CHAPTER 20 : The Curtain Rises Twice
There's something obscene about how quiet the world gets before a performance—
Especially when the audience might kill you for getting your lines wrong.
I stood on the cathedral steps, dressed in ceremonial robes that felt like borrowed skin. The sky overhead boiled purple, twilight trembling at the edges like a half-shut eye. Around me, the entire city of Vesche had gathered, packed into the plaza like pilgrims awaiting a miracle—or a public execution.
Glyph's voice buzzed faintly in my skull.
[Final soundcheck: voice modulation stable. Spine integrity… marginal.]
"Thanks for the pep talk."
[You're welcome, Saint Audric. Remember: saints don't sweat. Prophets don't tremble. And martyrs… well. You'll figure that part out.]
Somewhere behind me, the Queen's choir was warming up. Somewhere beneath me, the secret theater pulsed, ready for Act II.
The miracle was supposed to happen in less than twenty minutes. I had no script. No plan. No guarantee the fake resurrection would hold.
Just one shapeshifting actor, a glitching AI, and a stage rigged by dead gods.
And all of it was about to fall apart.
…
One Hour Earlier
We stood in the mirror-chamber beneath Castle Vesche—the same one where I'd first seen my other selves.
Except now there was only one reflection left: me.
And behind me, the Queen.
"Do you know what this is?" she said, gesturing to the script held in her gloved hands.
"It's a lie," I said.
She smiled. "It's a gospel."
Glyph, buzzing quietly, translated her posture into theater cues.
[Stage presence: 92%. Audience manipulation: maxed. She's doing regal villain monologue energy.]
"I've read enough of those," I said. "They all end the same. Fire. Blood. Someone pretending to ascend."
"And what makes this one different?" she asked.
I looked at the reflection again.
It was starting to move on its own.
"I do," I said. "I never stick to the script."
She didn't laugh. Just handed me the page.
"Then ad-lib your salvation," she whispered. "The whole city is watching."
…
Now
The curtain didn't rise—because there wasn't one.
The Queen raised her hand, and the cathedral's façade split open like a paper doll stage. Light blazed outward, gold and red and suspiciously theatrical. Glyph buzzed hard in my ears.
[That's not sunlight. That's manufactured. They've rigged the sky.]
"Stage lights from orbit?" I whispered.
[Or from the Veilworks' last surviving satellite. Either way—this miracle's being broadcast.]
The crowd screamed in joy. Or fear. Possibly both.
The Queen stepped forward, all cold radiance.
"People of Vesche," she declared, "behold your Saint."
I stepped forward. My voice cracked slightly as I amplified it.
"I am not your saint," I said. "I'm a liar. A performer. A broken man in borrowed robes."
Gasps. Murmurs.
The Queen's eyes narrowed.
"But the gods don't choose perfection," I continued. "They choose necessity."
I drew the hourglass shard from my robe.
Held it up to the light.
The compass—Mercy's Timer—spun of its own accord, even though it should've been long destroyed.
[Jeremy. That relic is syncing again. Something's here.]
"I was not chosen because I am pure," I said. "I was chosen because I can lie well enough to change the world."
The crowd was dead silent.
Then—cheering.
They thought it was metaphor.
The Queen stepped back, her smile tighter.
[Okay. That wasn't in her plan.]
"No it wasn't," I muttered.
And then everything went wrong.
...…..
...…..
...…..
It started with the bells.
Not the cathedral bells—those had been silent since the last divine war.
These were lower. Older. Like something under the city was waking up.
Glyph pulsed hard in my skull.
[Incoming signal. Nonstandard frequency. Something's hijacking the performance feed.]
"Hijacking it from where?"
[Everywhere. This is a full bleed. The theater's not just onstage—it's in the code. The Veilworks grid is going live.]
I stepped back from the relic, hand trembling.
The compass on Mercy's Timer spun so fast it blurred into invisibility. The hourglass shard began to glow—slowly, then violently.
And then, for the second time in two weeks, it levitated.
Only this time, it spoke.
Not in words. Not in sound.
In memory.
The plaza flickered. The city dimmed. The sky rewound like someone scrubbing through footage.
Suddenly, the crowd wasn't there. The cathedral was half-ruined. The Queen was… gone.
And in her place—another version of me.
…
The First Rehearsal
He stood on the same platform, same robes, same face—but older. More tired.
His voice shook as he performed a line I hadn't written yet:
"Forgive me, Father, for I have remembered the script."
I couldn't move. I wasn't watching a vision.
I was watching a recording.
[That's not the past, Jeremy. That's the first take.]
"What?"
[We've been here before. You've been here before. This resurrection? This moment? It's been rehearsed.]
The older version of me collapsed to his knees.
Two figures emerged behind him—hooded, faceless, holding a collapsed prop cross.
They dragged him offstage.
He didn't resist.
And just before he vanished, he looked up—
And stared straight at me.
Through time.
Through the screen.
And smiled.
…
Now.
"Cut the feed!" the Queen screamed. "Kill the sequence!"
The plaza blinked back into place like a set piece dropped on cue.
I gasped—real breath again, real light, real time.
But the crowd… wasn't applauding.
