The sigil exploded.
Light swallowed everything.
Luna felt her body tearing apart.
Not pain.
Not death.
Something worse.
Erasure.
Her memories flashed like broken glass, each one sharp and brilliant and disappearing.
Her childhood.
Her mother's voice singing lullabies in a language Luna had forgotten.
The night she almost died, cold water filling her lungs.
The mark burned itself into her skin for the first time.
Kael.
His face appeared in front of her, distorted by the collapsing light, reaching for her even as reality tried to tear them apart.
"Luna!" he shouted. "Hold on!"
She tried to reach him.
But her arm felt heavy, as if reality itself was pulling her backward, trying to undo her existence one moment at a time.
The double tightened its grip on her wrist, its touch the only solid thing left.
Its eyes glowed brighter than the sigil's light.
"Do you feel it now?" it asked softly.
"Yes," Luna whispered.
She felt it.
If the sigil finished its work, she would vanish.
Not die.
Not reincarnate.
Just... stop existing.
As if she'd never been born.
As if every choice she'd made, every person she'd touched, every moment she'd lived would simply unmake itself.
The Watchers continued chanting, their voices trembling but relentless.
"Do not hesitate!" the High Watcher yelled, sweat streaming down his face. "If it stabilizes, the balance of worlds will collapse!"
Kael looked at them in disbelief, rage burning through his fear.
"You're going to kill her?" he shouted.
"She is no longer just a girl," the High Watcher replied coldly. "She is a cosmic anomaly. A tear in reality itself."
He raised his staff higher.
"And anomalies must be corrected."
Luna's chest tightened.
Anomaly.
Monster.
Mistake.
For a moment, she almost believed them.
Almost agreed that the world would be better if she simply... stopped.
The double stepped closer to her, their foreheads almost touching.
"We are not mistakes," it said quietly, fiercely.
Luna stared into her own eyes, eyes that reflected both silver and shadow, both her humanity and something far older.
"What are you?" she asked again, desperate for an answer that made sense.
This time, the response was different.
"I am the Luna who was never supposed to survive," the double said.
The words hit like thunder.
Images flooded Luna's mind, not memories but possibilities timelines that had split away, paths she'd never walked.
Another night.
Another moon.
A version of herself that died under cold water, lungs filled, heart stopped.
A version of herself that never woke up from that hospital bed.
A version of herself that chose power and became something inhuman.
A version that chose love and watched the world burn.
Dozens of versions.
Hundreds.
All the Lunas who had died so this Luna could live.
"But you survived," the double continued, voice layered with the echoes of all those lost possibilities. "You broke fate. You chose a path that shouldn't exist. And when fate broke..."
It gestured at itself.
"I was born from the fracture."
Kael's voice cracked through the chaos. "Then what happens now?"
The double looked at him, and for a moment, Luna saw something like longing in its expression.
Then it looked back at Luna.
"There can't be two of us," it said simply. "Not in the same reality. Not for long."
The sigil burned hotter, pulling harder.
The chamber shook violently, stone cracking, the ceiling beginning to collapse.
Cracks spread across the walls like lightning frozen in stone.
The Primordial screamed from beyond, a sound that made reality itself flinch.
Choose, its voice commanded.
The word echoed inside Luna's mind, inside her bones, inside every cell of her body.
She felt the meaning instantly, understood the impossible equation with perfect clarity.
Only one Luna could remain.
If the double disappeared, Luna would vanish with it—erased from every timeline, every memory, every moment.
If Luna survived...
The double would take her place.
Her life.
Her memories.
Her bond with Kael.
Everything.
And no one would ever know the difference.
Kael grabbed her hand desperately, his touch the only anchor left in the dissolving world.
His touch felt real.
Warm.
Human.
"Don't listen to them," he said, voice raw. "We'll find another way!"
The double smiled faintly, sadly.
"There is no other way," it said. "There never was."
The sigil began to pull the double upward, reality closing around it like a fist.
The Watchers shouted in relief, their chanting reaching a crescendo.
"It's working!"
"The anomaly is being contained!"
"Hold the binding!"
Luna felt her consciousness fading, edges blurring, thoughts scattering like smoke.
Her fingers slipped from Kael's hand.
Panic surged through her, not fear of death, but fear of not existing, of never having existed at all.
"No!" she cried, reaching for him desperately.
The double looked at her one last time.
Its lips moved.
Three words, spoken so softly only Luna could hear them beneath the roar of collapsing reality.
Let me live.
Luna's breath caught.
Because in those three words, she heard something she hadn't expected.
Fear.
The double wasn't just a consequence of her choice.
It was alive.
It was conscious.
It wanted to survive.
Just like she did.
And in that moment, Luna understood what the true choice was.
Not between herself and the world.
Not between love and duty.
Between two lives that both deserved to exist.
"I'm sorry," Luna whispered.
She didn't know which of them she was apologizing to.
And suddenly
The sigil shattered.
Not from the Watchers' power failing.
From Luna's power answering.
Silver light exploded from her mark, so bright it turned the chamber into a star.
The double's eyes widened.
The Watchers screamed.
And reality split.
When the light faded, Luna stood alone in the center of the chamber.
The double was gone.
The sigil was destroyed.
The Watchers lay scattered, unconscious or barely breathing.
Silence fell like a shroud.
Kael pushed himself up slowly, blood running from a cut above his eye.
He looked at Luna.
And his expression stopped her heart.
Confused.
Distant.
