My blade passed through the warrioress’s ghastly body, severing the shadowlight that bound her together in that shattered state. The light broke as if caught in a prism, dissipating into small, misty geysers of green and silver. Fragments of glass rained onto the floor, each one holding a frozen sliver of the woman’s reflection.

  I picked one up.

  It stared back at me with an eye suspended in stasis. Brown, full of hope and still unbroken by the line that had shattered her vision and forced her to see the world as it truly was. Or at least as it appeared behind the veil of illusions and lies.

  I hadn’t wanted to kill her. But I wasn’t na?ve enough to believe there had been another option once my cover was blown. Between her and Jason, the choice was as clear as the glass in my hand.

  And now that she lay scattered in pieces, I could finally get to saving my poor damsel from the trouble his lovely outlook on life and I had landed him in.

  As all of this occurred, Nick continued his quiet conversation with Joan. Their responses were surprisingly gentle—comforting him, assuring him that Jason would reach out sooner than later, telling him not to worry. It caught me off guard.

  If only they knew what was really happening here, they might not have sounded so certain.

  I focused on my situation though by summoning a bag I’d stitched together the day before as preparation. It was made of blue velvet crossed with yellows and oranges, meant to mimic Van Gogh’s Starry Night. A painting I adored. I’d declared it art and painted its image into my spellbook so it would be ready to teleport.

  It appeared in my outstretched hand in an instant, along with all the deadly contents inside. I was indebted to Phillip for those. He’d been more than happy to supply them when I called him yesterday, and unsurprisingly, he’d had a rather generous stash lying around, ready to explode whenever the situation called for it.

  I unpacked the prepared C4 and planted charges around the room, placing one each near the pools holding the two Jasons. I tucked the remote detonator back into my paints bag and, finally ready to proceed, stepped between the two strange, bath-like crystalline protrusions to look down at the Jasons inside.

  The first thing I tried was touching both of them, willing them away, but the opposition was far too strong. An image pushed into my mind instead. Something ongoing. A process continuing.

  I stepped back to reassess, splitting my focus while listening in on the sounds coming from the courtroom where Peter was.

  “They’re ready for the verdict,” he whispered. “They all look scared as three hells. I don’t think it’s going to be anything we’d hope to hear.”

  Those pesky Shattered probably had people planted on the jury. Why wouldn’t they, if they could be anyone? They seemed determined to reach into every organization possible. Even my humble one-person, multidimensional operation hadn’t been spared. They’d even dealt with those EoT mages, despite having kidnapped their chief engineer. The only thing that could stop them from interfering would be the power of the justice Goddess herself, because I was sure that she wouldn’t consider it just if the jury was compromised.

  Which meant I had only one choice.

  I had to break whatever was happening in here before the verdict made it impossible.

  And as I stood there thinking, it hit me like a sledgehammer made of thoughts layered with realization. Those EoT mages I’d just thought about. I remembered them talking in front of the One World Trade Tower. Among them was that biology domain mage dr. Jugger who’d sparred with Rhythm, speaking with some of the Shattered I didn’t recognize.

  That wasn’t my memory. Even though it sat in my head, it belonged to Malik. A residue left behind from when this brain had been his, not mine. It seemed I had access to other fragments too, impressions etched deep enough to linger.

  Something to explore later.

  If later ever came, and the present didn’t grind me into paste first.

  I knelt and reached for the umbilical cords. They were cold, rigid, clearly part of the floor itself, and they didn’t budge no matter how much strength I put into them. Shadowlight flowed inside, and only then did I notice the direction. It was moving one way, from the Jason on the right toward his counterpart on the left.

  I tried cutting through with Ghostflame. The blade stopped dead against the glassy exterior of the cord and refused to push through, no matter how hard I pressed.

  I stood and ran to the left vessel, leaning over it to study the man inside. He was naked, probably completely, though parts of his body were covered in a partially fluid, mercurial film that rippled into jagged glass shapes, as if something struck the center and sent waves outward. His arms lay at his sides, not restrained, so I tried to move them.

  “We, the jury, decide,” I heard as I struggled with his body. Aside from his arms, upper torso, and head, he was completely fused with the mirror pool. “We find the defendant, Solitary Twin,” the voices continued as I ran to the second Jason and tried everything in my power to pull him free as well, “liable. We however find the person named Jason Smith to be uneven and therefore divinely a property of the Solitary Twin for as long as Jason Smith remains alive.”

