Jason stood on the edge of the collapsed terrace, where the Ghost City of Kaelis spread like a mirage in ruins. The wind whispered warnings, carrying faint echoes of lives that once were. Nyra stepped beside him, her eyes shadowed with memories and grief. The gate's tremors reached even here, vibrating deep into the cracked stone underfoot.
"They're coming again," Maelis muttered, pressing his hand against the earth. "But not Hollowborn this time. Something older."
Elias led them downward, following a secret spiral staircase once used by Anchors who served under Jason's father. Each step felt heavier than the last, as if the air itself remembered blood spilled and truths buried.
At the bottom lay a chamber covered in mirrors—shards of reflective glass that pulsed faintly. Jason's reflection didn't mimic him. It bled. It spoke. "You are late."
The reflection called itself Kaelen, the Forsaken Prince—a bloodline fragment created when Jason's father fractured time to seal the original Bloodline Gate. Kaelen wasn't real. And yet… he was.
"You were supposed to be me," Kaelen said. "But your father chose a different fate. So I decayed."
As Kaelen walked through the mirror and became flesh, Jason felt a fracture in his soul. His powers flared—and something awakened. The blood seal on his neck shimmered, revealing new symbols.
"You need me," Kaelen hissed. "The Gate will not open with just truth. It demands pain. I am your pain, Jason Deynar."
Jason stumbled back. But Nyra didn't. She stepped between them, drawing her blade. "I've lost too many to shadows. I won't lose him."
Kaelen only laughed. "You already have."
In the vault of the Mirrors, Elias revealed an old recording from the Watcher War. It showed Jason's father, younger, determined, breaking the Bloodline Seal for the first time—and condemning Kaelen to be erased.
"He chose you," Elias said quietly. "But choice has a cost."
Jason struggled with the growing fracture in his mind—Kaelen's memories overlapping his own. He saw a world that might have been: one where Kaelen stood beside his father, where Nyra died young, and the Hollowborn ruled unchecked.
Maelis offered a solution: a forbidden rite called The Joining. It would merge Jason and Kaelen—fusing truth with regret.
"It's dangerous," Maelis warned. "If he overpowers you, Jason… we lose everything."
Jason stared into the mirror. Kaelen smiled back.
"I'm tired of running from what I am," Jason whispered.
The rite began under a blood moon.
Fire, water, salt, and spirit were invoked. Elias carved runes into the ancient floor. Nyra stood by Jason, gripping his hand so tightly it hurt.
Kaelen's voice echoed inside him: We were never meant to be two.
As the ritual deepened, Jason's body split between shadow and light—his form flashing with memory, blood, and spectral flame. Visions surged: his mother's final breath, Elias's last stand, the face of the true Gatekeeper—Vaelra.
Then silence.
Jason fell, unconscious. But when he rose—his eyes were no longer the same. One glowed gold, the other black.
Kaelen was gone. Absorbed. But not destroyed.
Jason stood tall.
"I remember everything now," he said. "The Gate isn't just a lock. It's a question."
And behind them, the first Hollowborn tower began to crumble, as if fearing what he had become.