The room stayed still for a blink. Nothing. Then the pressure started - like being held underwater by a hand that would not let go. It climbed from my toes, up my calves, curling past ribs, squeezing my lungs. I cracked one eye.

  I tried to breathe through it.

  Something inside me split, as if every piece of flesh inside me was being tugged in opposite directions. A slow, tearing ache that threaded through bone and memory.

  My fingers clenched into nails-on-wood agony.

  And I told myself that this had been a bad idea.

  “Don’t pass out,” I muttered to myself.

  I had felt pain before, in this life and the last. Cuts. Shattered bones. The weeks I spent passing kidney stones back on Earth, curled on the bathroom floor, shivering, begging for it to stop.

  Those were stubbed toes compared to this.

  This wasn’t pain in one place. It was everywhere. It was my blood boiling and my teeth icing over. It was nerves being rewired by someone who didn’t know what nerves were for. It was a butcher working inside me with dull tools.

  My skull felt like it was being pried apart along invisible hinges. My spine arched wrong, cracking in ways that should have ended me. My ribs constricted like they were trying to crush the heart they protected. My stomach folded and twisted; acid, copper, and terror all flooded my tongue at once.

  A horrible mix.

  I didn’t scream - I’m not built for screaming - but I made this awful, stifled sound, like an animal trying not to cry while its leg was being cut off by a trap.

  If I had been louder, maybe someone would have come and complained about the noise.

  My jaw locked around a breath that wouldn’t come. My fingers dug into the floorboards, and then I clawed at my face, hard enough that my nails split.

  And then it was finally over.

  My vision doubled and shimmered.

  Then there was movement beside me.

  Another small, stunned sound - almost exactly like the one I’d made. I blinked and saw him: a mirror of me, as precise as a reflection, sitting up slowly where there had been empty floor. He had my hair, purple, which I wished would just be a little brighter, and the same stupid face, but now with a half-formed grin that meant something had gone very right and very wrong all at once.

  He looked at me with the exact angle of surprise I felt. His mouth opened.

  “Caleb?” he said.

  “Caleb?” I said back.

  Both voices were mine.

  A second me.

  And even through the fading shock, the only clear thing my scrambled brain could offer was.

  “Never-“

  “Again,” he finished the thought for me.

  It wasn’t like I could ‘see’ inside his mind, but I was sure that our thinking process was so similar that it was basically the same thing.

  “My own clone!”

  “Now neither of us will be virgins.”

  “Dude…”

  “Sorry.”

  We celebrated for a moment - hand in hand, jumping up and down.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  It worked! It just hurt like a motherfucker, but it really worked.

  He was standing in front of me, really, really standing in front of me.

  "What are you thinking about?” I asked.

  “Clothes,” he answered.

  I looked, and yeah. He was naked. The spell hadn’t duplicated my clothing.

  I made a face.

  “It’s…”

  “Kind of small. I know. We’re four.”

  We stared at each other for another beat.

  “Okay, let’s get you pants.”

  Searching for clothes, we found some rough linen lying around.

  He wrapped it around himself like a makeshift toga, grimacing.

  “This is itchy,” he muttered.

  “It’s that or walking around in your…our birthday suit.”

  My clone tested a step, wobbled, and then found his balance like Bambi on ice.

  “Feels weird,” he admitted. “Like my bones are…new.”

  I nodded. “They kind of are.”

  He looked around the hideout with an expression I recognized - tired, and inventing problems to worry about in the future.

  “So,” he said slowly, “I’m not hallucinating you. And you’re not hallucinating me."

  “I checked. You cast a shadow.”

  “And you’re breathing.”

  “And you feel shame when being naked, so you wear clothes. Seems very real to me.”

  I poked him on the shoulder, and he did the same to me.

  We both nodded: science completed.

  It wasn’t sinking in properly. This wasn’t an illusion. Or a summoned shade. This was me.

  Thinking, breathing, morally questionable me.

  “Two stars…” he began.

  “…keep not their motion in one sphere,” I finished.

  We rolled our eyes.

  “This isn’t that kind of story,” I said, and he agreed.

  We sat down across from each other.