  They went on, and an idea began to bloom in my head.

  “Marcus Smith, however, is to be paid thirty million dollars in damages for the loss of his only son.”

  “This bastard of a god created a mouth for himself just so he could smile at the crowd gathered here,” Peter whispered. “He’s a very creepy entity.”

  He finished just as something shifted in the room around me.

  Every reflective surface flared with shadowlight, and the cords along the floor began pumping more of it than before. The Jason on the left started to contort in silent pain, his face twisting into something horrific. His skin slowly began to coat itself in that mercurial film, reflecting everything around him.

  I realized then that the process of becoming Shattered had finally begun. I also thought that if I killed the Shadow Jason, it would legally have to stop, according to the jury’s decision.

  The problem was, I wasn’t sure I could, in good conscience, decide which one of them was the real one, and to make matters worse, my time was running dangerously low.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Only one of the Jasons was changing. The one being pumped full of shadowlight from his twin. Usually, that meant this was the shadowed one. After all, those were the ones who underwent the change. His face was relaxed, eyes open, though there were no signs of anyone actually being behind them. He stared into the distance. His eyes were slightly squinted, and his mouth followed that shape, the corners lifted into a hesitant but honest smile. His hair was in disarray. His chin and the rest of his exposed body were clean-shaven, but already being overtaken by reflective surfaces, smooth and jagged alike.

  I moved to the other one.

  This one was calm and unmoving as well, but his equally vacant face was frozen in a grimace of displeasure. Lips pressed tight, muscles contorted, brows furrowed, eyes slightly closed. His skin was bare too, but covered with black hair, as if he hadn’t shaved in weeks.

  “Fuck!” I shouted, backing away from both of them.

  [You are not sure.]

  No shit. That was an understatement.

  Jason had body hair the last time we had sex. I remembered that very clearly. But he could have shaved, and the shadow might have been left as it was. That wasn’t definitive. The one being overtaken by that overeager mirror was smiling, so maybe he’d been happy at the moment they froze him. But why would either of them be? Maybe that expression was just a side effect of the change itself.

  And the process? It could have been the real Jason changing, absorbing his shadowed twin. Or the Shadow undergoing transformation to be fused into Jason later.

  [Any option is possible. I agree. But only one of them loved you. Can’t you check for that in some way?]

  “I can’t believe I am going to do that,” I said as I rushed to the one already undergoing the change. He had to be first. The glass was creeping up his neck now.

  I leaned in close and gently pressed my lips to his, making sure his absent eyes caught at least a glimpse of my face as I did it. Not that it looked much like my real one. I didn’t have time to strip the makeup off, so don’t judge.

  I pulled back and watched him for a second. Nothing changed.

  So I moved to the other one. I leaned over the crystalline bathtub, looked into his green eyes locked in that angry grimace, and went in for the kiss.

  I heard it, thanks to the rabbit ears sticking out of my hood, sharpening my senses. His heartbeat sped up for a few seconds during the contact.

  Was that enough to decide? Probably not.

  But Noxy was already in my outstretched hand, summoned straight from my Domain and aimed at the changing Jason. Leveled at his face, which I watched through the painted side-eyes on my hood, because I didn’t have it in me to turn my head and look with my real ones.

  I pressed the trigger lightly.

  My heart started pounding, hesitation clawing in at the last second. I shouldn’t do this. I knew I shouldn’t. I could just leave him. Let that foreign god finish what it started. He’d be alive.

  But different.

  Other.

  Alien.

  Stripped of his will.

  Forever?

  I squeezed the trigger all the way.

  First came the light, erupting and tearing the darkness apart. Then the thunder, released and deafening. Finally, flesh and bone gave way where the shot landed.

  Blood and brain splattered across the glass and mirror behind him as the change kept crawling up his neck, where a face no longer existed.

  “It didn’t work?” I asked out loud.

  But it did. I realized that just a moment later. If the real Jason had been hit, the shadow would’ve simply disappeared, no longer being dreamt by its caster.

  I released a breath and willed the Jason closest to me into my Domain.

  The place answered with a very clear, very blunt: fuck you, Alexa. All you’ve done was for nothing. He is staying.

  I swallowed.

  “Judge Justice is making the confirmation of the verdict. You’re almost out of time,” Peter whispered doom straight into my ears.

  “What should I do?” I asked out loud, directing my words toward the friend stuck inside my soul. “I’m running out of options.”

