Rafe opened his eyes.
But he wasn't in the forest.
He wasn't in the cottage.
He wasn't anywhere recognizable.
He stood on a vast, empty plane of gray stone stretching infinitely in every direction. No sky. No horizon. No sun. Just a faint, cold glow coming from nowhere and everywhere at once.
It felt like standing inside a memory that had forgotten itself.
Rafe shivered.
"…Where am I?"
His voice echoed — not through space, but through existence itself.
A whisper answered, drifting like smoke.
"Inside."
Rafe turned sharply.
A figure emerged from the gray mist.
Not a monster.Not a shadow.Not the version of himself he saw earlier.
This one was older.
A teenager — maybe sixteen. Calm eyes. Steady posture. A face that looked like his, but sharper, colder, shaped by years of survival and battle.
Rafe's breath caught.
"…Who are you supposed to be?"
The older reflection stopped a few steps away.
"Your future."
Rafe took a step back. "That's impossible. My Shadow vanished."
"I'm not the Shadow," the older Rafe said. "He was a discarded fate. I am the fate you are trying to create."
Rafe's chest tightened. "Then why are you here?"
"To see if you're worthy of becoming me."
Rafe swallowed hard.
"I don't want to become you," he said quietly. "Not if it costs—"
"It will cost everything," the older Rafe said. "Strength always does."
The entire plane trembled as those words echoed.
"But you're not here to argue," the older Rafe continued. "You're here because your Awakening triggered early. If you can stabilize it, you live. If not…"
He gestured around them.
"…you stay here forever."
Rafe clenched his fist. "What do I have to do?"
The older Rafe snapped his fingers.
Light flared beneath them, forming a vast circle of runes that pulsed with alternating bands of white and black.
Light.Shadow.
Rafe's duel affinities.
"You must choose," the older Rafe said.
"Choose what?" Rafe asked.
"Which part of you leads. And which follows."
Rafe felt a chill crawl down his spine.
"What happens if I choose wrong?"
The older Rafe smiled — thin, cruel, knowing.
"You lose yourself."
The runes surged upward, engulfing them both.
Rafe staggered backward as waves of mana crashed over him. One side burned hot, blinding-bright, pure and sharp. The other side coiled cold, deep, heavy as night.
Light and shadow roared inside him, clashing like two storms fighting for the same sky.
Rafe screamed as the pressure bent his bones inward.
The older Rafe didn't move.
"Light demands clarity," he said. "Shadow demands truth. You cannot lie to either."
Rafe's knees buckled.
The light burned.
The shadow suffocated.
He fell forward onto his palms.
"Stop—" he gasped. "Stop!"
"You stop it," the older Rafe said. "This is your soul. Your burden."
Rafe's vision blurred.
He saw flashes—
Mara crying as she held him earlier.Lyn trembling at his side.Selene's fierce determination.The Shadow's last whisper.
Live.
He gritted his teeth, forcing himself upright.
"I'm not choosing one," he hissed.
The teen version raised an eyebrow. "Then you'll die."
"No."Rafe stared into his own older eyes."I'm choosing both."
The runes erupted like lightning.
"Impossible."The teenager's voice cracked.
Rafe screamed as both forces slammed into him at once. His body shook violently, but he didn't fall. He pushed forward.
"I'm… the one… who lived."A step."And I'll keep living."Another."Light isn't enough."Another."Shadow isn't enough."Another."But together—"
The two forces inside him surged, colliding so violently the entire plane shattered like glass.
The older Rafe staggered backward for the first time.
"Together… I become me," the younger Rafe said.
Light and shadow spiraled around him, no longer clashing — intertwining.
Balanced.
United.
Rafe stood tall.
And the teenager — his potential future — smiled.
Not cold.Not cruel.
Proud.
"You passed," he said. "Now go back."
Rafe blinked. "What happens to you?"
"I wait," the older Rafe said. "I become real only if you survive."
The plane cracked again.
Reality pulled at Rafe like a tide.
"Tell them—" he tried to speak.
But the world vanished.
Rafe's eyes snapped open.
He gasped and sat up, drenched in sweat.
Mara cried out and threw her arms around him. "Rafe! You're awake—thank the gods—!"
Lyn hugged his side, sobbing.
Selene exhaled with relief, though her eyes still gleamed with fear and awe.
Rafe looked at his hands.
They glowed faintly — white on one side. Dark on the other.
Balanced.
Alive.
And for the first time…
He wasn't afraid of either.