For the first time since entering this test, something made sense.

  I held the hilt of the strange, familiar dagger, wet with both our blood, and looked at him.

  Really looked.

  My face.

  Without the scars.

  When I stepped through the gate, something hit me hard enough to lift me off my feet.

  I woke on cold stone with Lumi clutched in my hand and a hollow twisting under my ribs, like something vital had been carved out. The bond that should have thrummed through the hilt lay dead and empty.

  Then I saw him.

  My face. Unmarked. Whole.

  The person I might have been.

  For a breath, I just stared. My thoughts scattered, then snapped back into place. This was a trial. React wrong and it would punish me for it.

  So, I vanished.

  I kept to the fog and watched him move through the marsh, muttering under his breath, turning in slow circles as if the land itself mocked him. I did not call out. I did not interfere.

  Only when the mist swallowed him and the marsh fell quiet did my breathing settle.

  I returned to the gate and pressed my palm against the stone. Cold bit into my skin. I stepped through.

  Nothing changed.

  The fog shifted but offered no answer. I turned once, then again. Every direction looked the same. When the haze thinned, the twisted tree stood far off in the distance, dark against the pale sky.

  It drew the eye. It felt deliberate.

  I tightened my grip on Lumi. “Hello?”

  No hum answered me. No flicker of light. The hilt stayed dead in my hand.

  Fine. I would do this without him.

  I moved into the marsh. Mud dragged at my boots and sucked at every step. Pools spread where solid ground had been seconds before. Narrow rises twisted back on themselves. I crossed the same patch of dead reeds more than once and felt it.

  The land resisted me.

  By the time I reached the tree, my shoulders felt wrong. Too light.

  I looked down.

  My pack was gone. My sheath too.

  I swore under my breath. The fog pressed against my thoughts, dull and heavy, as if it had been working at me the whole time.

  How long had I been walking?

  The vanishing rune flickered across my skin and died. Something moved at the edge of that fading sense.

  Not one presence.

  Many.

  I could not see them. I could not hear them. But through the rune I felt them shifting in the marsh, circling, patient.

  I forced a slow breath into my lungs and reignited the vanishing rune. The faint shimmer crawled back over me.

  Then I started to climb.

  Branches twisted out of reach just as my fingers closed. Bark peeled and slid beneath my grip. Limbs struck at my ribs and shoulders, shoving me away from the trunk as if it knew me and rejected me.

  I fell.

  I climbed again then fell again.

  The sky never shifted. The fog thinned and time lost its edges. My arms trembled. Skin split across my palms. Blood slicked the bark.

  I kept climbing.

  Near the crown, the branches thinned. I could see the upper limbs, close enough to taste the end.

  A few more feet.

  I stretched for the last branch.

  It shifted under my fingers. The bark rolled, slick and loose.

  My grip failed.

  The world dropped away.

  The trunk spun past in a rush of dark wood and grey sky. I fell hard. Stone and root slammed into my back and the breath burst from my lungs in a sharp, empty gasp.

  Pain rang through my spine.

  White light flared across my vision.

  Lumi’s perception rune ignited.

  I rolled and brought the blade up just in time.

  Steel met steel.

  He stood over me, drenched, mud streaking his clothes. His pack was gone.

  A dagger sat in his hand. My sheath hung at his hip.

  This was the trial. I felt it in my bones.

  He came at me again.

  I slipped aside and let his blade carve through empty air. He moved slower than I did, but every step landed where I meant to go. He read my shoulders before I turned. He shifted before I committed. He slid inside my guard as if he had trained in my body his whole life.

  I forced the pace.

  His breath turned rough. His swings shortened. His shoulders began to sag.

  I stepped in hard and drove him off balance.

  He went down.

  I followed and pinned him there with the edge of my blade hovering inches from his throat.

  For a heartbeat, neither of us moved.

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  Then he did something I did not expect.

  He raised the dagger between us and offered it by the hilt.

  I faltered.

  Was he giving up? Had I passed the test?

  I reached for the hilt.

  The instant my fingers closed around it, he turned the blade and dragged the edge across his own palm.

  Pain flashed across his face. The surge hit me a breath later. Heat raced up my arm and drove into my chest, flooding through me in a rush.

  I staggered back.

  “What did you just do?” I demanded.

  I caught his eyes for a second.

  There was no hatred in them. No malice.

  Just intent.

  “Can you understand me?” His words were clear.

