The glass shattered.
It didn’t burst outward in a shower of deadly shrapnel; instead, the heavy reinforced panel disintegrated into a fine, glittering dust that hovered suspended in the golden aura radiating from the Lotus.
Through the haze, the duplicate stepped forward. Up close, the resemblance was horrifying. Every line of my face, every minor asymmetry, even the small scar along my jawline from a missed Boran block in my early training—it was all there. But where my pulse raced with adrenaline, her skin carried no flush of warmth. She moved with an eerie, weightless grace, as if gravity were merely a suggestion she chose to follow.
"Stay back!" Neak’s voice echoed down the concrete staircase, sharp and commanding. He hadn't left me. Even with the rest of the family moving up the transit tunnel, my brother stood three steps up, his weight centered in a grounded stance, his staff held ready to strike. "Sister, fall back!"
"She can't," the duplicate said. Her voice didn't come from her throat; it resonated directly inside the chamber of my chest, vibrating against the icy anchor the Lotus had forged between us. "The Golden Lotus doesn't release what it claims. Ask our grandmother."
Up above, at the landing of the staircase, Grandma Dary halted. Grandpa Kiri stood beside her, his large frame blocking the dark hallway ahead, but his head turned back toward the glow below.
"Dary," Kiri murmured, his voice laced with an old, familiar grief that had resurfaced after decades. "What did you leave behind in the old world?"
Grandma Dary’s knuckles were stark white where she gripped the iron railing. For the first time in my life, I saw her stoic posture soften into something agonizingly human. Her eyes didn't look at the monster or the broken door; they looked straight into mine.
"In 1975, when the Khmer Rouge marched into the city, we ran through the night," Grandma said, her voice trembling slightly before she caught herself, forcing the iron back into her tone. "The regime tore families apart, renamed the living, and erased the dead. In the chaos, when the earth opened and the first dark entity tried to drag us into the soil... I had to make a choice to save the bloodline. I carried the true name, and I buried the relic so they couldn't take it."
"You didn't just bury the relic," the duplicate hissed, taking another step closer to me. The golden light flared violently around us, reflecting in her empty, dark pupils. "You left the first child behind to guard it. You renamed the survivor so the darkness couldn't trace the lineage. And now, two generations later, the Lotus remembered."
The revelation hit me like a physical blow. The Golden Lotus hadn't chosen me by random luck during our escape from the rift zone. It had recognized the exact bloodline and spirit—the echo of the girl who was left in the dark so the rest of the family could escape across the border to build a new life in America.
"No one gets left behind," I whispered, the core rule of our family tasting like ash on my tongue.
"We do what we must so the next generation survives!" Grandma Dary called down, her voice breaking as she held Kiri's hand. "We built you to be strong! We gave you Boran so you would never be helpless!"
"And yet," the duplicate whispered, reaching out a pale finger toward the glowing center of the Lotus, "you couldn't save your own son from the Hollowkin. You couldn't save me."
As her finger neared the relic, the cold pressure in my chest spiked into a burning heat. The Golden Lotus unfolded its innermost petals, unleashing a blinding, shockwave of pale gold energy that slammed through the basement, throwing the duplicate back against the concrete wall and rattling the very foundations of the safehouse.
"Neak! Nimol!" I shouted, turning toward the stairs as the ceiling began to crack overhead. "Get Grandma and Grandpa to the surface! Now!"
"We fight together!" Nimol yelled from the landing, iron pipe in hand, preparing to charge back down.
"Not this time," I said, stepping firmly between my family and the rising entity in the dust. "This is between
the Lotus and me."