Chapter 31:

The Twin Within

Dreambound: The Veil Between Worlds


The first thing I noticed was silence.
Not the soft kind of silence that filled the library halls of the Archive or the quiet courtyards where the silver leaves whispered. This silence was hard, almost metallic, like standing inside a bell before it rang. My breath fogged in the air, though there was no cold. The corridor I walked stretched infinitely, walls shifting like polished obsidian mirrors.
Each step sent ripples through the ground, as though the stone were water pretending to be solid. And with every ripple, faint silhouettes swam across the mirrored walls—familiar figures I couldn’t quite recognize.
No… not unfamiliar. I knew them.
They were me.
Dozens of Lucens, flickering faintly in the obsidian, their mouths moving silently. Some were older, some younger, some broken, some smiling as if they carried happiness I’d never felt.
I slowed my pace, pressing my hand against one reflection. The glass rippled under my touch, and the boy on the other side mirrored me perfectly. Brown hair falling just so, uniform tattered from too many battles, eyes weary but still burning.
“Who are you?” I whispered.
The boy inside the mirror tilted his head. Then his lips moved, forming words I knew before they came.
“I’m you.”
The silence cracked.
The mirror-shape pressed his hand back against mine—and then stepped forward, as if the wall had never existed. The surface broke like liquid, and my reflection pulled itself out into the corridor.
I staggered back, heart pounding. The copy stood where I had been moments ago, wearing the same uniform, holding the same faint shimmer of dreamlight at his fingertips.
But there was something off. His eyes.
Mine held fear, uncertainty, and a desperate will to keep moving despite everything. His burned with certainty. With hunger.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I said.
The Twin smiled. “No, you shouldn’t.”

---
The air rippled, and with it came the presence I had felt once before in the Archive—those creatures born of memory and shadow. This one, however, was different. It wasn’t shapeless. The thing inside my twin’s body had perfected its form.
A Mirrorborn.
They were whispers in Elarin’s teachings, spoken like curses. Parasites of identity. Creatures that devoured the fractures in your self until nothing was left but a hollow shell repeating someone else’s name.
And one now stood in front of me, wearing my face.

---
The Twin raised his hand, and a shimmer of silver light coiled into his palm. My spell.
“Lumae verin,” he murmured, his voice like mine but sharpened. The corridor pulsed with a rush of dreamlight. The word—the spell that had once tethered me between realms—was now his weapon.
The blast of silver struck the ground, sending cracks through the mirrored walls. Dozens of Lucens inside the glass screamed in silence, their images shattering into static.
I threw up my arm instinctively, dreamlight swirling to life at my fingertips.
“Lumae verin!”
The spell clashed midair, silver crashing against silver. The impact rattled my bones, threw me back against the warped ground. My twin didn’t flinch.
“You’re weak,” he said, stepping closer. “I am the part of you that was meant to live. You’re the fragment.”
“No…” I pushed myself up, chest burning. “I am me. Not you. Not anyone else.”
The Twin tilted his head, like a predator playing with prey. “Then prove it.”

---
The Mirrorborn lunged.
Our bodies collided in an eruption of dreamlight. Spells sparked across the corridor like fireworks, silver sigils spiraling into the mirrored ceiling before crashing back down as shards of light. I could feel the Twin’s will pressing against mine, his movements matching mine perfectly—as if he already knew what I would do before I did it.
Every strike I made, he countered. Every step I took, he mirrored.
I was fighting myself.
But it wasn’t just imitation. He was better. Stronger. More decisive. Where my strikes faltered with hesitation, his cut through the air with ruthless precision.
It was like battling the version of me I could never become—the one unburdened by doubt, fear, or hesitation.

---
My chest heaved, sweat stinging my eyes. My dreamlight was fading, cracks opening along my arms as the strain of magic pulled at my body.
The Twin stood tall, barely touched, a cruel smile playing on his lips.
“You see?” he said. “You’re nothing but a shadow. A dream that thought itself real. I am the true Lucen. The one who deserves to carry the name.”
He raised his hand, gathering a sphere of blinding light, stronger than anything I had conjured before. My own spell turned against me.
If he unleashed that, I’d be erased.
I bit down on the panic, forcing my focus inward. My name pulsed faintly within me, fragile but alive. And beneath it—deeper—another thread stirred.
The spell Elarin had whispered once before, when she warned me never to use it. An unstable weave of dreamlight that could twist reality but at a cost.
I had no choice.
Closing my eyes, I let the forbidden syllables slip past my lips.
“Seran velith.”
The words burned, as if they cut my tongue on the way out. The corridor trembled violently, and my Twin’s eyes widened for the first time.
The spell unfolded like a crack in the world, tearing the mirrored walls apart. The dozens of Lucens trapped inside wailed soundlessly, pouring out like rivers of shattered light.
The Twin’s sphere of silver collapsed in his hands. His perfect form wavered, as if the Mirrorborn within him was losing its hold.
“You… you would destroy yourself…?” he hissed.
“Better than becoming you,” I gasped, dreamlight searing through my veins.
The unstable magic coiled outward, consuming everything. The Twin shrieked—not in my voice, but in the guttural cry of something inhuman. His form shattered like glass, scattering into dust that dissolved into the mirrored floor.
Silence returned.

---
I collapsed to my knees, the last flicker of dreamlight fading from my hands. My body felt hollow, every breath scraping like shards of glass through my lungs.
The mirrors were broken now. Instead of endless reflections, only jagged fragments remained, each piece showing a different version of me. One weeping. One smiling. One lifeless.
I reached out, touching a shard. The Lucen inside stared back at me, lips trembling.
“Which of us is real…?” he whispered.
The shard cracked under my touch and fell away into nothingness.
I didn’t have an answer.

---
The corridor ahead slowly unraveled, its walls opening into a vast chamber bathed in pale silver light. At its center stood a familiar figure.
Elarin.
Her silver hair caught the glow, her eyes steady as they fell on me.
“You’ve seen it now,” she said softly. “The truth of what you are.”
I tried to speak, but my throat was raw.
She walked closer, kneeling in front of me. “The Veil is not infinite, Lucen. It remembers only what survives. But you… you are both memory and dream. That is why the Mirrorborn hunger for you.”
I looked at her, desperate. “Then… who am I really?”
Her gaze softened, but there was sorrow in it.
“You are the one who must choose.”
Her words echoed through the broken chamber, through the fragments of myself still scattered across the mirrored floor.
And for the first time, I wasn’t sure if I was the one moving forward—or if another Lucen had already taken my place.

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To be continued…