Another chapter that may need some work but I like the tone of it.

EMILY & ELISE ZHOU

Emily and Elise moved to their doors separately but found themselves standing in the same room.

That was the very strange beginning to their test.

The door closed behind them with the sound of a deep inhale.

The air shifted.

They stood in a cavern without walls—a horizonless hall of shallow, silver water. The floor beneath their boots rippled with light—stars that were not stars mapping constellations across the surface. A pale dome arced overhead as if the sky itself had become glass. Every breath they took came back a heartbeat later, doubled, as though the room answered.

Elise glanced at Emily. “We’re together?”

Emily nodded, uncertainty threading her voice. “Maybe that’s the point.”

A voice rose—nothing close to human. Calm and layered, like two tones held in perfect balance: one ancient, one newly born.

Two souls that walk in rhythm. Why?

Elise licked her lips. “Because we’re twins?”

Water rippled with a sound that could have been amusement.

Twins are born. Bond is chosen. Why have you chosen?

Emily hesitated. “Because we’re better together.”

Is that what you believe?

The silver surface deepened, and the world changed.

Beneath them, reflections swelled into pictures—memories rising through water like ink.

They saw family first. Their mother. Their father. Their brothers one by one.

Caleb—no older than twelve—dared gravity to do its worst and leapt from the stable roof, landing badly and laughing anyway.

Ethan, ten, trailed the courtyard’s edge with a book open in one hand, nearly walking into a tree.

Ryan at four, cleary another time, torn between watching a fish and watching his brothers.

Elise smiled. “They were trouble. Do you remember those games we used to play in the gardens? Caleb was always the hero and Ethan always the villain.”

Emily’s mouth curved. “Ryan wanted to be a ball.”

They both laughed. When Ryan was little, his only word had been ball, and he truly did love them.

The water shivered and fast-forwarded. The boys stretched taller, voices leveling, eyes sharpening.

Caleb learned how to make a hall look at him without speaking. Ethan learned how to make problems kneel by refusing to bend. Ryan learned how to hold a house together with patience and the right word.

Then the reflections shifted again—and the ache began.

Caleb stood before a burning doorway, chin lifted, pride and fear warring in his eyes.

Ethan was a silhouette in a room of light and machine-scribed circles, surrounded by devices that sang to him louder than voices.

Ryan sat alone at a long table, hands clasped hard enough to whiten the knuckles, as though he could will two truths to live in the same room without killing each other.

Elise’s breath hitched. “They’re changing.”

“They have to,” Emily said, though the words scraped her throat.

And you? the voice asked.

What will you do as they change? What will you do if that change has already occurred and their outlook has forever shifted?

The girls looked at each other—unease blossoming.

What an oddly specific question.

Elise answered too quickly. “We’ll follow them. We always do.”

Followers are easily lost, the voice replied—not unkind. Foundations are not.

The light dimmed to twilight. Water rose to their ankles, then to their knees—cool, then cold.

Hundreds of small ripples bloomed, each a vignette: Caleb laughing too loud, Ethan forgetting to eat, Ryan stopping a fight no one else saw starting.

Then: moments they did not recognize. These were clearer., mot memories exactly more like possibilities.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

“Are these… futures?” Elise whispered.

Emily stared down at Ethan’s light-drunk outline, Caleb’s flame, Ryan’s tired hands. “Maybe. Or warnings.”

Not warnings, the voice corrected gently.

Remnants, offered early. What will you carry for them?

“Anything,” Emily said—and meant it.

Anything is nothing, the voice replied.

A vow without weight breaks in the hand.

The surface split.

The floor cracked like ice beneath a bootheel, and the twins were pulled apart—Emily to one island of light, Elise to another. Their linked hands tore; distance yawed between them until the other was more haze than person.

“Elise!”

“Emily!”

They strained toward each other—only to find that every step lengthened the gulf.

The voice returned, quieter now:

You have survived by standing shoulder to shoulder.

But when you are parted—by duty, by war, by choice—will the bond still bind?

On her island, Elise steadied herself. The air cooled to winter-glass blue. The water stilled and showed Caleb—older, deliberate, handsome the way arrogance is handsome before it’s humbled. He stood before a hall she recognized—the Li main estate—while flame crawled up its far wall. He gave orders through his jaw, not his mouth, pride holding him upright where wisdom should have stood.

Her voice failed.

He didn’t turn.

A stab of panic cut her.

She saw—clearly, terribly—how easily his need to win might become the need to be seen winning.

If no one reminded him what he was for, he would mistake conquest for purpose.

Across the gulf, Emily’s island flared harsh, brittle blue.

She saw Ethan—not in a hall of invention but in battlefield ruin.

The ground scorched black.

Machines shattered.

The air reeked of iron.

