The jesters were gone.

The world had resumed its rhythm. Light returned, and the music resumed. My friends were looking at me now with confusion, unaware that they had been frozen in time, suspended like wax figures while something ancient played out around them.

Dark Cynthia stood beside me at the center of the ballroom floor, her breath shallow, eyes locked on the marble beneath our feet.

That was when I saw it.

The motif.

For the first time since I found the motif. The symbol beneath us had changed. It was never like this before. What could have caused this change, the only clue I had was the jesters.

A single portion of the carving had lit faintly, gold glinting between the etched lines. What had once appeared as chaotic geometry, meaningless spirals and angles, now revealed a clear shape rising from the center curve.

A sunburst.

Not just a circle, but one lined with sharp, radiant beams, like the breaking of day. It pulsed once, barely noticeable, and then stilled again. The rest of the motif remained dull, unawakened.

I stared, transfixed.

“What is it?” Dark Cynthia asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

“I think… It’s changing,” I said. “Or it’s waking up.”

She knelt beside me, brushing her fingers just over the lines without touching them. “It wasn’t like this before.”

“No,” I agreed. “It’s revealing something. Like it’s waiting for us to see it, bit by bit.”

A thought crept into my mind, uninvited but insistent.

What happens when the whole motif is revealed?

Would it be a key? A warning? A doorway?

My eyes drifted across the polished marble, imagining the rest of the shape coming into view. What if it showed more than a sunburst? What if it was only half of something greater, an eclipse, perhaps? Or a mirror image?

“Maybe this is the connection,” I said, more to myself than to her. “Between the two worlds. Between us.”

Dark Cynthia glanced at me. “You think the motif is tied to the split?”

“Maybe it caused it. Or maybe it can fix it.”

We sat in silence for a moment, surrounded by people who were entirely unaware that a symbol carved into the ballroom floor had just reacted to our presence.

And not just reacted, responded.

“If we reveal the whole thing,” I said slowly, “could we fix whatever’s broken between our realities?”

She didn’t answer immediately. Then she whispered, “Or break it further.”

That was the danger, wasn’t it?

This motif, this ancient design, wasn’t passive. It was a language, a lock, maybe even a map. The jesters knew it. The jester who danced in both our colors had led us here, shown us the past, trapped us in frozen time.

They were watching something.

Or waiting.

And now, so were we.

As time settled back into motion and the colors returned to the ballroom, the hush of normalcy resumed like a stage cue.

Dark Cynthia and I stood silently over the partially revealed motif. My eyes flicked to the others, my friends, who were now staring at us with varying degrees of shock, confusion, and concern.

Oswald was the first to approach, stopping just short of the pattern on the floor.

“Okay,” he said cautiously. “Someone wants to explain why there are two of you now?”

I nodded and motioned toward my darker counterpart. “This is… me. From the other world. The one I told you about before. The darker version of this place, the Adumbral reality.”

Cedric crossed his arms, squinting. “So the whole cursed dual-reality thing wasn’t just some dramatic metaphor?”

“No,” I said. “I wasn’t making anything up. While you were all frozen, something happened. And the motif here… it changed.”

Dark Cynthia, quiet as ever, stepped forward and gestured to the faintly glowing lines on the floor. “This piece. It wasn’t visible before. It looks like a sunburst.”

Harold leaned forward slightly, eyeing the floor. “You think the whole thing’s going to… change to some kind of big picture that will magically make sense?”

“It’s already started,” I said. “And if we can uncover more, maybe we can understand how the two realities are connected.”

Veronica looked between the two of us, blinking slowly. “It’s eerie. You’re alike, but not the same. Even your voices have a different tone.”

“I don’t like it,” Iris said bluntly, folding her arms across her chest. “This is going to get confusing really fast. What are we supposed to call you both?”

The group fell into a short, awkward silence.

Cedric shrugged. “We could go with Cynthia One and Cynthia Two?”

“Please no,” I muttered.

Veronica glanced at Dark Cynthia. “What about Cynthia… and Cyn?”

“I don’t think that helps,” Oswald said with a small laugh. “She’s still Cynthia. Just from another place.”

Samuel, who had been unusually quiet, finally spoke up. His voice was thoughtful, almost tentative. “What if we used your last names? Or… something close to them.”

I looked at him.

“Luce,” he said, pointing to me. “Short for Lucidus.”

Then he turned to Dark Cynthia. “And Umbra. From Adumbral.”

Dark Cynthia’s expression didn’t change, but I thought I saw the faintest hint of a smile in her eyes.

“That… actually works,” Veronica admitted.

“It has symmetry,” Iris said slowly, clearly weighing the aesthetic. “Luce and Umbra.”

“Light and shadow,” Harold added.

Cedric clapped once. “Perfect. We’re living through some cursed mythic play, might as well name our leads properly.”

Oswald grinned. “Alright then. Luce and Umbra. That settles it.”

I looked at her, at Umbra, and she looked back at me with something I couldn’t name. Not exactly gratitude, not yet. But understanding. The kind you only have with someone who’s walked through the same kind of dark.

We turned back toward the motif, faintly glowing beneath our feet, and I knew this was just the beginning.

There were more secrets to uncover.

More symbols to reveal.

And now we had names.