Chrono's Curse

The morning was colder than it should have been.Even the wind hesitated.

Alpha sat still, hand wrapped tightly around his palm where the cut from the dream remained, a thin, precise line that hadn't healed.

Selene knelt across from him, drawing strange sigils into the frost with a shard of obsidian. Her breath came out ragged and clouded, the rite clearly costing her more than she wanted to admit.

"We don't have much time," she said, voice low.

"Time for what?"

"To listen. Before it becomes irreversible. Before it no longer speaks with your voice."

Alpha looked at his reflection in Vanitas's blade. For a moment, he thought he saw something else blink back at him. Then it was gone.

Selene placed both hands into the center of the drawn circle.

"This is old magic. Banned magic. The kind that only works when you've already begun to fray."

"Fray?"

"When you're no longer sure who's the original."

He stepped into the circle.

The world did not vanish.It just tilted.

Suddenly, he stood in a space that was not a room, not a forest, not a dream, just fragments of all those things.

And across from him stood..

Him.Not quite him.

The eyes were colder. The posture more regal. Calm.Like a version of himself that had seen too much and remembered all of it.

"You're here early," the Echo said.

"What do you want?"

The Echo tilted his head.

"Want? No. I exist because you don't. I am every choice you buried. Every rage you swallowed. Every guilt you never atoned for."

The Echo stepped forward. Their movements mirrored, disturbingly perfect.

"And now you're cracking. That's why they can see me now."

"They?"

"Your companions. Your boy. Selene."

Alpha flinched.

"He saw me yesterday, you know," the Echo continued. "Saw me standing over him while you slept. He didn't scream. Just stared."

Alpha reeled back, but the Echo stepped into him..

And for a second, they were one.

He woke gasping.

The boy stood at the edge of the campfire, eyes wide, hands shaking slightly.

"You… You were talking in your sleep," he said."You said my name. But it wasn't your voice."

Alpha didn't answer.

The boy took a slow step back.

"Is it true?" he asked. "That you have a monster inside you?"

Before Alpha could respond, a horn blew in the distance.

Selene jerked upright. Her fingers twitched toward her hidden blade.

"Zealots," she said coldly."Ritual-burners. Masked in bone, wrapped in vows. They think twin-wielders are blasphemies."

"Are they wrong?" Alpha asked bitterly.

"They've survived their own Echos ," she said grimly. "And killed others to forget it."

Figures emerged from the fog. Black robes, bone masks, and weapons painted with salt and ash. They chanted as they walked:

"One soul. One shape. The mirror must shatter."

The boy cowered behind Alpha.Selene didn't move.

"If they take you, Alpha," she whispered, "they will not kill you. They will try to split you apart. And not gently."

The Echo stirred in the edges of Alpha's mind.

Let me help, it whispered.You'll die without me.

Alpha drew Vanitas.

And for the first time…

The blade whispered back.

The fire had burned low, but neither of them moved to stoke it.

Ash hung in the air like snowfall.The boy slept uneasily, curled in the farthest corner of the clearing, his small frame flinching at every rustle of wind.

Alpha sat alone.Vanitas lay beside him, its hilt untouched.

He hadn't slept since the Echo spoke with his mouth.

"You'll die without me."

The words still clung to him like smoke.

His hands trembled.

He flexed his fingers slowly, staring at the skin. Every scar felt unfamiliar now. Every breath came with doubt. He tried to summon a memory from his childhood—just one—but what came instead was a scene of a village on fire, a mother's scream he didn't recognize, a name that wasn't his.

Who am I, if my memories might not be mine?

He leaned forward, elbows to knees, and let the silence take him.

Until...

"You remind me of him," Selene said softly from the edge of the camp.

Alpha turned. She stood in the shadows, half-lost to the night, arms folded tightly across her chest.

"Of who?"

"My Echo."

She walked to the fire and sat across from him, careful not to look at Vanitas. Her face was tired older in ways time couldn't measure.

"I killed her. Or thought I did."

"You thought?"

Selene nodded.

"I performed the ritual. Blade through the heart, beneath a twin moon. I burned her name. Buried her face. But I still see her. Every night. Sometimes in reflections. Sometimes in the choices I make."

She looked directly at him then.

"The Echo never dies. You just change places with it."

Alpha swallowed hard.

"So… I'm losing?"

Selene shook her head.

"You're changing.""But losing? That depends on which part of you wants to survive."

There was a long pause. The fire popped between them, sending a stray ember spiraling skyward.

"Do you regret it?" Alpha asked. "Killing her?"

Selene didn't speak for a while.

Then:

"No.""But I regret… who I became to survive it."

Later that night, Alpha lay awake, staring up at the stars.

The boy murmured in his sleep, whispering a name Alpha didn't recognize.

Alpha turned over.

His mind wandered.

He saw:

His hands soaked in blood.

The boy screaming, not from pain, but fear of him.

Selene's body, cold and still, Vanitas plunged through her chest.

And finally… himself, watching from the shadows. Calm. Smiling.

Alpha sat up, heart pounding.

A whisper brushed his ear, soft as breath:

"We are not so different, you and I. You just haven't made the hard choice yet."

He looked around.

No one was there.