Like he was looking at someone he'd never met before.
"Who..." he started, voice hoarse. "Who are you?"
Luna's world tilted.
"Kael?" she whispered.
He stared at her, and there was nothing in his eyes.
No recognition.
No love.
No memory.
"I don't... I don't know you," he said slowly, backing away. "Why do I feel like I should?"
Luna's knees buckled.
Rhea appeared in the doorway, blade drawn, eyes wild, and when she looked at Luna, the same confusion crossed her face.
"What happened?" Rhea demanded. "Where's Luna?"
"I'm right here," Luna said desperately.
Rhea's blade didn't lower. "Who are you?"
Luna looked down at her hands, they were hers, she recognized every scar, every line, but when she caught her reflection in a shard of broken crystal...
The face staring back wasn't quite right.
Same features.
Same silver-streaked eyes.
But different somehow.
Like a painting copied so perfectly that only the artist could tell it wasn't the original.
"No," Luna breathed. "No, this isn't"
The Arbiter's voice cut through her panic.
The merge was incomplete, it announced. The anomaly was not destroyed. It was... redistributed.
Luna's chest tightened. "What does that mean?"
It means, the Arbiter said, that you are no longer entirely the Luna who made the choice. Nor are you entirely the consequence born from it.
You are both. And neither.
A fusion that should not exist.
Luna looked at Kael desperately.
He was still staring at her with those empty, confused eyes.
"Kael, please," she whispered. "It's me. It's Luna."
He shook his head slowly. "I don't know anyone named Luna."
The words cut deeper than any blade.
Rhea stepped forward cautiously. "Then who is she?"
Before anyone could answer, a new voice spoke from the chamber entrance.
Luna's father.
He stared at her with tears streaming down his face.
"She's my daughter," he said hoarsely. "But also... not."
He took a shaking step forward.
"The Luna I raised died in that sigil," he whispered. "And something new came back wearing her face."
Luna felt like she was drowning.
"Dad, no, I'm still"
"Are you?" he interrupted, voice breaking. "Can you even be sure?"
Luna opened her mouth to answer.
And realized with crushing horror
She couldn't.
Because buried beneath her own memories, she could feel others.
The double's memories.
Its thoughts.
Its feelings.
Merging with hers until she couldn't tell where one ended and the other began.
She was Luna.
But she was also the thing born from breaking fate.
And she had no idea which one was real.
The Devourer's voice whispered through her confusion.
Welcome to the cost of choosing the impossible, little Moon.
You got your third path.
But you paid for it with your identity.
Luna fell to her knees, hands pressed to her head as two sets of memories crashed together like waves.
Kael watching her with empty eyes.
The double's loneliness as it was born from fractured fate.
Her mother's last words.
The double's first words.
Let me live.
Let me live.
Let me
A hand touched her shoulder.
Luna looked up.
The child, the First Moonbound, stood beside her, ancient eyes filled with sympathy.
"I know what you're feeling," she said quietly.
"I don't know what I'm feeling," Luna gasped. "I don't know who I'm feeling it as."
The child knelt down, meeting her eyes.
"That's because you're neither of the people you were before," she said gently. "You're something new. Something that's never existed."
"I don't want to be something new," Luna whispered. "I want to be me."
"You are," the child said. "You're just... more now."
She squeezed Luna's shoulder.
"But more comes with a price."
Luna's voice cracked. "What price?"
The child's expression turned grave.
"The people who loved you before," she said slowly, "may not love who you've become."
She gestured at Kael, still staring with empty recognition.
"Because part of you is a stranger now. Even to yourself."
Luna's heart shattered.
She looked at Kael, at the man she'd chosen over the world, over power, over everything.
And saw nothing but confusion in his eyes.
"How do I fix this?" she whispered.
The child was quiet for a long moment.
Then:
"You don't," she said. "You can't unmake what you've become."
"Then what do I do?"
The child stood slowly.
"You move forward," she said. "And hope that the people who matter will find a way to love the new you."
"And if they can't?"
The child's expression turned unbearably sad.
"Then you learn to live with being powerful and alone."
The chamber began to tremble again.
Not from magic.
From something approaching.
The Primordial's voice boomed through the walls.
The trial is not complete, it was announced. The Moonbound has evolved beyond design. She must now prove she can exist without destroying the balance.
Or be unmade entirely.
The floor split open.
And from the crack, something vast began to rise
Not the city of bones.
Not the formless shadow.
Something worse.
A mirror.
Massive. Infinite.
Reflecting not Luna's face
But every version of herself that had ever existed or could exist.
Thousands of Lunas staring back.
All of them are reaching forward.
All of them speaking in unison:
"If you want to stay real, you have to choose which of us you are."
"Choose wrong, and we all dissolve."
"Choose right, and only one survives."
The reflections began to move independently, each one stepping forward, each one claiming to be the real Luna.
Kael stepped back, overwhelmed. "What is this?"
The child's voice was grim. "The final test."
"Of what?" Luna demanded, staring at her infinite reflections.
The child met her eyes.
"Of whether you can hold onto yourself," she said, "when reality itself is trying to make you forget who you are."
The reflections reached the mirror's surface.
And one by one
They began to step through.
Into the chamber.
Into reality.
All of them are real now.
All of them Luna.
And all of them convinced they were the only one who deserved to exist.
The first reflection lunged at Luna with silver claws.
Kael shouted her name
But Luna didn't know if he meant her.
Or one of the others.