CHAPTER 1230: AFFLICTION’S AFFECTION (3).

Kade’s chest tightened—his counterpart manipulated the space the same way the imprint had twisted memory. Except now it wasn’t showing anything. It was pushing.

Pressure closed in on his ribs like invisible hands squeezing.

Kade staggered back. "You’re not supposed to attack. Seren said—"

The double’s voice sharpened.

"Seren is not here."

The pressure intensified. His vision blurred at the edges.

"You are fracturing. You refuse to accept yourself. So I will break the parts you reject."

Kade forced a breath in. "Try."

The shard’s light rippled through his arm and burst outward in a short pulse. The pressure shattered like brittle glass.

The double blinked once—expression still calm, but the void flickered behind him.

Kade rolled his shoulders and steadied his stance. "If you’re supposed to be the ideal version of me, you’re doing a terrible job."

"I am not an ideal," the double said. "I am the path without pain. Without loss. Without guilt. You could have had peace."

Kade barked a short, sharp laugh. "Peace is a lie. Doesn’t matter what life I lived, I’d still end up making mistakes."

"You cling to suffering as if it makes you meaningful."

"No," Kade said. "I cling to responsibility. If that feels like suffering to you, that says a lot."

The double’s expression twitched—for the first time showing something that wasn’t calm certainty.

"You speak of responsibility," it said softly. "Yet you keep running. Every major turning point in your life, you chose escape."

Pain flashed through Kade’s chest. He didn’t deny it.

The double pressed.

"And you will run again. When the anchors fall. When the Interstice collapses. When the First Light calls you its vessel. You will run because you always do."

Kade met its eyes head-on. "I didn’t run from you."

The double stopped. Its outline wavered.

The void around them split into streaks of white and black. The air hummed with rising pressure.

Kade stepped forward until they stood only a few feet apart. "I’m scared. Sure. But I’m still here. You think I don’t know what I could’ve been? I do. I think about it all the time." His jaw tightened. "But I can’t live in a past that never existed."

The double trembled—light fracturing off its form like cracked porcelain.

"You do not understand," it whispered. "If I break, the Interstice breaks. If I fall apart, so do you."

Kade gripped the shard tighter. "Then stop fighting me."

"I am not your enemy."

"So stop acting like it."

A long pause.

The void dimmed.

Then the double said, "Show me."

"Show you what?"

"Show me that you accept me."

Kade swallowed hard. This felt like another trap, but instinct told him he was at the edge of something critical. One wrong move and the Interstice could unravel under him.

He took a slow breath.

Then he stepped forward and reached out his hand.

The double hesitated—but placed its palm against his.

Light detonated.

Not a blast.

A merging.

Memories collided—his pain, his regrets, his triumphs, his failures, all slamming together with the paths he never walked.

He felt it all.

The weight.

The longing.

The resentment.

The acceptance.

His double dissolved into golden light that flowed into his chest and settled there like a heated coal.

Kade gasped and dropped to one knee.

The shard blazed in his grip, nearly white. Resonance roared through his body like a tidal wave.

A voice—not the imprint’s—spoke from everywhere at once.

Anchor secured.

The void shattered.

---

Kade’s eyes snapped open. He was back in the Interstice—on the tower platform, sunlight bleeding through fractured clouds. Seren stood over him, face tight with restrained urgency.

"You stabilized," she said. "The Interstice felt it. The imprint has merged."

Kade pushed himself upright, chest still heaving. "It was... intense."

"It should have been impossible," Seren said quietly. "Yet you keep doing the impossible."

The porcelain fox hopped onto his shoulder, tail flicking. Kade stroked its head absently, staring at the shard now embedded faintly in his palm like a second pulse.

"So that’s two anchors done," he said. "What’s next?"

Seren turned toward the sky. Cracks of light streaked through the clouds like fractures in glass.

"The First Light has awakened," she said. "And the final anchor—the Crown Path—has begun to take shape."

Kade rose fully, steadying himself.

"Lead the way."

Seren nodded once. "Follow closely. The next step will test you far more than the imprint ever could."

The storm above the citadel wouldn’t settle. Lightning split the cloudbank in violent, silent flashes, each burst tracing the outline of the Watchtower’s fractured apex as if the sky were trying to sketch its own crime scene. The walls trembled under every pulse of wind. The whole world felt like it was leaning toward collapse yet refusing to commit.

Elias braced himself against a fallen column as the floor pitched again. The quake wasn’t natural—he could hear the resonant hum in it, the same frequency he’d felt the moment he tore himself free of the rift. His body still ached from that escape. His veins still burned with that strange, uninvited brightness, something left behind by whatever had tried to drag him deeper.

But he’d made it out. Alive. Breathing. Present.

And now he had a problem.

The citadel around him wasn’t empty. He could hear voices—distant, echoing, too many to count. Some sounded human. Others didn’t.

He pushed off the column and forced himself upright. Dust fell from his coat. The new mark on his forearm—the thin, branching streak of white fire—glowed faintly through the grime. He kept it covered as much as he could. He didn’t know what it meant. He didn’t want anyone else to know he had it.

A sharp, clipped voice rang out from the corridor ahead.

"Keep formation. If anything moves that isn’t us, signal immediately. The Watcher’s aura hasn’t dissipated yet."

Elias froze. Soldiers. Not the enemy—human, by the sound of them—but that didn’t mean safety. Humans loyal to the Fallen Angels could be as dangerous as any corrupted seraph.

He moved toward the shadows behind a toppled archway and stayed low as the squad marched past. Six of them, armored in silver and obsidian, masks shaped like stylized wings. Enforcers. Servants of the Fallen.

They were searching for survivors.

Or for him.