Alter-ego

The day, no, perhaps the night is stormy. Since the cloudy skies don't let even a single ray of light through, it's impossible to tell whether it's day or night. The ocean was rough, with waves exceeding twenty meters as if it were its calmest day. And in the middle of that turbulent ocean was Theo, drowning every moment.

Every time the boy tried to lift his arm out of the water, the waves pulled him back under. It was an endless cycle. It didn't matter if he could touch the bottom or not, the waves always dragged him back down.

At times, Theo felt small sea creatures swimming around his feet. Sharks and eels entwined around his legs, sending him into momentary panic.

It had been two hours since Theo was trapped in this cycle. Even when he gave up and let himself drown to wake up, he simply returned to square one. At one point, he completely stopped resisting and surrendered to the storm.

"2897… 2898… 2899… 2900," Theo counted. Since he stopped resisting, he had counted exactly 2910 seconds, and he didn't stop.

It felt like days had passed, but it had only been a few hours. Three, to be precise, since he entered the process of self-discovery. Theo no longer knew what to do; he just let the waves drown him, the sea creatures surround him, and, if it had to happen, let himself die. But that didn't happen.

He was patient, and because of that, the hours of storms soon became irrelevant. The waves, though still rough, now seemed calm simply because Theo had managed to reach the bottom without drowning.

Theo tried to steady himself on the seabed, but the thick, sticky sand transmitted such a disgusting sensation that his only reaction was to let go and try to float again on the stormy waves.

Then, suddenly, after twelve hours, a massive thirty-meter wave brought with it an amber glow that illuminated the entire vast plane. It was enough to ignite a flame in Theo's core. He woke up joyful, thinking that the sun had finally dispersed the storm. But the glimmer of hope soon turned into anxious flames. Ignoring the disgusting sensation of the sand, he struggled to stand.

The water from the remnants of that wave cascaded down like a waterfall. Theo's pupils dilated, his heart raced. Memories of a blood-soaked moonlight revisited him.

'Death.'

Even with the twenty-meter waves, that beast still stood out in the storm. It was about fifty meters tall, now with its upper half above the ocean, but it still extended underwater for so many meters that it was impossible to count.

Its body was humanoid, with hands replaced by claws that connected to fins. Its face resembled that of a dragon. Two horns circled its skull and connected at the nape: from its forehead, a bright spark emitted an intense blue light. Squid-like tentacles hung from its face like the strands of a mustache.

And with a flap of its demonic wings, the waves parted. The impact seemed to ignore Theo, as he didn't need to exert any effort to stay still. Still, his intuition told him to shield his face with his arms.

The atmospheric force managed to cut through Theo's skin and flesh, and with the saltwater touching the wounds, the boy had no choice but to relax his arms and try to protect the injuries.

At the end of the gust, a two-hundred-meter circle was formed. The demon's tail served as a wall: it was a serpent's tail, so massive that it encircled the entire radius mentioned earlier.

"A…" Theo stammered with a sob. "A…" His pupils dilated until his vision blurred.

"A sea demon," a mature and commanding voice completed. Familiar, seemingly Theo's own voice.

For a second, the boy's soul detached from his body and split in half: a golden stain that spread through the space and reached a human silhouette beneath the demon, walking towards Theo.

His face, broad and well-defined, soon revealed a tall, blond man with blue eyes, dressed in black military attire. Directing his right arm backward, he flicked the air, obliterating the demon. The monster was split in half like a perfect sword strike, its head crushed, and all that remained of the corpse was to fall into the ocean, which began to churn again, as there was nothing left to hold it back.

Even as the waters returned to merge, the man continued walking towards Theo, who could do nothing but remain still, drowning in his own surprise. How could a man kill such an abyssal creature with a single attack? Even from a distance, it was clear that no spell had been cast.

The ocean regenerated, creating a whirlpool in the center and pulling everything into it, including Theo. With a simple wave of the man's hand, the entire ocean gradually calmed. The waves that once reached thirty meters were now nothing more than gentle ripples.

With the man in front of him, but with the waves and darkness hiding his appearance, Theo exclaimed:

"Who are you!?" he asked, wide-eyed and fists clenched, still trying to maintain his balance on the turbulent waves.

"I am you," the man replied, but in a calmer tone.

