Under The Midday Moon

Standing in the endless wheat, chest heaving, Lucius saw the other him watching from across the field. That silence. That smug, patient silence.

The wheat whispered, endless and gold, but he heard only his own ragged breath. Across the field, his double waited, like a mirror that refused to crack.

Lucius spat into the dirt. “Talk. You’ve been sitting there in every shadow, every dream. Why won’t you say anything now?”

The other him tilted his head slightly. Because you already know the answers.

“Bullshit.” Lucius’s fists clenched, nails cutting into skin. “If I knew, I wouldn’t be chained up like an animal. I wouldn’t be crawling up those steps day after day only to choke halfway. I wouldn’t...” His voice caught, sharp and raw. “I wouldn’t still be weak.”

The double smiled faintly. And yet, you are. Because you choose to be.

Lucius froze. A hot tremor shot through his chest. “What?”

You cling to weakness because it’s familiar. It excuses you. If you’re broken, if you’re small, you don’t have to carry the weight of what you could be. Your present reality is a thing of agony and delirium, and yet you choose to stay.

“Don’t lecture me like you’re above me!” Lucius’s voice tore through the air. “You are me. Every mistake, every ounce of shame. Every night when I begged for it to stop, you were there. You watched me. You let it happen.”

I was you, the double corrected softly. The part that did fight. The part that didn’t bend. The part that was left to rot. I am everything you buried.

Lucius staggered back, clutching his head. His voice cracked. “No. I fought. I always fought. I tried to carry it. My parents, her, all of it.”

The other stepped closer, every word a knife. And every time you failed. You begged for death. You begged for silence. Don’t pretend you wanted to win.

Lucius tried to speak, but no words came. His heart hammered like it wanted to break free of his chest.

The silence stretched. The double’s eyes glinted, catching the moonlight overhead.

You hate me because I remind you of the truth. You are the one who made me, afterall. Your guilt, your sins, your refusal to forgive yourself. I exist because you couldn’t carry the weight of your own soul.

Lucius shook, eyes brimming with furious tears. “Then what the hell do you want from me?!”

The other’s smile vanished. When you are truly ready, you know exactly where to find me.

The wheat bent under the sudden wind, the moon swelling impossibly bright above them. Lucius felt it crushing down, unbearable, searing. He could hardly breathe.

“That’s your answer?!” His voice rose to a scream. “After all you’ve done, the nights of torture, the chains, the failures? ou expect me to just-just-”

No reply. Just those eyes. His own eyes.

He choked, his fury ripping through the air. His hands reached upward, claws toward the swollen moon. “ENOUGH!”

The moon swelled overhead, white and suffocating. Its glow pressed against him until he felt it blister his skin. Lucius’s scream tore through the field as he soared up, his hand closing around the moon, nails digging into it’s surface.

The sphere split in his grip with a thunderous crack. Glass white shards exploded across the sky, raining down in jagged streams. They carved through the wheat like scythes, slicing the world apart. One shard slashed across his cheek, searing a crescent scar beneath his right eye.

He didn’t cry out. He laughed.

A broken, guttural laugh that shook the dream to its bones.

His blood spilled, but the drops glowed emerald, burning holes in the ground. His veins ignited, threads of jade green resonance ripping through him like wildfire. His hair bled green, every strand hissing like flame as it changed to a deep jade hue.

The double Lucius dissolved, the scenery screamed as it twisted into green fire, then collapsed into nothing.

Lucius’s eyes snapped open in the Serious House.

The green fire poured from him, every vein searing with resonance. The chains that had gnawed his flesh hissed, cracked, and then burst apart in a storm of sparks. The chair of the Serious House splintered under the sheer force of his trembling body.

The heavy door at the far end of the room groaned. For days, weeks, eternity, Lucius had stumbled toward it only to fail. But now, his hair stained a dark green, light spilling from his eyes and his scar burning like a crescent brand, he didn’t walk to it. He flew.

The walls of the Serious House warped and shook, shadows scattering like vermin. With one reach of his hand, he decimated the door into dust.

The stairs rose before him. Mandukath. All three hundred and sixty five steps spiraling up into the abyss, vanishing into the storm of clouds above.

Every day he crawled them. Failed them. Died on them. But not now.

Lucius bared his teeth, resonance shrieking out of him in a furious corona, jade flames twisting into breaches of light. He didn’t climb. He didn’t stumble. He soared.

One breath. One surge. His body became a streak, a comet tearing through the endless stairway. Stone shattered beneath the speed of his ascent, fragments falling away into the nothingness below. His scream ripped from his throat, raw and ragged, echoing across the void.

Step one. Step fifty. Step two hundred. Step three hundred. Gone in a heartbeat.

He was through.

Lucius burst out the top, essence exploding outward in a shockwave that tore the black clouds apart. The sky of Pareidolia, always drowned in gloom, split open to reveal a yawning rift of silver light.

He hovered there, suspended above the sprawling dark city, his resonance blazing so bright it painted every tower in shades of emerald flame. His hair whipped wild and free, his figure glowed like a sigil, and his chest heaved with rage and triumph.

He had not reached the summit. He had annihilated it.

The Serious House lay in ruin behind him. Pareidolia trembled below him.

For the first time since the chains had bound him, his voice wasn’t a whisper. It was thunder.

Ultra.

The word wasn’t spoken. It traveled. Torn from his chest and hurled across the open line.

I’m free.

***

Inside the Sanctum, under screens that flickered and towers of circuitry that pulsed, Ultra staggered back as he felt a force rip through the chamber, rattling the walls. His eyes widened.

“...he’s…he’s out.”

Umbra’s hands shot over the console, eyes sharp. “What? How is he-”

“He spoke! Open the gateway,” Ultra shouted. “Do it now!”

Caesar stepped forward, the magenta flames of Ender Realm already coiling around him like ribbons. “I’ll pull him through, on your mark.”

Umbra’s fingers danced, a fracture of apricot light splitting open in the center of the chamber, jagged and unstable.

Caesar gritted his teeth, focusing his resonance out like a beacon across reality to find and bring him home.

There.

Lucius tore through the gateway like a meteor, scorching the air as the Sanctum’s lights dimmed under the weight of his arrival. His landing lit up the floor, smoke curling off his body, his breath a growl that shook in his chest.

He was changed. Not broken, not chained. Transfigured. Resonance poured from him in violent waves that bent the air, every breath a storm barely contained.

Umbra gasped, instinctively stepping back, her arms crossed to shield her face from the light.

Caesar’s mouth went dry. The words caught in his throat before spilling out, quiet but certain. “You’re…you’re really free.”

Ultra alone stepped forward, though even he hesitated at the edge of Lucius’s radiance. He studied the boy who had once been fragile, bleeding, nearly gone. The boy who had been broken.

“...Lucius,” Ultra said, his tone torn between relief and dread. “You made it out.”

Ultra’s throat tightened. He’d wanted this. Fought for this. Yet standing before him now he felt was something untouchable.

“But you’re…not the same.”

Lucius’s gaze locked with his, eyes blazing with fury and clarity.

“No, I’m not,” he said, voice sharp as a blade. “I’ll never be that weak again.”