"Who are you," Gad said, though some part of him already knew the answer.
"You," the other Gad said, stepping closer with a calmness that felt deeply wrong on a face identical to his own. "Or what you could have been, if the courtyard had gone differently that night."
"Which night?"
"The riot. The night you chose restraint instead of power." The other Gad's eyes held a faint pale light, the same glow that had once bled from beneath Gad's skin during his worst moments. "I let the entity take everything it offered. I stopped fighting it."
Gad's stomach turned. "That's not me."
"Isn't it?" The other version circled him slowly, torchlight catching along skin that shimmered faintly, power radiating off him in a way that felt effortless rather than desperate. "I'm what you would have become
