The One Who Was You
1209 Words
The moon cracked.
Not broken—split—a thin fissure across its glowing surface, as though the very sky had been struck by an ancient blade. From within, not light, but shadows bled into the night.
Zaire watched from the tower.
“She’s coming,” he whispered.
Aeryn stood beside him, clutching the handle of her blade. “The Fold sent her.”
“Or she sent herself.”
Below, in the stronghold’s courtyard, the guards had already raised alarms. The sky was screaming again. Animals bolted from their stalls. Magic surged unpredictably in every rune-seal, every defensive array.
Keal stormed into the chamber moments later.
“She just stepped through the Veil Gate,” he said. “We don’t know how she got access. She’s inside the walls.”
“Who is it?” Aeryn asked.
He paused.
Then:
“Nyra.”
But not the Nyra they knew.
This one walked barefoot across the cold stone. Her armor was made of shatterglass and blacksteel, ribs exposed beneath magical veins. Her eyes were white. Lips sealed shut with burn-scars, as if she'd silenced herself long ago.
And from her back, wings.
Not feathered.
Fractured.
Like broken mirror shards hanging midair, twitching with unseen breath.
She paused only once—beneath the massive banner of Aldric’s line—and touched it with her fingertips.
It caught fire.
In the vault chamber, Nyra clutched her head.
“She’s here,” she said. “I feel her. She’s inside me already. Like a memory waiting to happen.”
Seraphina stood ready. “That’s what she is. A potential you.”
Keal arrived, sword drawn. “She’s not some theoretical version anymore. She’s real—and killing guards.”
Zaire stepped forward. “Let me talk to her.”
“No,” Keal growled. “You’ve done enough.”
“I bound myself to her to prevent this,” Zaire snapped. “Now let me finish what I started.”
Seraphina held the Requiem orb. “This time, we do it together.”
They found her in the Mirror Hall—the oldest corridor in the keep. Every wall reflected distorted versions of the present. Ghosts of futures that might be. Blood trickled down the silver panels where guards had fallen—no wounds, just blank stares.
“She erased their minds,” Aeryn whispered. “Took their identity like thread from fabric.”
Zaire stepped forward.
The corrupted Nyra turned.
It wasn’t recognition on her face.
It was resignation.
“I knew you'd come,” she said, voice like glass and ash.
Zaire’s chest tightened. “You remember me.”
“I remember everything,” she said. “And so do you. Even if you’re pretending.”
Nyra—the real one—stepped out from behind Seraphina.
The corrupted Nyra blinked once. Her wings folded slightly.
Then she whispered, “You don’t survive me.”
The fight erupted without warning.
Corrupted Nyra vanished in a blink—appearing beside Zaire with a downward strike that split the floor. He barely dodged, drawing a glyph-shield in the air that shattered on impact.
Seraphina flanked her, casting a silence rune—but it evaporated as soon as it touched the corrupted aura.
“She’s unbinding spells!” Aeryn shouted. “Every structure we built, she’s already unraveled.”
“She knows our moves,” Keal growled, blocking a blade made from her own shattered memory. “She lived them.”
Nyra stood in the center of it all—shaking.
“I don’t want to fight her,” she said. “Because I know how it ends.”
Corrupted Nyra appeared in front of her, face inches away.
“Then don’t.”
Nyra raised a hand—and the air around them warped.
Not magic. Choice.
She bent the moment—not time, but intent.
“I’m not you,” she said softly. “I made different decisions.”
“Not enough,” her future self hissed. “You still let Zaire bind himself. You still opened the Vault. You still stood beneath the Ether Tree. You still listened.”
She raised her blade.
Zaire jumped between them.
“Then kill me. Because I’ll never let you touch her.”
Corrupted Nyra paused.
And—for the first time—hesitated.
It was Aeryn who broke the silence, charging forward with her glaive now blazing with bloodlight. She struck—not for the body, but the soul.
The blow connected.
Corrupted Nyra screamed, her wings fracturing, one of them collapsing into dust.
But instead of retreating, she smiled.
“You cut away a piece of me,” she whispered.
And then looked at Nyra.
“Now it’s yours again.”
Nyra collapsed.
Unconscious.
And in her mind—
The Future Unwritten
She saw the Fold’s throne.
A place made of mirrors and grief. Zaire’s corpse laid across it like a flag. Aeryn’s blade rusted at its foot. Seraphina's crown—empty, floating.
And atop it all, her.
Crowned in flame. Veins of silver. A hollow smile.
“You survived,” her future self whispered.
“But you forgot why.”
Outside the vision, chaos still reigned.
Zaire lifted Nyra’s body, backing toward Seraphina.
“She’s in her mind now,” he said. “We have to protect her while she fights herself.”
Aeryn stood guard. Her blade sang with unstable resonance.
Keal faced Corrupted Nyra directly now. “You think we’ll let you take her?”
“You already did,” she said.
“I won’t lose my daughter.”
She stepped forward. “You never had her. You had a version. I am what happens when you let fear decide for her.”
Seraphina raised the orb.
Corrupted Nyra’s smile vanished.
“So you brought it.”
“Requiem’s Edge,” Seraphina said. “And I won’t hesitate.”
“Then you’ll erase the only one who remembers how to win.”
In Nyra’s mind, she stood at the mirror throne.
“I refuse you,” she said.
Future-Nyra stood.
“You are me.”
“No. I’m what chose differently.”
Future-Nyra raised her blade—
And Nyra raised memory.
Every face she loved. Every moment she doubted. Every scar earned.
She let them fill her.
Not power.
But imperfection.
“I’m not your shadow,” she whispered.
“I’m the girl who said no.”
Back in the hall, Nyra’s body surged upward—gold fire bursting around her.
The Fold’s mark shattered from her chest.
Corrupted Nyra screamed.
The hall began to crumble.
Zaire reached for her.
But she turned.
Smiled.
And stepped backward into her timeline—
Her body unraveling into mirror shards.
Gone.
The silence afterward was unbearable.
Nyra fell to her knees.
“I killed myself,” she whispered.
“No,” Keal said. “You saved yourself.”
Zaire nodded. “And now we know how far the Fold is willing to go.”
Aeryn added, “That version was made by fear. This one—by choice.”
Nyra looked at them.
Tears in her eyes.
And fire in her voice.
“Then it’s time we stop waiting. We find the Fold’s heart.”
“And we end it.”
- Writer