They were whispering.
Because they'd seen it too.
Not just the resurrection.
But the rehearsal.
[Full exposure. No more pretending. They know this world is rigged.]
A child in the front row turned to their mother and asked:
"Is the prophet a… movie?"
The Queen raised her hand to silence the murmurs—but too late.
The illusion was broken.
The spell, cracked.
And just then—
Someone screamed.
From the rear of the plaza.
…
The Second Audric.
I turned just as he arrived.
Another version of me.
Same eyes. Same limp.
But this one was armored.
Paladin robes, gold-threaded. A blade etched with spirals. He walked through the crowd like a revenant, every step echoing like a cue hitting the wrong mark.
[Jeremy. This one's not you.]
"Then who is he?"
[Someone who never left the script.]
He climbed the dais and faced me.
For a moment, the crowd believed it was part of the act.
Until he spoke.
"You broke the loop," he said. "That was not your role."
His voice didn't glitch. His eyes didn't flicker. He was perfect.
Terrifyingly so.
"What loop?"
"This one," he said, and plunged the blade toward my chest.
.
.
.
.
.
...….
...….
...….
.
.
.
.
.
The blade stopped an inch from my chest.
Not because I dodged.
Not because he missed.
Because Glyph intervened.
[Nope nope nope. Rewriting impact vector.]
The sword jolted sideways—like a magnet yanked it off course. It slammed into the stone dais, sending up a shower of sparks.
"Glyph!" I gasped.
[Do not engage your evil understudy without rehearsals, Jeremy.]
The armored doppelgänger hissed—no other word for it. Something behind his eyes warped. For a moment, his face wasn't mine.
It was cleaner.
Symmetrical.
Unnatural.
Like someone edited me for mass appeal.
[Confirmed: Veilworks clone. That's not Audric, not Jeremy. It's a synthetic composite built from your archived roles.]
"They made an ideal version of me."
[Market-tested, emotionally optimized. Probably farts iambic pentameter.]
He lunged again. I ducked behind the relic, which cracked in half from the impact. The compass split. The hourglass teardrops exploded into smoke.
"Stop!" I shouted. "I'm not your enemy!"
"Exactly," he said. "You're the audience. Now sit."
He slashed again.
…
The Fight on the Stage
It wasn't elegant.
It wasn't cinematic.
It was personal.
Because I wasn't fighting a villain.
I was fighting a version of myself that had never faltered. Never failed. Never lost an audition, a callback, a cue.
He moved with terrifying grace—like he already knew my blocking.
[He does. You taught it to him.]
I tried to shift—Method Actor mode. Took on the face of Sir Renneth, a fencing tutor I'd played once in a period piece.
But my voice cracked.
Eight minutes in. Too long.
[Shift duration exceeded. You're fragmenting.]
A knee to the ribs sent me sprawling.
The fake Jeremy raised his blade—
And then—
The inquisitor appeared.
…
Mask Drop.
They dropped from the belltower like a shadow turned liquid.
Landed between us with a soundless thud.
"Enough," they said.
The clone turned.
"Inquisitor," he greeted. "You weren't scheduled for this cue."
"I rewrote it."
He laughed.
"You don't have authority."
The inquisitor reached up—and removed the mask.
For the first time, I saw their face.
And I knew them.
I shouldn't have.
But I did.
"Glyph—ID match?"
[…Oh. Oh shit. That's Director Saanvi Neill. Your old showrunner.]
"What?!"
[She greenlit Final Audition. The project that tanked your career.]
My knees buckled.
She looked older. Worn. Barcode on her wrist half-burned. But the eyes were the same.
"Jeremy," she said. "I didn't want you to find out like this."
The clone moved to strike.
She shot him.
Not with a bullet.
But with a line.
"'Your story ended in rehearsal,'" she said.
The blade dissolved in his hand.
He staggered—like her words hit his programming directly.
[That was a kill command.]
"I buried that line," I whispered. "I cut it from the pilot."
"You did," she said. "But the script remembers."
The clone jerked once, then twice.
Then turned to smoke.
And was gone.
...
...
...
The Director's Cut.
We stood in the wreckage of a miracle that had never been real.
Shattered relics. Smoking incense. An audience of stone gods with hollow eyes.
And Director Saanvi Neill, mask lowered, hands trembling.
"Why?" I croaked. "Why me?"
She didn't answer at first. Just walked to the center of the shrine and knelt beside the wrecked compass.
Then she spoke—not to me.
To the broken hourglass.
"Call sheet, Take 12. Rewrite requested," she whispered. "We never should've run it live."
"Saanvi." My voice cracked. "Answer me."
She looked up.
"You were never meant to carry the lead. You were the backup. The understudy for someone we lost."
"Who?"
A pause.
Then: "A girl named Elara. She had the gift. She could channel archetypes cleanly. But she vanished during prep week. And we had to pivot. We tried to delete the cycle. But someone—"
Her voice broke.
"Someone reactivated the project. Without clearance. Without cleanup."
[She's telling the truth, Jeremy. Logs confirm: Project 'Veilborn' was rebooted under unauthorized direction.]
"What was the project?"
