Natalia City's streets had changed in a century, but the rot was the same — just perfumed and painted over. Spiritlamps now floated midair in enchanted glass, casting ever-shifting hues across buildings reinforced with rune-etched steel.
Hover-carriages zipped overhead, drawn by elemental spirits bound in golden harnesses. Street vendors peddled memory-infused nectar, whisper-crystals, and bottled time along sidewalks washed clean with illusion magic.
And yet beneath all the advancement, the gutters still ran with fear.
Natalia walked through Wraith Alley, an old corridor of the city once reserved for rebel meetings and forbidden trade. Now, it pulsed with life — both criminal and cursed. Glimmering signs blinked in forgotten languages above boarded doors. A blind fortune teller mouthed words in reverse as passersby tossed spirit coins into her copper bowl.
But Natalia wasn't sightseeing.
Her mind replayed that brief moment again and again — the girl outside The Binding Vow bookstore. The eyes. The curve of the cheek. The expression that was hers and not hers.
A perfect copy… or a mistake.
She turned into a side passage and entered a crumbling warehouse, one of her old safehouses.
Her boots echoed against stone as her shadow stretched ahead, flickering with the blue glow of spirit braziers that still burned, undisturbed after all these years.
She slid a rune-key into the wall, and a hidden door opened with a hiss. Inside: her old war room.
Maps littered the walls.
Threads of fate, once pinned and tangled, hung loose now.
She crossed the room to a sealed drawer and retrieved a thick leather file marked PROJECT ECHO.
A tremor of cold ran through her fingers.
She hadn't opened it since the purge.
Inside, it was worse than she remembered.
"Clones. Vessels. Soul mirroring…"
Natalia whispered the terms aloud, her voice laced with disgust. She pulled out a diagram — two figures side-by-side, identical in every measurable way, labeled N.T. and H.T.
"Hope Taylor," she murmured.
She flipped the parchment. The name came with a birth record from a spirit-genetic lab that had supposedly been destroyed fifty years ago.
"No record of a mother. No father. Born through... artificial soul-weaving?" Her brows furrowed.
Someone hadn't just made a copy of her face. They'd engineered a bloodline from it.
Just then, the spirit flame in the far corner flared violently.
Natalia's eyes snapped up.
A shadow moved — and then a familiar voice filled the air, smooth as silver.
"You're reading old sins like bedtime stories again."
She turned fast, blade half-drawn, before stopping.
Duke Silver stood by the staircase, his cloak damp with rain, his eyes glowing faintly with compressed time magic.
"I told you not to follow me," Natalia said, stepping between him and the file.
"I wasn't following," Duke said, voice calm, "I was observing. There's a difference."
Natalia narrowed her eyes. "This timeline's already on fire, isn't it?"
Duke sighed and stepped forward, his boots leaving faint prints of light in his wake. "Yes. But not because of you."
Natalia let out a quiet laugh, dry as ash.
"That's a first."
Duke's face softened. "You don't have to do this alone anymore."
"I've been alone since the Kims branded children like cattle. Since John Kim called me a weapon. Since I carved his throat open and watched the light go out of his eyes."
She looked him dead on. "You think I can come back from that?"
"I think," Duke said, "you were always more human than you pretended."
Natalia didn't answer.
Instead, she turned the file toward him and jabbed a finger at Hope's name.
"You knew about her," she said. "Didn't you?"
Duke didn't deny it. "I suspected. Her presence in the weave has always been... hazy. And now that she's awakened—"
"She hasn't," Natalia snapped. "She can't."
"Oh, she's starting to." Duke's gaze was far away now, his fingers tightening around a small silver compass. "The Ancient Magic Constitution is responding. The seal you helped put in place is cracking."
Natalia stiffened.
"You said she wouldn't awaken unless she was in mortal danger."
"I said she shouldn't," Duke corrected. "But timelines are unraveling. The demonhound tonight? That wasn't a random strike. It was sent."
Natalia's voice lowered. "Sent by who?"
"I don't know." Duke paused. "But I can feel a ripple."
"A ripple?"
"In time. In fate. The kind that only happens when an Immortal takes interest in a mortal vessel."
Natalia turned away, hands clenched.
"I swore I'd never let them twist another soul like they twisted mine."
"She's not you, Natalia."
"No. But she wears my face. And the world won't care about the difference."
Elsewhere in the city…
Hope sat in her apartment, trembling.
The pendant at her neck — an old family heirloom she'd never removed — was now hot against her skin. The mirror in her bedroom lay shattered, a glowing rune visible beneath the shards.
She pressed a towel against her cut hand, heart still racing.
The bookstore attack replayed in her mind over and over. That thing. That woman.
Why did she look like her? Why did she move like her?
And why, even now, did Hope feel her presence in her bones — like a thundercloud over the horizon?
Her best friend, Cleo, pounded at the door.
"Hope! Open up! I saw the news — there was a demon attack near your store!"
Hope let her in.
Cleo gasped the moment she saw Hope's bloody hand. "Spirit above—what happened?"
"There was this… thing," Hope whispered. "And a woman who saved me. She looked just like me."
Cleo froze. "Like a sister?"
"No. Exactly. Like me. Like a mirror."
Cleo sat down slowly. "Hope, this… might be crazy, but you remember those weird readings you used to get during health scans? The spirit tech always thought you were a mage, but you never tested positive for Spirit Affinity?"
"Yeah. What about it?"
"What if it wasn't that you don't have Spirit Affinity… what if you have too much?"
Hope blinked.
"That doesn't make sense."
Cleo bit her lip. "My cousin works for the Mage Registry. He told me once about a case — a girl born with something called an Ancient Magic Constitution. They erased the file, but he said it scared even the Immortals. Said if she ever awakened, she could rival gods."
Hope laughed nervously. "So, what, I'm some kind of superweapon?"
"I'm saying maybe you were hidden for a reason."
Hope stood, pacing. "That's ridiculous. I'm nobody. I run a shop. I make spirit-infused coffee and sell old spellbooks to collectors."
The pendant around her neck gave a sudden pulse.
And then…
A knock at the door.
Three slow taps.
Then silence.
Hope and Cleo froze.
"You expecting someone?" Cleo whispered.
Hope shook her head.
She moved to the door slowly, hand hovering near the handle.
"Don't," Cleo warned. "It could be whoever sent that thing after you earlier."
Hope reached for the knob anyway.
Because something inside her was burning.
A whisper in her mind.
Open the door.
As her fingers touched the doorknob, time slowed.
On the other side, someone waited — a presence so vast, so wrong, that the air itself bent around it.
Hope opened the door.
And the shadow smiled back at her.