  My breath caught. The feeling was strange, like I could feel his intentions.

  “Some test,” he said with a faint smile.

  The tension in my chest eased before I could stop it, and I found myself smiling back.

  Then the truth of it settled in.

  Somehow, he was me.

  I looked down at the dagger in my hand. It was the same dark metal as Lumi, and the rune cut into its side was far more intricate than any I had seen before.

  “The rune lets you understand what you cut,” he said, answering before I could ask.

  I nodded slowly. “Where did you get it?”

  A breath escaped him, close to a laugh. “Long story.”

  I held his gaze.

  He let out a breath. “Fine. Short version. I was wandering out there.” He gestured toward the marsh. “I found a blacksmith.”

  The dagger turned in his hand. The metal carried the same deep black as Lumi, old and heavy, yet the edges looked new.

  “I think he’s the one who made Lumi,” he said.

  I studied the blade. The way it caught the light and pulled it inward left no doubt. It felt familiar in a way I could not ignore.

  “So, what now?” I asked. “What does that mean for the test?”

  He lifted his eyes to the twisted branches above us and gave a small, helpless shrug.

  “I don’t think that was ever the way out.”

  The tightness in my chest eased a fraction. I lowered my gaze to my hands. Thin cuts crossed my knuckles, half-dried with blood.

  “I was sure it was,” I said. “The moment I saw it, I felt pulled to climb. I don’t even know why.” I glanced at Lumi, searching the silent steel for an answer. “The whole time it felt like I was fighting myself.”

  I wiped my palms against my trousers and flexed my fingers. They still shook.

  He kept his eyes on the tree, scanning the trunk and the churned earth beneath it as if expecting it to shift again.

  “This place isn’t normal,” he said quietly.

  I studied him. “Do you know what this place is?”

  He gave a small shrug. “The smith called it the boundary.”

  Jerald’s notes surfaced at once. Thin places. Temporary.

  Crossings not meant for mortals.

  I looked at him again.

  At my own face without the scars. The version of me that had never been broken.

  A tight ache settled behind my ribs. Not envy. Not quite grief.

  Regret.

  For a heartbeat, I imagined a life where that face had been mine. Where I had never learned to measure rooms by threat. Where mirrors did not demand endurance.

  The thought faded.

  I lowered my gaze and drew a steady breath.

  “So,” I said, “what’s the plan?”

  He studied me, calm and careful. “I think I have an idea. I just need to check something.”

  He held out his hand for the dagger.

  I arched a brow. “You’re not about to stab me again, are you?”

  He gave a quiet chuckle.

  The rune stirred in my grip, a faint tightening in my chest that told me the truth.

  I placed the dagger back into his palm.

  He turned the dagger slowly in his fingers, thumb resting against the flat of the blade, as if testing something I could not feel. Then with a sharp jerk he cut his own thumb. A brief, distant look crossed his face. Sad. Then he steadied himself.

  “The smith who made this,” he said quietly. “He told me we’re cursed twice.”

  My stomach tightened.

  “The hag,” I said.

  He nodded. “She was right.”

  I looked down at my hands. One curse had already shaped every part of my life. My choices. My limits. The thought of carrying another made my chest feel tight and hollow at the same time.

  “I think this place did it,” he said.

  I looked up. “Did what?”

  “This place split more than just us,” he went on. “It split our curses as well.”

  He gestured toward Lumi.

  “May I?”

  I turned the sword sideways and held it out.

  His fingers brushed the metal.

  Something sharpened in his gaze, quick and precise, like a lock clicking open.

  “He says you’ve been acting foolish,” he said.

  A quiet laugh slipped out of me. It sounded exactly like Lumi.

  “I think I finally understand,” he said as he drew away from Lumi. “What the smith told me. The curse I’m carrying is not the blood one. That one stayed with you. Mine sits deeper. Asleep.”

  His hand pressed briefly to his chest.

  “To the soul.”

  Cold slid through my ribs.

  “It’s asleep,” he went on, voice steady, almost careful, “but its shadow still moves through me. That is why I can hear him.”

  The pieces settled into place.

  “What happens when it wakes?” I asked.

  He shook his head once. “I don’t know. But there’s only one way it can.”

  That, I already understood.

  The dagger had already made that clear.

  It had shown me something else as well.

  “I don’t think I’m leaving this place,” he said.

  The air between us tightened.

