Chapter Thirty-One
After what feels like an eternity—long enough for my mind to conjure a hundred different ways Ryder could’ve died—the vines snap, not gradually, but violently, tearing themselves apart as if some unseen force cut their strings.
They slither back into the forest, disappearing into the undergrowth like they were never there at all.
The path lies open again.
Wide.
Silent.
Empty.
But no Ryder.
River and I rise slowly, like prey coaxed out of hiding.
My breath hitches; his hand instinctively hovers near his dagger.
We stare at the new clearing formed between the trees—an unnervingly perfect circle of stillness, the kind of quiet that feels wrong, like the forest is holding its breath with us.
“Ryder?” My voice cracks on the second syllable.
I wait for him to step out from behind a tree, rubbing the back of his neck with that awkward half-smile he does when he knows he scared me. Or to hear him curse under his breath, or even storm out in a fury from whatever nightmare the Hollow put him through.
But nothing moves.
Nothing shifts.
Nothing answers.
A cold dread pours through me so fast it steals the feeling from my fingers. My heart sinks like a stone dropped into a lake, splashing panic up my throat until I can barely swallow.
What if he didn’t pass?
The thought strikes like a blade between my ribs. Suddenly, my lungs feel like they’re wrapped in iron bands, every breath shallow, sharp.
A twig snaps somewhere beyond the clearing, and both River and I whip our heads toward the sound. The noise slithers through the trees in a way that feels intentional, almost taunting, the Hollow reminding us that it still has teeth even when the canopy is thin.
Then a voice follows, echoing through the branches.
Ryder’s voice.
Except… something inside me recoils instantly, because it isn’t quite him.
It’s as if the forest is stretching his tone across something empty, something that doesn’t fully understand how to mimic warmth or fear or anything human.
Every syllable feels like a performance.
The sound crawls up my spine like cold fire, igniting the instinctive part of me that knows when I’m being hunted.
And then the Hollow speaks—layered over Ryder’s voice or threaded through it like veins in a leaf:
“Two wear his face—one truth, one lie.
Choose your Ryder.
Kill the other, or the real one dies.”
The words settle into my stomach like stones.
Another snap echoes through the trees—this one closer, heavier—and a figure steps out from behind a tree.
Ryder.
His clothes are torn; there’s a smear of dirt across his cheek, and his chest rises too fast as if he’s been running for far longer than a human should. When his eyes find mine, they widen with such raw relief that my heart leaps before my head can stop it.
“Asha?” he breathes, voice frayed at the edges. “Thank the Gods—Asha, I’ve been looking everywhere—”
But before the hope blooming in my chest can take shape, another Ryder pushes out from the opposite side of the clearing.
Identical.
The same scrapes, the same dirt-smudged cheek, the same ragged breath.
Everything inside me drops—my stomach, my lungs, my thoughts—like the ground has fallen away and I’m suspended in freefall.
River stands stiff beside me, shock carved into every line of his face. “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me…”
Both Ryder’s speak at once, their voices overlapping like a reflection on water disturbed by wind:
“Asha—listen to me—don’t go near him.”
I instinctively step back, and both of them lurch forward in perfect sync, as if the forest itself is mocking my panic.
My pulse stutters painfully, a disjointed rhythm I can’t get back under control. My skin feels tight, too small for my body, and for a moment, I swear I can feel the Hollow watching with a predator’s patience.
One Ryder flinches, brows knitting with that familiar crease he gets when he’s scared he’s losing me. “Asha, it’s me. You know me. You know me.”
The other’s voice carries the same note of desperation, the same cadence that used to make me turn toward him without thinking. “Come on, Asha, it’s me. Don’t listen to him.”
Exactly like him.
Perfectly like him.
Even the ink black veins spidering up his arm like bolts of lightning. Each stroke carved with precision.
The riddle pulses through my mind, steady and merciless:
Two wear his face—one truth, one lie.
Choose your Ryder.
Kill the other, or the real one dies.
My breathing becomes thin and fragile, like I’m trying to inhale through a cracked ribcage. My hand trembles around the hilt of my sword, and the tattoo on my palm pricks—not enough to warn me, not enough to guide me, just enough to remind me it exists.
