The revelation that he was one of many versions shattered what remained of Marcus's sense of identity. For a moment, he couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. Couldn't process the information coming at him from all directions.
"Explain," he said, and his voice sounded hollow, uncertain, as if the word belonged to someone else.
"The original Marcus Vale was a prodigy," Diana said. She was moving through the archive with the ease of someone who had visited this place many times before. "Born with natural talent for cultivation that surpassed even Viktor's early potential. But he also had something that most cultivators didn't have. He had a fundamental rejection of authority. Even as a child, he refused to follow the traditional paths that society laid out for him."
"So they created copies," o
