The hero scans the room, noting features of significance. Pale mist on the horizon, tantalizing in its opacity. Water underfoot, jarringly clear. A single island in the center. A gnarled tree.
And silence.
The stillness is quickly broken by his footsteps and the fairy's chatter, but in that moment the hero imagines the eons elapsed in this room before his arrival. He thinks of waiting in the silence and knows it would be enough to drive one insane. The door locks behind him. He must defeat the monster within to progress, yet he dreads facing the creature that has been distorted by so many years of isolation.
The island, to his surprise, is empty. Yet the bars on the far door remain unmoving. In that moment he understands, and turns. The shadow gains form as he nears, sword drawn. Its humanoid appearance gives him pause, but only for a moment. He senses the evil festering within, the darkness that his sword is destined to vanquish. And so he attacks.
It is when the shadow parries his third strike that he realizes. The shadow is not simply humanoid. It is a mirror image of himself. He grits his teeth. Perhaps the Dark Lord thinks it amusing, pitting the hero against his own shadow. But a shadow can never overcome the original. So he thinks to himself, more prayer than conviction, and charges.
The hero has long since lost track of time. The fairy has wearied, and fallen silent. The only sound, the ring of metal striking metal, and the soft splash of boots hitting water.
Then a groan. He leaps back in surprise, withdrawing his sword from where it has drawn blood on the shadow's arm. Foolish, perhaps, but he did not expect the shadow to inherit his voice along with his body. The next moment dispels those doubts entirely. The shadow eyes him, gaze neither friendly nor malicious, and grunts, "Finish me."
"You speak," comes his startled reply.
The shadow's chuckle is cut short by a grimace of pain. The hero glances at the other's sword, fallen to the ground, and sheathes his own. He retrieves bandages from his pouch and approaches. The shadow seems confused, but accepts the aid. The hero asks its name.
"I have none."
"Is there anything you'd like to be named?"
The shadow considers, fiddling with the knot the hero has tied on the bandages. It smiles suddenly, eyes lighting on his own. "You."
The hero nods without a second thought. His name he will gladly share with this newfound companion.
They converse as only two individuals well acquainted with solitude can. The shadow tells the hero of what little past he remembers. The countless attempts to go beyond the mist, always that invisible barrier. The distant command to slay what came through the door. The overwhelming yearning to speak and be heard, to see another face, to feel another's touch. The hero smiles and holds out his hand.
He tells the shadow of his travels and his life. That bustling town, now infested with the dead. Those first steps down into a dungeon, the possibility that he will never surface again. That peaceful farm, a loyal partner ever so fond of carrots. A lost seven years, the occasional bump into a doorframe he forgets is too low, the shock when he sometimes sees his hands and cannot believe they are his own. The shadow grimaces again, not in pain, but in sympathy, and the hero is touched by this compassion.
The hero plays for the shadow all the songs he knows, and makes up a few as well. The shadows takes to one particular melody, asks the hero to play it again, and the hero obliges.
When they stand to go, there is laughter for the first time in months, the fairy grumbling over some teasing comment by the shadow, the hero looking on in amusement.
They find the doors still locked. The fairy looks on helplessly as both hero and shadow pound at the unyielding steel.
The shadow stands back at last, face blank. "It's no use." It shouts for the hero to stop, and he pauses to listen. "I must die for the door to open."
The hero does not wait for the shadow to finish, only redoubles his efforts. The sound of a blade being drawn turns the blood in his veins to ice. He whirls, urgent words on his tongue. A plea, a promise, he will never know, for the sight of the shadow standing there, sword poised, renders him mute.
The shadow smiles at him then. This smile holds all the words that will never pass between them. All the murmurs of comfort, oaths of loyalty, professions of love. All the dreams and fears and hopes and doubts and reassurances. An entire future denied them, a destiny they cannot flee.
The image of the shadow in that instant is forever seared into the hero's mind. Hair poking out from underneath the cap, a cowlick the hero never had. Eyes brimming with a deep tenderness, a shade that awakens a memory of sweet berries eaten one lazy summer afternoon. Mouth turned up in that devastating smile. Tunic equal parts sandy and damp. A hand grasping the sword hilt with such surety, the same hand the shadow had used to touch his own.
The blade plunges into the shadow's chest. The hero screams, a cry so full of anguish and despair it scarcely sounds human. He runs to the shadow, catches it mid-fall, cradles its body in his arms.
The shadow's eyes are trained on him, its smile unchanging, and it mouths something. The hero cannot hear through the blood pounding in his ears, but he reads its lips well enough.
The shadow is saying his name, its name. Perhaps it is a farewell to the hero. Perhaps it is an assertion of its own identity. Perhaps both, for are they not two halves of the same whole, forever intertwined? Hero and shadow. Light and darkness. Life and death.
The shadow dies.
The hero pulls bottles of red liquid from his pouch, to no avail. He uncorks a final bottle in desperation, pleads with the fairy inside, but it cannot or will not revive this being of evil.
The bars on the doors withdraw. He is free to leave.
He stays, for how long he does not know. He does know it is nothing in comparison to what the shadow must have endured. The fairy lets him be, and he is grateful. After what seems an eternity yet still not long enough, the hero leaves. A promise to the princess, his duty, and a vain hope of reunion. These are the things that see him through the coming months.
When he trudges through the desert, sand stinging his eyes, he envisions the shadow at his side, cap nearly blown clean off. When he gallops across the wide expanse of green, he can hear the shadow's whoops of joy at knowing such freedom. When he makes his way through the sinister rooms of the temple above the graveyard, he wonders if the shadow would feel at home in the darkness. When he stands in front of the Dark Lord's castle, he thinks of the shadow's smile, knows some sacrifices are too great to bear.
There is no reunion. The hero understands this as he pulls the sword from the Dark Lord's dying body. He will never see the shadow again. Before the princess sends him back, he asks to make one final visit.
The hero returns to the room in the submerged temple. The mist and water are gone now, as is the body. Yet the sword remains. He takes it with him.
Returned to the past, the hero is a child, with eyes that have seen too much, and a heart achingly empty. He buries the sword, then changes his mind and stands it upright in the dirt. The grave is in the woods, beside a familiar berry patch.
The years come and go. The hero never fails to visit every day, sometimes for hours, sometimes for simply a glance. The shadow lives in his memory vividly. Some days he talks, telling the shadow of the world outside, like he did during their first and only encounter. Other days he is silent, remembering the shadow smiling at him in that last moment, a lifetime of words left unsaid.
He plays the shadow's favorite song.
The hero tells no one of the shadow or the grave, sees no reason to. When he feels death coming, he bids his friends farewell, and leaves for the forest. He does not return.
In the woods there is a secluded clearing, requiring a mix of luck and intention to find. In one corner stands a berry patch, red berries visible all year round, but especially sweet during the summer. In another corner stands two swords.