand? Or to play a role written by a hand I couldn't see?
Before I could speak, the world shattered.
The air split open like glass under a hammer, and darkness poured through the cracks — thick, liquid, suffocating.
The Shadowwrath raised its melting hand, and in that moment, I felt my consciousness being torn apart — thread by thread.
"Suffer within your memories," it whispered.
"Let them unmake you."
And the world vanished.
When I opened my eyes, I was standing in a void.
No sky. No ground.
Just a dim horizon stretching forever — an ocean of mirrors floating in blackness, each one showing fragments of moments I didn't remember living.
A child crying beside a grave.
A battlefield soaked in rain and blood.
A woman's voice, calling a name I didn't know how to answer to.
"Carten…"
My name echoed, but it sounded hollow, detached — as though it belonged to someone else entirely.
Then, the Shadowwrath appeared again, its form shifting like smoke, its voice echoing from everywhere and nowhere.
"There is nothing here," it said mockingly.
"Your past has been erased. You have no pain, no memory, no self. You are hollow — and only suffering can make something out of nothing."
"I don't need suffering," I said through gritted teeth. "I just need to understand who I am."
It laughed — not a sound, but a vibration that rippled through the void.
"Then you will remember — and when you do, you will beg to forget again."
And suddenly, the mirrors began to crack.
Each fragment burst open like glass under pressure, spilling scenes into the air — distorted, unfinished, incomplete.
I saw glimpses of a fortress collapsing in flame…
a child's hand reaching for me…
a blood-red sky over a city drowning in shadow.
And then — I saw myself.
He stood before me — identical in every way, yet not.
His eyes were filled with something mine weren't: clarity.
He looked at me with quiet pity, like one would look at a lost animal.
"You're me," I whispered.
"No," he said, his voice low, distant. "I'm the part that remembers."
The Shadowwrath hovered above us, its voice vibrating through the air like a low hum of thunder.
"Fight him," it hissed.
"Only one of you may exist. The stronger will inherit the truth."
I shook my head. "I won't fight myself."
But the other me — the memory-bound Carten — raised his hand.
A sword of light appeared there, gleaming faintly, its surface inscribed with words I couldn't read.
"You don't have a choice," he said. "I was written to win."
Our blades met — one forged of light, the other conjured from shadow.
When steel clashed, the void itself rippled. Every strike echoed with scenes of my lost past — each blow tearing open a memory long buried.
Every time I fell, the voices of the dead whispered around me:
"Carten… you promised…"
"Don't forget the truth…"
"You were never chosen…"
Those words cut deeper than any blade.
At last, I dropped my sword, panting, my hands trembling.
He stood over me — the other me — his eyes filled with sorrow.
"Why are you fighting?" I asked.
He hesitated. "Because… it was written that I must."
The Shadowwrath's laughter filled the void, sharp and cold.
"Fate writes us all, Chosen One. You, me, the gods themselves. None escape the ink."
Then — the light in my other self's eyes began to fade.
He looked at me one last time and whispered,
"Erase the ink… before it erases you."
And he vanished — his body turning into shards of glass that dissolved into my chest.
The mirrors around me shattered completely, and all I could see was my reflection — countless versions of me, whispering, screaming, weeping.
When I awoke, I was lying on the cold floor of the fortress again.
The Shadowwrath was gone.
The air was still, heavy with silence.
I looked at my hands — trembling, glowing faintly with runes I didn't recognize.
A faint whisper echoed in my mind, not my own voice — but his.
"You were never chosen… You were written."
The words sent a chill through my spine.
I stumbled toward the dying fire, clutching my head as fragments of memory began to return — flashes of quills, of a god with a thousand eyes, of a book that wrote itself as I spoke.
The fragment of the divine mirror still pulsed faintly in my pocket — and this time, when I looked into it, I didn't see my face.
I saw a hand holding a pen, writing my story across the sky.
Then — faintly — a whisper from nowhere:
"He has begun to remember."
The walls trembled, the air shimmered, and I looked up to see words forming across the ceiling — glowing, divine, undeniable.