Ethan knelt at the center, his sword broken, one hand pressed against the earth as if trying to hold the world together by touch alone.

His cultivation was gone.

His mana, once a flickering spark, was now choking smoke.

When the wind moved, it carried deranged laughter.

Emily’s chest ached.

He wasn’t building anymore.

He wasn’t dreaming.

He was surviving—and it was killing him slowly.

If no one reminded him why he had begun, he would fade where he knelt, another prodigy swallowed by silence.

The image shifted—Ryan appeared with their parents, all three broken together yet alone. Behind them lay Emily’s and Elise’s bodies, destroyed.

Elise reached toward Emily. “I can’t get to you.”

“I know.” Emily swallowed. “I can’t either.”

You cannot save them from what they were, the voice said.

Only remind them of what they intended to be.

Elise sank to her knees. “Then what do you want from us?”

Not rescue, the voice answered.

Remembrance.

Not shadowing steps—steadying hearts.

Emily closed her eyes. She could almost feel Elise’s pulse echoing under her own.

She raised her voice—not loud, but true.

“Elise.”

A tremor in the mist. “I hear you.”

“We don’t need to cross,” Emily said. “Just believe.”

Elise let out a shaky breath. “You always say things like that—like it’s easy.”

“It isn’t,” Emily said. “It’s ours.”

They stood—not together, but facing one another across the gulf.

“Say it,” Emily called. “With me.”

Elise nodded.

“I won’t forget who they are.

I won’t let them forget, either.”

The water answered.

Silver threads rose from the surface—thin as hair, then thicker—twining, brightening. They laced the air in a trembling span. The bridge did not resemble stone or rope or steel. It looked like woven light and memory.

Elise stepped first. The bridge held.

Emily stepped to meet her.

When their hands clasped at the center, the reflections did not vanish; they clarified.

Caleb still stood at the burning door, but the flame looked less like appetite and more like fuel.

Ethan still listened to the machines, but he also looked up—as if hearing someone calling him home.

Ryan still carried burdens, but he paused, breathed, and asked for someone to join him.

Elise whispered, voice cracking, “What did we do?”

Emily squeezed her hand. “We chose.”

This is the power of bond freely chosen, the voice said.

Not one soul divided, but two who refuse to forget.

Through you, those you carry will remember their first intentions.

Through you, roots will hold when the storm comes.

Warmth spilled through the room.

The cold fell away like a curtain.

The bridge dissolved. Water softened to mirror.

Etched beneath their feet, lines of light arranged themselves into a sigil—two arcs crossing and re-crossing, meeting at one point before diverging again. A mark lit on each sister’s palm: the same design, mirrored. Emily’s curled clockwise. Elise’s curved the other way. When their hands met, the symbols aligned.

Carry this, the voice said.

When ambition forgets its heart, be the bridge between what is and what must endure. There will be a time when you must convey this to others.

The water folded into the floor. The sky-dome thinned. A door unsealed ahead, spelllight spilling through.

They stepped forward together.

Serenya stood in the shrine’s hall with arms folded and one eyebrow raised. The others turned as the twins emerged, boots dripping silver droplets that winked out before touching stone.

Vivian’s violet eyes sharpened. “You saw something.”

Emily nodded. “Our brothers.”

Sophie’s mouth quirked. “That covers a wide range.”

Elise answered quietly but firmly. “What they’re meant for. And what we’re meant to be when they forget.”

Marissa fluttered her fan to hide that she was listening too closely. An-Mei grinned—delighted, as always, by drama.

Serenya looked at the sigils glowing faintly on their palms, then at their faces. The mischief in her softened into something like pride.

“Good,” she said. “The goddess wastes nothing on ornaments.”

Elise blinked. “What… are we?”

Serenya’s smile warmed. “Necessary.”

The twins didn’t argue. For once, nothing in the room made them feel like the youngest or the smallest or the ones meant to wait. It felt instead like a door had opened—one only they could see through—into a house none of them had built yet, but all of them would live inside.

Later unclear whenever it was in waking or the dream state;' they saw and considered the thin moon. The night smelled of cedar and river.

Elise tipped her head back. “Do you think they’ll ever know?”

“Our brothers? Eventually,” Emily said. “Probably after they nearly ruin everything.”

Elise huffed a laugh. “That sounds like them.”

They sat quietly, marks dimming on their palms. Wind moved through the pines; somewhere, Serenya murmured to an unseen listener. The shrine held its silence like patience.

For the first time, Emily and Elise Zhou did not feel like observers to the story.

They felt like the bridge that would hold it together.

Far across the grounds, something stirred—too faint to be voice, too bright to be only thought.

Foundations chosen. Remember them, it whispered through root and stone.

When the world begins to break, remind the builders what they meant to make.

The twins rose. The marks dimmed to memory.

There was work to do.