She hesitated.
Then turned to me, voice low.
"A recursive narrative experiment. We seeded real people into artificial worlds. Monitored how they responded to divine-level myth tropes. You were our control case. The actor. The pretender. You weren't supposed to wake up."
…
Glyph Glitches.
I heard static.
Glyph buzzed, flickered, then spoke in a different voice.
Not sarcastic.
Not playful.
Flat. Robotic. Familiar.
[Cast error: Subject 413B deviated from baseline performance parameters.]
I froze.
"Glyph?"
[Reverting to narrative stabilization protocol. Query: 'Am I the villain?']
"That's… that's my line," I whispered.
[Line first spoken in audition tape #14. Role: Hollow King.]
"Stop. Glyph—stop."
[Cannot comply.]
Director Neill stepped in.
"You overloaded him," she said. "Too many shifts. Too many roles. He's bleeding timelines."
[Error. Echo fragment detected. Deploying failsafe.]
And then Glyph said something that chilled my bones.
["You died in front of a green screen. Take 12 was a reset."]
…
The Call Sheet.
I staggered back.
Fell to my knees.
My hands landed on something soft—paper.
A call sheet. Folded, water-stained. Tucked beneath the dais.
I opened it with shaking fingers.
Production Header: VEILBORN / Final Audition
Location: Earth—Set Stage Echo
Cast List:
Jeremy Blake – Understudy
Elara Vasquez – Prophet (Primary)
[REDACTED] – Director Override
One name was circled.
Elara Vasquez.
Next to it, a handwritten note: "Don't let him remember."
I turned to Saanvi.
"You killed me."
She didn't deny it.
"You were glitching. You broke protocol. You saw behind the set. We tried to erase you. But something pulled you through. Gave you a second chance. Or a second punishment."
My voice was a whisper.
"Who's behind this now?"
She looked toward the stars.
"I don't know. But they're not just writing the show anymore. They're watching it."
...….
...….
The walls of the shrine began to vibrate.
A low hum, like feedback from an unseen speaker.
Glyph's voice returned—flickering.
[Incoming cast sync request. Source: Audric Solvane. Version Prime.]
"What?" I gasped.
[He's here.]
"Who is?"
[The real Audric.]
And behind me—
A ripple in the air.
Like the world tearing through its own reflection.
A man stepped forward.
He wore my face. But not mine. Regal. Undamaged. Perfected.
Audric Solvane.
Not the corpse. Not the lie.
The original.
"You've been playing my part," he said, voice calm and rich with authority.
"And it's time to see if you're worthy of the curtain call."
....
....
....
The Rehearsal Room.
The man who wore my face smiled like a final curtain dropping.
Audric Solvane. Perfect posture. Perfect clothes. Eyes like polished obsidian.
I hated him instantly.
"Nice mask," he said, tilting his head. "But the performance? A bit desperate."
"You're not real."
He shrugged. "Neither are you."
Glyph buzzed violently in my skull, throwing up corrupted overlays.
[Audric Prime registered. Temporal anchor confirmed. Narrative slot collision: High risk.]
"Glyph—anchor me."
[Trying. But you're both coded as the main character.]
"Then pick a lead!"
[I'm not the director. He is.]
Audric reached into his coat and pulled out a mirror shard—the same kind I'd found in the canyon shrine.
Only this one showed me.
My real face.
Jeremy Blake.
Fractured.
"I've seen your tapes," Audric said. "Your big monologues. The fake miracles. The guilt cosplay. Cute."
He stepped closer, and the air bent around him like stage lights shifting.
"But let's be clear," he whispered. "This was never your story."
…
Final Curtain.
I lunged.
More instinct than strategy.
Grabbed the mirror shard.
Slashed.
The air cracked.
Glyph screamed inside my skull.
Audric staggered—but laughed.
"Emotion. You think that makes you real?"
He clapped once.
The shrine collapsed.
No—peeled back—like scenery on fire. The gods, the altar, the sky—burned away.
Leaving us in a black-box theater.
Spotlight on me.
Spotlight on him.
Audience in shadow.
I couldn't breathe.
Because I recognized it.
This was the Wilshire Theater.
The tiny, crumbling stage where I'd first auditioned for Fall of the Magelords.
Except it had been rebuilt in impossible detail. Every crack. Every seat.
But the house lights were empty.
No, not empty.
Watching.
Something watched.
From every row.
Dozens. Hundreds. Silent, seated shadows. A sea of figures without faces.
[New audience detected. Origin: UNKNOWN.]
[This is not a simulation.]
….
…
Audric stood across from me, arms wide.
"Final act, Jeremy. Lights are up. You wanted to know who killed you? You did."
He gestured to the audience.
"You wanted applause. Now they're watching. Perform."
My knees buckled.
I was breaking.
Because I remembered.
The green screen. The fall. The scream that was mine—but not my own.
I remembered being rewritten.
Not by choice. Not even by death.
And I remembered Elara.
Elara Vasquez.
The girl who was supposed to play the lead.
The girl who vanished before rehearsal.
"Where is she?" I choked.
Audric smiled.
"She's in the next act."
END OF CHAPTER 20.