  “We need to think,” I said. “We can’t both walk around like nothing’s changed. Someone will notice there are suddenly two noble toddler prophets in the palace.”

  He nodded immediately. “Right. …So let’s assign roles. I want to be the spooky one.”

  I raised a brow. “Spooky one?”

  He spread his hands like he was revealing the grandest idea known to toddlerkind.

  “You have the… cult.”

  “Cult?” It sounded harsher now that it was said out loud.

  “You know - us and the creepy girl squad,” he clarified. “That’s already a story. A prophet. Chosen one. Savior figure.”

  “And what does that make you?” I asked.

  His grin sharpened. “The dark savior.”

  I stared.

  He leaned closer, lowering his voice like even the walls were listening.

  “One hero. One villain. Two sides of one prophecy.” He pointed at me, “Prophet of the Gods.” Then he pointed at himself. “Prophet of Entropy. Right? You, the Father, and me, the Dark Child.”

  I thought about it.

  “You,” he continued, jabbing a tiny finger into my forehead, “keep being the public figure. The charming, sweet, harmless, and behind closed doors, the boy prophet with magic.”

  “And you?” I asked.

  “The person they’ll all blame. Every religion has its antichrist," he declared.

  I rubbed my face. Hard.

  This was spiraling, but I had to admit, it was a good idea.

  “Look,” he said. “We’re both thinking it: Two of us means double the impact. Double the safety. Double the plots. We can actually play every side.”

  He offered me a hand.

  "Are you sure you’re okay with playing the villain?”

  “I’m just afraid of dying if Geshich gets bored.”

  That was as good a reason as any, so I took his hand, sealing our roles.

  Two identical smiles formed - both far more tired than a four-year-old should have.

  “So,” I said, trying and failing to sound calm, "what do I, or we, call you?”

  “Right,” he said, like he wasn’t thinking about it. “Guess I can’t be Caleb anymore.”

  He turned, that linen swirling around tiny legs like a villain’s cloak.

  “You’re Lightbane. I’ll be Shadowboon. I’ll find a first name later. It’s a cool, somewhat edgy name, isn’t it?”

  “Bane versus Boon. Sounds a bit like I’m the mean one. But isn’t it a little obvious? Reversing the name? What if someone tracks it back to me?”

  “You think so? C’mon. We’re a nobody. The third child of a low-rank noble. It’s your job to keep cover.”

  “We need rules,” I said.

  “Agreed. The first one being that we won’t kill each other, no matter what.”

  I nodded.

  Then he snapped his fingers like he’d remembered something obvious.

  “The book."

  Right. Geshich’s book. The way to escape a doom of infinite and endless void.

  I shuddered just thinking about it, and then the shudder extended to my other self.

  “We write anything remotely interesting in it,” he said. “Our movements. Our plots. Our enemies. Our victories.”

  “Our failures,” I added.

  He nodded once.

  “How about this:” I said slowly, deliberately, “Our story, at least the events that are written in the book, treats us as strangers. We’re the same. We’re rivals, enemies, myths who clash.”

  “Long-lost twins?” he suggested, delighted by the melodrama. “Split by fate. Opposite destinies. Forced to fight each other?”

  I let out a slow breath. “No. Too hacky.”

  “I guess you’re right.”

  “One more thing,” I said.

  “What? A secret handshake?” I asked. “Maybe a blood pact? That feels a little on-the-nose.”

  “No, nothing like that. When are we going to switch who has it? And how are we going to find each other if-“

  “Dude, I literally know where you live. If something comes up, a plot point you need to know, or any other major development, I’ll just come to you, at least until I have my own place to stay. It isn’t difficult. With the speed spells that I know, the journey won’t even be a day.”

  “Right. If you learn any sick spells in the meanwhile, you have to teach me.”

  “Of course.”

  “So,” I said. “Prophet of Light… Prophet of Entropy.”

  “Right.” He gave me a little salute. “Back to the castle then, Lightbane.”

  “And you?” I asked.

  He grinned wide. “When the assassin wakes up from his little nap, I’ll have some major role-playing to do. First move to make my doomsday prophecies come true.”

  “You’re a scary guy.”

  We both smiled a little.