  [Maybe the process is still ongoing? Removing the Shadow Jason might be the move?]

  But I already killed him! I shouted inside my own head, pacing frantically. What else could I have done?

  The answer from my creative brain came before the question finished forming.

  I rushed to the crystalline bathtub, reaching for both Liora—taking him out of my Domain—and the brown and black spray cans. “Help me paint over this glass, please!” I shouted at him, pleading clear in my eyes. “We don’t have much time, so follow my moves.” I steadied my voice once I saw my lóng was ready.

  We both fell into a painting frenzy almost immediately, layering tone after tone, hue after hue, color after color. The goal was simple and impossible at the same time. Make this mound of broken glass and mirror—the one that still held the dead Shadow Jason inside— look close enough to earth that my verisimilitude sense, backed by my soulmark of trueform, would accept it as such.

  When the browns and blacks finally settled, we moved on to details. Lio worked the base, adding the suggestion of roots poking out here and there, stones half-buried in dirt. I focused on the film coating the body itself, reshaping it to resemble freshly turned soil, sprinkling in blades of grass and small pebbles to seal the illusion.

  When we were done, I jumped back and, with sheer force of will reinforced by my Authority, reached for the thing we had painted and commanded it to become earth.

  I dropped to my knees as resistance slammed into me.

  It did not want to be what I was asking.

  It felt like a god’s body, because it was one. Its skin was the mirror of lakes, of glass and polished surfaces. Its blood was water and mercury. Its hair was broken glass and ice. A giant’s Authority, woven deep into the concepts this reality accepted, and I stood against it here, on a plane hidden from perception.

  The struggle wasn’t physical. It happened somewhere within the souls’ space we occupied. Still, the pain, the pressure, the sheer mental weight of it drove me to all fours. It pressed harder and harder, forcing me down as its gravity became unbearable.

  But suffering was familiar to me by then.

  So I endured.

  I became a small, stubborn stream that didn’t know any better, drilling its way into a mountain over countless eons. And with every passing second of pushing back against a god itself, I realized I was learning him. Each realization made my power stronger, by virtue of the voidling properties it had been given.

  There was a feeling of being alone. Of being stranded.

  Torn away from my own reflection.

  No! It wasn’t the reflection.

  What those people were being deprived of was something deeper. Something rooted in the inner workings of the world itself.

  Broken in halves, we were.

  Separated by the veil between worlds, we drifted away from each other. Forced to live without that other half, we couldn’t bear the strain life put on us, and so we broke. Like mirrors.

  Scattered and unable to pull ourselves together, we fought a hopeless battle. And it was those uneven, shattered people he sought with his divine sight, forcing them into wholeness again. Melting the pieces back together against the brokenness the worlds had created.

  Benevolent, yet absolute.

  With no room for doubt about the righteousness of his own way.

  I provided a second option.

  My soul surged, supported by the force of my Authority as an artist and a master of identity and connection. People had every right to be broken. To not be forced into something they imagined they would be if they were whole again. There was beauty in things that existed in pieces. There was art in it. In recognizing one is broken. In accepting it. In moving on and rearranging those pieces. Finding new connections between them and setting new paths.

  This was my way.

  And no god would tell me that I, or anyone else, didn’t have the right to follow it!

  I breathed hard as my consciousness pulled free from the soul realm. The room blazed with shadowlight, the god’s presence saturating every surface within the walls. Every surface except the small, painted mound of earth that held the shadow I had killed.

  My identity was accepted.

  But the body was still there. Waiting.

  [For a prayer?] Anansi chimed in.

  “From ash to flesh, from flesh to ash, what didn’t rapture return to earth must,” I whispered as I begun standing up. My lungs burned, my chest heavy with exertion. I knew it wasn’t exactly what I’d heard days ago. I hadn’t paid enough attention to remember the precise wording. But I understood now, deeply, that in Ideworld, intent mattered more than memory.

  My intent was clear.

  “From ash to flesh, from flesh to ash, what didn’t rapture return to earth must,” I repeated.

  “From ash to flesh, from flesh to ash, what didn’t rapture return to earth must!”

  As I shouted, I borrowed the world’s Authority, the one that allowed a body to be moved away so another could be born. The Shadowed Jason dissolved into a puff of mist-like shadowlight, which sank into and was absorbed by the ground I had created for him.

  And as he vanished, I heard the wail.