The mask hit the scorched floor with a dull clang.

Lustrous black hair, cropped short. A strong jaw, now tight with agony. Eyes the color of a starless night, blazing with a hate that felt… familiar.

Lucian froze.

The world narrowed to the man's face. The line of his brow. The shape of his nose. The set of his mouth. It was like looking into a distorted mirror, one that showed him an older, harder version of himself. This man was in his mid-twenties, but the resemblance was uncanny. It was more than a coincidence. It was a ghost.

His mind raced, a frantic, silent scream. Impossible. His parents only had two kids. Him, and Lucy. He'd have known. There would have been pictures, a story, something. This wasn't a brother. This was a phantom.

Marc snarled through the pain, sweat beading on his forehead. "See something you like?" His voice was a raw, pained thing, but the venom was there.

Lucian didn't answer. He just stared, the mission, the vault, Eron—all of it receded into a dull roar. This was wrong. This was a piece of a puzzle he never knew was missing, and it had just fallen from the sky and hit him in the face.

He saw his own eyes staring back at him, filled with a lifetime of bitterness he didn't understand.

"Who are you?" Lucian's voice was quiet, dangerously soft.

A bloody smirk twisted Marc's lips. "The one who should've been the only one."

That was all Lucian needed to hear. The confusion, the shock, it crystallized into a single, cold point of action. Answers weren't here. They were down below, with the man in the vault.

His hand moved in a short, sharp chop. It wasn't fueled by anger, but by a grim necessity. It connected with the side of Marc's neck with a sickening thud. The fire in those black eyes guttered out, and the big man slumped forward, unconscious.

For a moment, Lucian just looked at him. At the way he fell. At the black hair, so like his own, now dusted with stone fragments. The resemblance was a physical weight in his gut.

He bent down, grabbing Marc by the collar of his armored jacket. He was heavy, a dead weight of muscle and metal. Lucian dragged him, the body scraping a trail through the ash and debris. The sound was loud in the sudden, eerie quiet of the annihilated chamber.

He moved toward the archway leading down, his mind a storm.

Older than me. Older than Lucy. How?

Every scrape of Marc's boots against the stone felt like an accusation. He wasn't just dragging an enemy. He was dragging a question mark made of flesh and blood.

The descent was a spiral of rough-hewn stone, the air growing colder, the scent of ash and iron stronger. The green ward-lights pulsed on the walls, their light catching the angles of Marc's face, making the resemblance even more stark in the flickering shadows. Lucian had to look away.

His focus was shattered. The straight line to his team was now blurred, twisted by this… this thing he was hauling behind him. Eron hadn't just taken his friends. He was hiding a secret that felt like it was carved from Lucian's own bones.

---

In the vault, the tremors had stopped.

Eron sat perfectly still in his chair, his fingers steepled under his chin. The silence was deeper now, more profound. The distant sounds of combat had ceased.

Reia strained against her chains, her heart a frantic drum in her chest. The quiet was worse than the noise. It meant something was over.

Silas lifted his head, his breathing still ragged. "He won," he croaked, a statement of desperate hope.

Eron's lips curved into a small, knowing smile. He didn't look at them. His gaze was fixed on the great stone doors. "Did he?"

The grinding of stone on stone began, slow and heavy. The doors were opening.

Vyn tried to push herself up, her shadows flickering weakly. "Lucian..."

The doors swung inward.

He stood there, silhouetted against the flickering green light of the hall. But he wasn't alone.

He stepped into the vault, and the sound that followed was the dry, scraping drag of a body. He held Marc's collar in one fist, hauling the unconscious man behind him like a sack of grain. Lucian's clothes were scorched, his knuckles bloody, but his posture was rigid, his energy a contained vortex of silent fury.

He stopped in the center of the room, his eyes, black and burning, locked directly onto Eron. He ignored the relieved gasp from Reia, the sharp intake of breath from Silas. He ignored everything but the man in the chair.

With a final heave, he dumped Marc's body onto the stone floor between them. The limp form landed with a heavy, final thud.

Then, Lucian lifted his gaze. The air in the vault grew thick, the pressure dropping as space itself seemed to bow inward around him.

Eron's smile didn't falter. If anything, it widened. He looked from the unconscious Marc to Lucian, his eyes alight with a twisted delight.

"Lucian," Eron said, his voice a smooth, welcoming baritone. "I see you've met your brother."

The word hung in the air, toxic and undeniable.

Brother.

Reia's eyes went wide. Silas stared, disbelief washing over his bruised features. Vyn's faint shadows stilled completely.

Lucian didn't flinch. He didn't shout or deny it. The resemblance was too strong to argue. Instead, a cold, terrifying calm settled over him. The storm in his eyes didn't rage; it froze.

He took a single step forward, his boot echoing in the dead silence.

"Start talking," Lucian said, his voice low and flat, a promise of violence wrapped in ice. "Who is he? And why does my mother's face look back at me from a man I've never seen?"

Eron leaned back, steepling his fingers again. He looked like a professor about to begin a favorite lecture.

"Your parents, Alistair and Isabella, were always so… idealistic," Eron began, his tone conversational.

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