Chapter 65: Which Am I, I Wonder?

Cyrus tore through the darkness, rage fueling each desperate stride.

The labyrinth twisted around him, stone corridors stretching impossibly long as the creature dragged Kane deeper into the shadows.

"Kane!" His voice echoed, returning hollow and distorted.

Crimson energy gathered in his palm.

He hurled a bolt of dragonfire, the flames illuminating the passage ahead—but they passed harmlessly through the retreating shadow, splashing against stone walls.

The creature paused, turning Kane’s face toward him—but the features began to shift.

Kane’s amber eyes bled into Elias’s cold gaze, lips curling into that familiar smirk.

"Too slow, as always," Elias’s voice taunted.

Cyrus launched forward, throwing a shockwave that shattered the floor beneath them.

The magic rippled through the darkness like water, achieving nothing.

The shadow morphed again—now wearing Cyrus’s own face, eyes burning with malice.

"This is what you truly are," his doppelg?nger snarled, voice layered with ancient power.

Cyrus faltered, the corridor stretching and contracting around him. The walls breathed like living tissue.

Was Kane ever here? Had he imagined their reunion?

The seal on his chest pulsed, but even that sensation felt suspect now. The labyrinth was dissolving the boundary between reality and illusion.

Cyrus stumbled forward as the corridor warped.

The stone beneath his feet liquefied and then hardened into a perfect circle—the same tiles, the same torch brackets, the same wooden door.

He pushed through the door and froze. Kane stood in his penthouse, packing his belongings.

"I’m leaving," Kane said flatly. "The Bureau assigned me elsewhere. The bond was never real."

Cyrus reached for him, but Kane disintegrated into ash.

Another door appeared. Cyrus charged through.

Kane lay bleeding on warehouse concrete, just as they’d first met. But this time, when Cyrus knelt beside him, Kane’s eyes widened in terror.

"You did this," Kane whispered, blood bubbling between his lips. "You’re the one who—"

The scene dissolved. Another door. Another nightmare.

Kane trapped in dragon’s fire. Kane walking away with Elias. Kane’s body discarded like refuse after the bond killed him.

Door after door after door.

The corridor merely stretched longer, more doors materializing, each promising a fresh horror.

"Enough!" he roared, his voice shredding into draconic registers.

His fist, wreathed in crimson energy, slammed into the nearest wall. Stone crumbled, ancient magic shrieking in protest as reality itself fractured beneath the blow.

He stumbled through the breach, expecting more illusions—more torments.

Instead, he found himself in a sunlit clearing.

The weight of familiar armor pressed against his shoulders—dragon scales harvested from his own molted skin centuries ago, forged with enchantments no modern craftsman remembered.

A figure stood with his back turned, silver-white hair catching the light.

Not Kane as Cyrus had last seen him, but older—weathered by time and experience.

"You’re late," the man said without turning. His voice was Kane’s but deeper, tempered by years Cyrus hadn’t witnessed.

Recognition slammed into Cyrus like a physical blow. The stance, the slight tilt of the head—he had seen this version of Kane before, centuries ago, in another life.

"How is this possible?" Cyrus whispered, his armor creaking as he stepped forward.

The older Kane turned, amber eyes crinkling with familiar mischief despite the new lines around them.

"You’ve been chasing me across lifetimes, dragon. Did you think this labyrinth could keep us apart now?"

Cyrus stood frozen, unable to reconcile the Kane before him with the memories scattered across centuries.

This older version wore confidence like a second skin, so different from the impulsive agent he’d been bonded to.

"This isn’t real," Cyrus managed, though doubt threaded through his words.

The older Kane laughed, the sound achingly familiar.

"The labyrinth shows what we fear—and what we hope for. Which am I, I wonder?"

He approached Cyrus with measured steps, no trace of the clumsiness that so often plagued the Kane that Cyrus knew.

When he reached out, his fingers brushed against Cyrus’s chest, where the karmic seal pulsed beneath fabric and skin.

"You need to find him," the older Kane said, his expression sobering.

"How?" Cyrus demanded. "I’ve tried—"

"With this." Kane’s hand pressed firmly against Cyrus’s chest.

The clearing began to dissolve around them, sunlight fragmenting into darkness.

"Find me," the older Kane whispered as he faded. "Like you always do."

Cyrus stood alone in the fading vision of the older Kane, the words still echoing in his mind.

The karmic seal on his chest pulsed with heat, no longer just a bond of obligation but something deeper—a tether across time itself.

He closed his eyes, pressing his palm against the seal.

For the first time since it appeared, Cyrus didn’t fight the connection—he embraced it, reaching through the magical current that linked them.

"Kane," he whispered, pouring his will into the bond.

The labyrinth trembled around him.

Stone walls groaned as Cyrus channeled his draconic energy into the seal, illuminating pathways of crimson light that spread outward like veins through rock.

Across the chamber, Kane felt a sudden warmth flood his chest as the seal glowed beneath his shirt.

"Cyrus?" Kane gasped.

The crimson light pulsed, once, twice—a heartbeat calling to its mate.

He stumbled forward, following the pull of the seal through twisting corridors that seemed to rearrange themselves with each step.

Cyrus moved with singular purpose, the bond growing stronger as distance closed between them.

He rounded a corner, and there stood Kane, disheveled but alive.

"Is it really you?" Kane asked, raising his pistol defensively.

"Because I’ve seen about five fake Cyruses tonight, and I’m not in the mood for another one."

Cyrus approached slowly, eyes scanning Kane for injuries. "You’re not hurt."

"And you’re surprisingly concerned for a labyrinth phantom," Kane replied, finger hovering over the trigger.

"Only you would mistake legitimate concern for smugness," Cyrus said, straightening his posture to its usual regal bearing.

Kane lowered his pistol, a smile slowly spreading across his face.

"There you are. The phantoms couldn’t quite nail that superior attitude."

Just then, stone walls rippled like curtains in a breeze, and a new passage materialized between them.