The resonance of the cold hand pressing against my chest didn’t vanish when the blinding flare faded; it anchored itself deep beneath my ribs, pulsing in time with my own racing heart.
I stayed on one knee, gasping for air that tasted like sulfur and ozone. The safehouse basement felt smaller now, suffocatingly tight, as if the shadow of our family’s buried past had taken up physical space alongside us.
"Get up," my brother Neak said quietly, his hand firm on my shoulder.
He didn't pull me up roughly, but the tension in his grip showed the weight of the moment. Beside him, Vannak was trembling slightly, though his stance—feet planted shoulder-width apart, knees soft in the foundational Boran guard Grandpa had drilled into us since we were old enough to walk—remained steady. Nimol had shifted slightly to cover my flank, her iron pipe held high, while Veicha stood ground near the reinforced door, his eyes locked onto the glass. Six of us, raised under the strict rule that no one gets left behind, now faced an threat that wasn't just trying to kill us—it was trying to unravel who we were.
Behind us, the Hollowkin began to crawl backward along the concrete floor, its shadowy, smoke-like limbs scraping against the stone. It let out a thin, wet hiss, completely indifferent to us for the first time since it had tracked our group across the ruined sectors. Its focus was pinned entirely on the duplicate.
"Look at it," Nimol whispered, her voice barely a breath. "It's terrified."
"Good," Grandpa Kiri said. His voice was low, heavy with the gravel of a man who had faced war, famine, and the unbearable loss of his firstborn son. He didn't step away from Grandma Dary. His hand remained resting at the small of her back, a steady anchor against the ghosts rising around us. "If it fears what's behind that door, then whatever is in there is the key."
The duplicate hadn't moved its hand from the glass. Through the reinforced pane, its eyes remained locked on mine, ignoring the creature squirming in the darkness behind us.
"The Lotus chose the wrong piece," the duplicate murmured through the intercom grid, its voice echoing with that horrible dual frequency. "Or maybe... she just gave you the name of the one who died."
Grandma Dary’s posture remained unyielding, but I saw the subtle hitch in her shoulders—the tiny, fractional movement of a woman holding back a tidal wave.
"Dary," Kiri said softly, turning his head slightly toward her. "What is it talking about?"
"It’s trying to break us before the rift expands," Dary said, her tone as hard as iron, though her fingers dug deeper into Kiri’s hand. "We move back. Now. All of you, fall back to the upper transit tunnel."
"Not without answers, Grandma," I said, rising slowly to my feet. The Golden Lotus in my hands felt heavy, its gold petals warm while the core remained icy cold against my palms. "It showed me the platform. It showed me Uncle..."
The room went dead silent. Grandpa Kiri’s breath caught in his chest. For a second, the formidable survivor who had built our family's safehouses out of salvaged rubble looked suddenly fragile, the phantom weight of his eldest son's loss striking him all over again.
"It wasn't an accident," I continued, looking directly at Grandma Dary. "The Hollowkin pushed him. But this duplicate... it knows who I am. It knows why the Lotus bound to me."
The duplicate smiled, a cold, empty stretch of lips against the glass. "She won't tell you. She buried the other child in the soil of the old country before the rifts ever had a name. Ask her what happened in 1975, wielder."
Before Dary could speak, a sharp, metallic screech echoed from the ceiling. The halogen light exploded in a shower of sparks, plunging the basement into the deep, golden glow emanating from the Lotus in my hands. The Hollowkin shrieked as the light hit its shadowy form, scrambling frantically into the ventilation shaft above and disappearing into the dark.
The duplicate didn't flinch. It pressed harder against the glass, and a hairline fracture spider-webbed across the reinforced surface.
"Run," Grandpa Kiri ordered, his instinct kicking in as he shifted to place his broad frame between the fracturing glass and his family. "Neak, take the lead! Boran guard, clear the stairs!"
Neak didn't hesitate. He grabbed Vannak and motioned for Nimol and Veicha to form a perimeter around Grandma and Grandpa. But as my family began their coordinated tactical retreat up the concrete staircase, I took one step back, my eyes fixed on the growing crack in the glass.
The cold hand in my chest pulled tight, like an invisible tether dragging me toward the door.
"I'm right behind you," I whispered to the empty room, raising the Golden Lotus as the first shard of glass hit the floor.