Chapter Six: The Moment the Light Split
My hand was raised, the black dagger trembling between my fingers as if it were a living creature refusing to be held. My shadow stood before me, steady, his features a distorted copy of mine — yet he seemed far calmer than I expected.
The entire city was silent, watching. Even the darkness itself felt as though it were holding its breath.
I lifted the dagger higher, until it hovered a thread's width from his chest, and in that moment — that moment no longer than a heartbeat — I felt the world freeze.
I said, my voice shaking:
"If I kill you… I'll be killing myself."
He replied coldly, "Or maybe… you'll be restoring yourself."
I was about to speak, but he suddenly raised his hand and gripped my wrist tightly. I felt no pain — only something worse… the feeling that my hand had become two hands, that my body had become two bodies, as though my identity itself was splitting.
My shadow said:
"Before you end everything… you must know the truth they hid from you… even from me."
And then something happened that I did not expect.
Instead of pushing my hand away…
he pushed the dagger into himself.
I screamed, "No—!"
But the dagger sank into his chest.
Sank deep.
And a sound — one that belonged to neither of us — erupted through the void. A scream… a scream that tore the sky apart.
Light exploded — not white, not black, but a strange mixture resembling the color of memory itself: a shade between gold and ash.
A tremendous force hurled me backward, rolling me across ground that had become cold and solid.
But the most terrifying thing wasn't the explosion…
It was that my shadow didn't fall.
He stood upright, the dagger buried in his chest, and he smiled.
A smile more frightening than all the darkness around us.
He said quietly, "I needed this stab… to become real."
Then he pulled the dagger from his chest, and not a single drop of blood fell. The wound closed on its own as if it had never been there.
Something terrible was happening — not just to me… but to the entire city. The ground shifted, invisible walls cracked open, and the shadows around us began to scream in voices that sounded almost human. The city trembled like a dying creature.
I struggled to stand, staring at him. "What have you done?!"
He answered without hesitation: "You freed me. I was a shadow… now I'm something else."
I stepped back, but the place around me changed suddenly, as if the darkness were turning into images, and the images into memories.
I saw myself in the past, sitting with the other six around a large table, each face twisted with fear.
One of them… a man with white hair… was shouting:
"If we leave him here… he will transform. The shadows will consume him."
And I was the first to say:
"It's better to imprison him. He cannot be killed… but he must never get out."
My shadow spoke now, his voice trembling:
"You always knew what I was. I'm not just a shadow… I was the power all of you feared."
He took one step — only one — but the ground beneath him cracked from its force.
He said:
"This city isn't what you think. It wasn't built to keep secrets… it was built to imprison me."
The words shook inside me.
He continued:
"You were the one who said: Let the shadow sleep. But you didn't understand that a shadow… does not sleep."
I stretched out my hand like someone trying to stop a flood.
"Wait. You're saying we… we built the city to be your prison?"
He let out a soft laugh.
"Finally, you begin to see the truth. You seven… wanted to control the shadows. You wanted to extract from me a power you needed. So you locked me here… and turned the city into my body."
I tried to remember, tried hard, and the images grew clearer…
Secret meetings, experiments, a desire to create a force that would protect the world from threats… then something went out of control.
Something born from within us that we didn't know how to stop.
My shadow said:
"And you… you were the closest to me. You shaped me. You gave me form… and name."
I said in shock, "Name? What name?"
He stepped closer, his eyes beginning to glow with a faint red light:
"The name you don't remember. The name erased from your memory when you ran.
The name that makes me more than a shadow."
Then he spoke the word that made the ground tremble beneath him:
"My name… is Lurasin."
When he uttered the name, the air around us split open.
Shadowy human-like figures rose from the ground, screaming, in pain, as if they'd been imprisoned for years.
Every corner of the city — from the square to the alleys — began collapsing like burning paper.
I shouted at him:
"If you escape… the entire city will collapse!"
He said:
"It was built to collapse the day I reclaim my name."
Then he pointed at the massive rift behind him:
"And when it collapses… I will walk into the world."
I stepped forward.
"I won't let you do that!"
He raised his hand — and suddenly the air grew heavy.
I couldn't move.
I was trapped inside my own body.
"You cannot stop me," he said.
"You created me… but I no longer belong to you."
Then he lifted the black dagger… but now it had changed shape.
It grew… lengthened… turning back into its original form.
The Blade of Shadow.
"There are only two ways to end this story," he said.
"Either I enter the world…
or you kill me with the blade that created me."
His eyes glowed with a terrifying light:
"But beware… if you kill me, you kill yourself.
Because I am part of you.
Because you are me."
I gritted my teeth.
"If the choice is between one death… or the fall of the world…
then I know what I must do."
With a strength I did not know I had… I broke free.
I leapt toward him.
I seized the blade.
I raised it with everything left inside me.
But before I could strike…
He lifted his hand and touched my forehead with the tips of his fingers.
And he gave me something…
something I was not prepared for.
A memory.
A complete memory.
I saw the whole truth — the true creation of the City of Shadows, the truth of Lurasin, the truth of the fear we created with our own hands, the truth of the guilt I had erased from my soul.
And at that moment…
The blade slipped from my hand.
It fell as I stared at him…
Realizing that what I was about to kill…
wasn't just my enemy.
It was something far greater.
Something that — if it fell —
the whole world would fall with it.