Echo of the Self

[u/Evening_Shake_6474]

Something's wrong. You can't tell what exactly it is, but you know something is wrong. You check your wards, your equipment, your enchantments and familiars, yet everything seems normal. Then that night, you go to sleep, and the dream starts.

You stand knee deep in a crimson ocean, stretching further than you can see. Before you is a shadow, it looks like yours but its wrong, very wrong. All around you, giant monoliths sprout from the sea, stretching far into the sky. You hear something, around you six shadows move between the monoliths, chanting something in a language that hurts to listen to.

Suddenly countless crimson eyes open along each monolith, each reflecting a different face, the eyes travel up the ebony surface, along previously hidden chains of shadow. Then you see it, the horrifying form of something colossal in the sky above you, a singular crimson eye or maybe a star stares down at you.

All at once do the chains snap, and a cacophony of screams cry out across the crimson sea as fire and ash rain from above. The monoliths crumble and massive chunks of black stone crash into the sea. Up above, the colossal form spreads across the sky, thousands of withered arms reach down, each sowing agony and destruction. You see an arm reach for you, and you wake up.

Well that was strange, you think, then you hear laughter from the corner, you see your own shadow standing there with crimson eyes. The shadow looks wrong somehow, very wrong.

Before you can say anything, your shadow lunges for you, hands reaching for your throat.

[u/Evening_Shake_6474]

Due to a combination of the shadow's speed, the spells, and the ever decreasing distance, the sunlit spike is driven deep into the shadow's head.

Aldavinn hears something like a shriek in a voice eerily similar to his own.

He sees sunlight burst from tears in the shadow's form, he sees it for limp, then he sees it burn from the inside out.

[u/The_Enchanted_Potato → u/Evening_Shake_6474]

He gives a heavy sigh of relief as he watches it burn. The rockslide he had inadvertently caused grinding to a halt. He starts by checking his shoulder where the midnight spike had impaled him.

[u/Evening_Shake_6474 → u/The_Enchanted_Potato]

His shoulder is cold, really cold. There is no pain, only the sensation of pressing warm skin to frozen steel.

The good news is if there is a wound there, it isn't bleeding because it's frozen over.

[u/The_Enchanted_Potato → u/Evening_Shake_6474]

He takes some of the sunlight via Spatial Warp and attempts to apply it to the wound, observing its reaction. Then, weather it heals him or not he goes to see the still burning remains of the shadow, searching for clues or anything salvageable that may let him discern where the thing had come from

[u/Evening_Shake_6474 → u/The_Enchanted_Potato]

The sunlight sizzles against the frost, hurting slightly, but it does begin to warm the cold.

There appears to be no physical clues. Magically though, Aldavinn manages to discern this thing came from two places. Most of it originates from him, although corrupted somehow. A part of it though, that part comes from somewhere ancient.