The storm clouds ceased, and the ocean waters became shallow enough to only cover the ankles. The day, once dark and stormy, was now a beautiful weekend, with the sun at 36 degrees over a shallow, turquoise sea and fine sand.

Theo was breathless. His heart raced, beating so loudly that he could hear his own heartbeat. His sense of time and space faded as he fully glimpsed who that man was.

What the man said, in part, wasn't a lie. He was Theo, but from a spiritual perspective. The man before him was the Egorian general himself, Liam Mason.

"You died," Theo denied.

"Died?" his alter-ego mocked. "I'm right here."

"You're a product of my imagination…"

"Am I?" Liam leaped the ten meters separating them just to deliver a punch to Theo's face. The boy fell back into the shallow waters. Crouching, Liam asked, "Am I really an illusion?"

"How…"

"How? This entire world is a reflection of your own soul. A reflection of you. But, after all… Who are you?"

"Huh?"

"Who are you? Cat got your tongue?"

Theo swallowed hard. "Theo de Lawren…!"

Before he could finish his surname, Liam kicked the boy away.

"I'm afraid I didn't hear you," Liam muttered, walking towards Theo.

"Theo de…!"

The general kicked the boy again, this time in the stomach.

"Whose soul is this?"

"Does it matter? I abandoned you long ago," Theo shouted, still suffering from the kick. "You're nothing but dust in this reality. You're nobody. There aren't even books about you…"

"Well, maybe you're just looking in the wrong kingdom. But since you refuse to accept it, I propose we revisit the situation. Theo De Lawrence, son of an extremely powerful duke. A rich kid who never had to worry about anything. At first, he was antisocial, couldn't even utter a word to anyone."

"Back then, I still retained your personality…"

"You should never have stopped being 'me,' as you claim. Continuing, my person wouldn't be mentally affected by others' deaths, right? Just as you remember. But you, 'Theo,' are… Michel Hansen? I think that was the name of that man."

Theo clenched his fists.

"Hilarious," Liam commented, followed by a laugh. "'Mr. Michel died, so I'll become strong to protect those I love and prevent deaths'…" Liam couldn't hold back his laughter again. "You sound like one of those teenage protagonists from the books we used to hate. If there's one thing we learned after our death, idiot, it's that: no matter how powerful you are, you can't escape or prevent death!"

Theo's eyes shifted from a look of hatred to one of genuine realization.

"Fate will be fate! You can't change it! It's written, all you can do is read those pages as time passes. One day you'll walk through the final door, and just like 'me,' you'll die!"

"Did you develop this thought after dying?" Theo asked.

"Me? You developed it. Or have you been playing 'Theo Lawrence, the golden child' for so long that you forgot your true self? Let me remind you, princess. After the cataclysm, you suffered the accident that affected your mind. What did that result in? A change in personality. You simply wanted to ignore who you are to adopt a new identity. That's your problem."

"My problem is wanting to stop being a killer and become a protector?"

"What soldier in wartime isn't a killer? Soldiers kill themselves, they kill innocent people. After all, they're just a bunch of dogs forced to kill in the name of their country or some nonsense like that. Destruction is all soldiers leave behind. In exchange for what? Strength? Money? Power? What's the point of killing yourself inside for fleeting nonsense?"

"They're not fleeting."

"They're not? Oh, please. Are you going to tell me you inherited all of Liam Mason's strength? Oh, sorry. If you had that strength, Michel Hansen and all the others would be alive now, but guess what… They're not! You're weak, ridiculous, sick. You're just an insecure mask pretending to be strong and mature. Accept that there's only one way out of this."

"And what's that? Accept that I'll always be you?" Theo retorted. "Accept that I'm a killer who murdered thousands, destroyed countries for nothing? That I'm arrogant, proud, and selfish? Someone who couldn't even care about the death of those I loved?"

Liam shook his head in denial while laughing.

"Aren't you already being proud by ignoring that I am you?" he asked, taking a deep breath after a second. "Teenagers are more stubborn than I thought."

Theo processed this for a moment.

"It's no use arguing with myself…" Liam said.

"I agree. So you should…!"

Before Theo could finish, Liam placed his hand on the boy's face and drowned him in the shallow sea, which quickly returned to the turbulent ocean it was before.

"Then, I should show you the part you decided to ignore…"