I want to scream.
I want to run.
I want to beg the Hollow to take my memories, my strength, my place in the world—anything but this choice.
But I force myself to lift my chin, swallowing down the terror even though it scrapes like broken glass on the way down.
“Okay,” I whisper, though my voice wavers. “If one of you is him… then say something only Ryder would say.”
Both of them inhale sharply.
“This is ridiculous, Asha. You know me,” one says, rolling his eyes just the way Ryder always does when I ask a question he finds hopelessly obvious.
But the other steps forward too, tension pulling his brows together in the exact pattern I’ve memorised since the moment I met him—the lines he gets when he worries about something he won’t say out loud.
“Kill him already so we can get the fuck out of this place,” he snaps—sharp and impatient, laced with that familiar edge of bravado he uses when he’s terrified and trying not to show it.
A short, disbelieving laugh pushes out of me before I can stop it, brittle at the edges.
Of course, he’d say that.
Of course, Ryder’s idea of comfort in a life-or-death situation would be sarcasm and profanity.
And I realise, with a sickening twist in my gut, that the Hollow hasn’t just copied his face.
It’s copied what I love about him. It has copied the invisible parts.
And now I have to destroy one of them.
“River. Can’t you tell… with your twin bond?” I whisper, hoping—praying—that he’ll give me something solid to cling to. But he only shakes his head, eyes wide, breath shallow, his disbelief written in every line of his face.
“Everything is just—confused… I can’t—I don’t—” He stumbles over the words as if even language itself has abandoned him. His mouth stays parted, like he’s still waiting for an answer to form on his tongue, but nothing does.
The Hollow has been watching us. I can feel it—it’s attention like cold fingers trailing down the back of my neck, cataloguing every soft spot, every fear, every break in our armour.
It’s been studying us from the moment we stepped into its territory, memorising the cracks in our foundation.
And now it has reshaped those notes into something monstrous—something so unforgivable I can barely draw enough breath to face it.
I have to kill one of them.
The realisation sinks through me like stones dropped into black water, heavy enough to drag my entire body down with it. If I choose wrong—if I even hesitate in the wrong direction—Ryder dies. The real Ryder. The one I—
I press my trembling lips together before the thought can finish itself.
I take a slow, deliberate step forward, feeling the weight of the sword at my side as if it’s suddenly doubled.
My eyes drag back and forth between the two Ryder’s, searching their faces so desperately that it almost hurts to blink.
They look identical… but that isn’t what terrifies me.
What terrifies me is that they feel identical.
Same breath. Same stance. Same heartbeat in the air.
“Asha… please. It’s me. I love you.”
The words hit me like a blade slipped between ribs—quiet, devastating and impossibly tender.
I feel them slide down my throat like something I should swallow whole, something warm and familiar and so deeply wanted that for a moment my knees almost buckle.
If I could live in the sound of those words forever, I would know nothing but peace.
But peace is exactly what the Hollow would weaponise. That voice could be nothing more than a borrowed instrument.
“Don’t listen to him… that’s not me, Asha. You have to kill him.”
The other speaks with equal urgency, equal pain, equal desperation.
And the moment his words land, my mind fractures.
It feels like something inside me has splintered into a thousand jagged pieces, each one whispering a different possibility.
My chest tightens until it’s hard to breathe.
The world blurs at the edges, and for a second, I’m terrified I might faint and lose everything in that moment of weakness.
I clamp my jaw shut, holding myself together with sheer force, and I make myself really look at them. I study the set of their shoulders, the subtle fidget of their hands, the way their chests rise and fall. I search for the smallest imperfection the Hollow might have missed.
But the forest’s craftsmanship is abhorrently flawless.
If I can’t choose by their bodies…
Then I will have to choose by what lives inside them.
“Ryder…” His name leaves me in a breath so thin it barely qualifies as sound. I don’t know where to look—left or right, truth or lie—because both Ryder’s stand before me wearing his face, his uncertainty, his quiet ache. “What did you say to me in the tub… after our first time—?”
“That I was done pulling away from you.”
They answer together.