  My chest pulled tight with it. I had only just begun to understand him, to see what he was, and already the distance was opening. The thought of him fading hit too fast to hold.

  He held my gaze and gave a small, tired smile.

  “I think this test was always meant to be this way,” he said. “The curse is tied to the soul. If I had to guess, the gate was built by one of our ancestors. Not to test us, but to pass on the truth.”

  “And what is that truth?” I asked.

  “The curse lies dormant in our family,” he said. “It can only awaken if you are the last of our line.”

  The words struck hard. My pulse kicked once in my throat. No one left in our line. We were all alone.

  Through the rune carved into the dagger, I felt it. Not just his intent, but the shape of it. A thread of understanding passed between us. Images moved through my mind. Lumi’s memories. Our ancestor standing alone.

  “Do you understand?” he asked, holding my gaze.

  I nodded.

  I understood how the curse worked. I did not understand what it meant for the future. The thought of being the last twisted in my chest.

  His eyes shifted. The focus in them thinned, as if something inside him had stepped back.

  “I don’t have much time,” he said.

  “How do you know?”

  He gave a small shrug. “I can feel it.”

  His hand pressed briefly to his chest. The air around him thinned, the edges of him no longer holding as sharply as before.

  “I believe it was the curse that made me,” he said. “What kept me alive.” He met my eyes. “It’s returning to you.”

  A faint strain crept into his voice.

  “When it settles fully in you, there won’t be anything left to anchor me.” He drew a steady breath. “You’ll be whole again.”

  The words settled heavier than I expected.

  “And then what happens to you?” I asked.

  He gave me a sly smile. “The ale will suffice.”

  Jerald’s old story surfaced at once. A warrior mortally wounded, crossing into the boundary and drinking from a stranger’s cup. He did not return. He became part of the place itself.

  The colour drained from his skin. The air around him felt thinner. My vision blurred for a moment and I forced myself to breathe.

  There was no stopping it.

  He stood, wiped the blade clean on his sleeve, and offered the dagger back to me.

  I took it and rose with him. Standing that close felt steady, grounded, as if something missing had briefly locked into place.

  Questions pressed against my throat.

  I said none of them.

  I stood there instead, unwilling to risk breaking whatever fragile balance remained between us.

  He smiled again. “Do you understand?”

  His voice thinned as he spoke, the sound hollow, as if it already came from somewhere far away.

  I nodded.

  I glanced down at the dagger in my hand.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  When I looked up, he was already fading.

  It did not happen all at once. His outline blurred at the edges, like fog pulling him apart. The scars he did not carry flickered across his face for a heartbeat, then dissolved. Light gathered beneath his skin, white and bright, threading through him in fine cracks.

  I did not move.

  The light glowed then rushed forward and struck my chest.

  Heat tore through my ribs and drove the air from my lungs. I staggered but did not fall. The white flare sank inward, deeper than bone, deeper than breath, and settled somewhere behind my heart.

  Then he was gone.

  Silence filled the space where he had stood.

  Warmth spread through my chest, steady and unmistakable. Not borrowed. Not forced. Something that fit.

  For a moment, something caught in my throat.

  I had never had a brother. Never had anyone who looked like me and understood without explanation. And just as I began to feel what that might mean, he was already gone.

  The loss pressed in, sharp and sudden.

  It did not break me.

  It set.

  The ache cooled into something steadier.

  Lumi stirred.

  The sword hummed, low and certain.

  “We need to leave,” he said.

  His voice struck clean through me. Relief hit first, sharp enough to sting. Then purpose followed. “This space is temporary.”

  I drew a slow breath and straightened. My body felt different. Balanced. Whole in a way it had never been.

  I slid Lumi into its sheath. Then I closed my fingers around the dagger and held it tight, not as a reminder of what I had lost, but as proof of what I had chosen.

  Movement caught my eye.

  The gate.

  I didn’t think. I ran.

  The marsh no longer resisted. The ground firmed beneath my feet. Pools thinned and broke apart as I crossed them. Reeds parted without clawing at my legs. The air opened ahead of me, pulling me forward.

  I did not slow.

  I burst through the gate and skidded across the stone floor of the dome, the wet, bitter smell of the marsh tearing out of the air behind me.

  I spun.

  “Hello?”

  The chamber stood empty.

  Almost.

  A single stone rested on the floor near the centre of the room. A folded scrap lay tucked beneath it.

  Doyle’s handwriting.

  I have been gone for too long.

  The trials have begun.