Velka's POV
The silence was unbearable.
Not the comforting kind that wrapped itself around your shoulders like a cloak after a long day but the other kind. The hollow, echoing silence of a sealed tomb. The kind that settled beneath your skin and whispered, This is where the forgotten rot.
The magical cell pulsed faintly around , etched with vampiric runes that buzzed like angry flies just beyond understanding. I'd stopped trying to decipher them after the first hour. The magic that held here was too ancient, too foreign. Older than , older than Aria, maybe older than the throne I had seen shatter in the mirror. It didn't hum with life it groaned with mory.
And I was losing my mind.
I paced, again, for the twelfth ti or the hundredth. It was hard to keep track. The light in the room didn't shift. There was no sun, no moon, no window. Just and the pulsing glass walls and the echo of Aria's smirk carved into my mory.
How dare she.
How dare she take my face, my voice, my life and twist it into sothing false.
And worse how dare she go to Elyzara in my place.
The thought alone made my hands shake, a cold fury thrumming through my veins. If she touched Elyzara, if she fed her lies with my face I would burn this entire dinsion down to get back to her. To Elyzara. To the only person who made this stupid, terrifying world make sense.
I leaned against the wall of the cage, breathing hard. Not crying. Not quite.
Just... thinking very loudly with my tear ducts.
[I'll get out,] I whispered to no one. To the walls. To the runes. To the part of that refused to give in.
And sothing... answered.
It wasn't a voice, not exactly. More like a presence a ripple in the air, a mory stirred. The runes flickered faintly at my touch. My na, Velka, vibrated softly through the space like a struck bell.
I blinked. Stepped back. The runes... responded?
"Say my na again," I murmured aloud, unsure if I was pleading or commanding.
They flared once, faintly. Recognition?
Okay. Okay, so maybe there was a loophole.
I reached for that ancient instinct again the one I'd ignored, the one that hadn't felt quite mine. But now, trapped here with nothing else to lose, I grabbed hold of it and pulled.
Magic erupted.
Not loud. Not explosive. But sudden, sharp. Like a blade through silk.
The rune beneath my palm sliced open. Light spilled through the crack, a line of crimson starlight that seared against the air. I didn't flinch.
I pressed both hands against it and whispered in a language I didn't know I rembered.
"Velkaria of House Nightthorn. Bound no longer."
The runes shattered.
The magic scread, walls groaning like a dying beast, then... fell silent.
My knees hit the floor. I gasped, every breath dragging fire into my lungs. My head throbbed, nose bleeding. But I was out. Out.
I looked around. The space outside the cell was barren, obsidian floors and endless darkness. But a door stood at the far end tall, arched, locked by nothing but shadow.
I stood slowly. Staggered.
My hands were shaking. But I rembered the throne room. The mirror. Elyzara's future cracked beneath her feet. And that was enough.
I walked.
The door opened without protest.
Outside, I wasn't in the school anymore. This was sowhere else. A forgotten place below the layers of Arcanum, or perhaps beyond it. Stone corridors sloped downward, lit only by ghost-lights that shimred blue and violet and whispered in voices I didn't understand.
I followed them.
My body ached. My magic sparked weakly in my chest, unsteady, barely awake. But sothing in knew where to go guided not by sight, but by instinct. Like my blood rembered the path.
After what felt like hours maybe days I reached a staircase carved into a spiraling shaft of onyx. It led up. Always a good sign.
I climbed.
Halfway up, my legs gave out, and I crawled the rest on hands and knees, pride long abandoned in favor of survival.
Finally, a trapdoor.
I slamd my fist against it.
It didn't budge.
"Open," I growled, slamming my palm flat against it.
Nothing.
I swore in three languages, kicked it once for good asure, and collapsed against the floor.
The echo of my frustration had barely faded when sothing clicked—not in the trapdoor, but in the air itself.
Magic sparked in front of like a match striking the edge of the world. A ripple shimred, then blood into a translucent screen—oval-shaped, edged with violet fla. It hovered midair, pulsing softly.
