"And yet… he only sees you. Never me."
The weight of her words hit Maya like a blow to the chest. She stumbled backward, her hands clutching at the ground as the crimson aura intensified around her. It wasn't just anger radiating from her other self—it was pain, deep and unrelenting, the kind of ache that Maya herself had tried to bury for so long.
"Do you know how angering it is?!" the other Maya shouted, her voice echoing like a thunderclap in the void. The crimson veins beneath them flared, the air crackling with energy. "To exist in the shadows, to be ignored, forgotten, while you bask in his attention, his trust? You get to be seen, and heard, while I'm left to rot in the dark!"