I blinked.
"...No," I muttered, dragging myself upright. "Absolutely not. You don't just conjure magical television after trauma."
But it was there.
And it was showing her.
My clone.
My not-.
She stood in a sunlit hallway of Arcanum, flanked by Mara and Elira, chatting with that ridiculous ease I never managed when I was conscious. Her laugh? Too airy. Her stride? Too smooth. She even twirled a lock of her hair my hair with flirtatious ease while glancing toward Elyzara.
My Elyzara.
They walked side by side, the clone leaning just a little too close. And Elyzara didn't notice. Of course she didn't. Why would she? The clone wore my skin like a velvet glove.
"She's flirting," I whispered, horrified. "She's weaponizing dimples."
The image shifted.
Now they were in the dining hall. The clone reached across the table offering Elyzara a slice of enchanted pear tart. I hate enchanted pear tart.
Elyzara took it with a soft, warm smile.
"Oh, this is a cri," I muttered. "I'm being impersonated with dessert."
The screen pulsed again. New angle.
Now the clone was at Elyzara's side during sparring drills, offering encouragents I'd never say. "You're doing amazing," she chirped. "You're practically glowing."
I covered my face with both hands.
"She's not ," I groaned into my palms. "I would have said, 'You almost decapitated him, I'm proud of you.'"
The screen zood slightly. Close-up on the clone as she brushed a lock of hair behind Elyzara's ear.
I scread.
The screen dimd. Flickered.
And then just before it vanished a flicker of sothing else.
The clone turned. Just slightly. As if aware she was being watched.
Her eyes t mine through the screen.
And she smiled.
That sa perfect smile that wasn't mine.
"I am going to lt her," I hissed, fury bubbling in my chest like boiling wine. "I don't care if it causes a reality rupture. She dies. Tonight."
The screen disappeared with a soft hiss of magic.
The silence returned but it wasn't hollow anymore.
Now it echoed with purpose.
My hand tightened into a fist. Blood pounded in my ears.
No one touched Elyzara.
Not like that.
And definitely not while wearing my na.
responding to my fury like it had earlier to my na. My magic my real, angry, defiant magic stirred at last.
The screen had gone, but the image of that smile hadn't. It etched itself into the backs of my eyes. Her hand brushing Elyzara's hair. Her voice saying the wrong words in my voice.
"She's not ," I whispered to the empty chamber, jaw clenched so tight it hurt. "She's a puppet in my skin."
And Elyzara had smiled at her.
The ache in my chest wasn't just anger now. It was sothing deeper sickening and sharp. Like jealousy. But not of her. Of what she'd stolen. The ti. The trust. The monts that should have been mine.
Elyzara didn't know.
Of course she didn't.
She wasn't stupid, but no one expects their closest confidante to suddenly be replaced by a doppelgänger with a sugar addiction and an unnerving grasp of flirtation.
I stood slowly, one hand pressed to the wall for balance. Every part of ached. My wrists were bruised. My head spun. But the burning in my chest steadied .
I had to get back.
I had to tell her.
But more than that I had to prove I was still . Because if I was going to punch a clone in the teeth, I needed Elyzara to know which of us had the better right hook.
The stone corridor beyond the broken cell flickered with dying runes, the magic holding this place finally collapsing. A low rumble echoed beneath my feet like the prison was aware I was leaving and very upset about it.
"Get in line," I muttered at the walls.
I reached the stairwell again this ti with more fury than energy and forced my body to climb. One painful step at a ti. Every now and then I caught my breath, blinked away sweat, and muttered a few colorful insults for Aria under my breath.
At the top, the trapdoor lood.
Still closed.
I raised my hand.
"I dare you," I growled at it.
It clicked.
I blinked. "Okay. That's more like it."
I shoved it open, ready to step into the corridor beyond—and into whatever chaos awaited .
I wasn't sure what I'd say first when I saw Elyzara. Maybe sothing dramatic. Maybe sothing awkward. Maybe I'd just collapse and let her catch like in those stories with far-too-many adjectives.
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