The city did not fall in fire.
It fell in reflections.
In the courtyards of the Spiral Sanctum, guards turned their spears on each other, not because they were traitors, but because they could no longer tell which version of themselves they were supposed to protect. In the lower wards, women gave birth to children that spoke prophecies the moment they drew breath and then forgot them. And in the plaza of the Broken Compass, time looped once, and then unraveled entirely.
Ayélè stood at the center of it, her blade drawn, but her eyes on him.
"What did you let in, Elias?"
"I didn't let anything in."
"Then why does it wear your face?"
The mirrored army had not attacked. It had arrived, one reflection at a time, stepping out of polished surfaces, glistening wells, and even the eyes of sleeping children.
Elias had stared into one of their faces and seen himself, but not Kéon, nor the body he'd leapt into.
It was the him who ran, the version who turned his back on Rae, who burned the city in another timeline, who traded a future for safety. It smiled when Elias flinched.
"This mirror," he said to Ayélè, standing above the city, "it's not just a door."
"We know that already. It's been speaking."
"No. I was wrong before. It's not even a portal."
He turned to her.
"It's a parasite. And I think I've been infected since the first leap."
They returned to the Hall of Accord, where the city's pact with the old bloodlines had once been signed. Only half the sigils still glowed. The rest had dried, their magic leeched.
The elders of the Five Houses waited for them.
But something was off.
Each of them stood behind a veil of glass, thick, fogged, anchored in place with chains.
"We cannot trust sight anymore," said the head of House Seret."We do not know who has been mirrored."
Elias stepped forward.
"Then what do you trust?"
"Only blood. And prophecy."
The blood, Elias understood. The mirror had no taste for it. It reflected, but it could not bleed. Prophecy, though?
That's when Ayélè made her move.
She drew her knife, not toward the elders, but towards Elias.
"He is the variable. He is the broken prophecy."
The hall rippled with movement. Guard-priests drew their staffs. Several aimed them at Ayélè. Others at Elias.
The veil cracked, literally, splitting down the middle as if the mirror that had infected the city's pact had found its next seam.
From the fracture in the glass, a voice echoed, not loud, but intimate. Inside the mind.
"You are the host," it whispered."The city is the first course."
Elias clutched his chest. He could feel it now, not memory, not instinct, but presence. Something inside him was mirroring him back, stretching his thoughts until he wasn't sure which were his own.
One of the elders stepped forward. Her hands were wet.
"The mirror was buried, once. Buried beneath the bloodstone vaults when the pact was sealed. We thought it could only leak through ritual."
"It doesn't leak," Elias said, his voice low.
"It chooses."
He turned to the gathered leaders. Their shadows were no longer matching them.
"The mirror is a mind. Or something worse. A mind that doesn't think, it remembers. It learns through versions."
"And what are you to it?" Ayélè asked.
Elias did not answer.
He didn't have to.
The Mirror answered for him.
"He is its vessel."
The Hall erupted.
Ayélè lunged, not to kill, but to test. Her blade grazed Elias's shoulder.
Blood.
Red. Human. Real.
The priests relaxed. For a moment.
Then the mirror screamed.
Not sound, but glass itself, shrieking as every pane in the Hall fractured inward. The reflections within them did not crack—they emerged. Dozens of them. Hundreds.
Elias looked around and saw every face he had ever worn.
The rebel. The lover. The monster. The scholar.
Some wept. Some grinned.
All of them reached toward him.
"Choose," said the Mirror.
"No," he whispered.
"You must. Or we will choose for you."
The only way to silence the Mirror's influence was to destroy its anchor.
Ayélè realized it first. She grabbed one of the elder's ceremonial axes and struck the central glass column, the original shard of the Mirror that had been embedded in the Hall's foundation.
The Mirror screamed again, but this time in pain.
Elias joined her. Every blow shook the building. The mirrored versions howled, began to distort, like oil slicks stretched too thin across fire.
The final strike sent a pulse through the city.
Mirrors across the city shattered simultaneously.
But not all.
Some broke inward.
Ayélè collapsed to her knees.
"You've broken the covenant," she said.
Elias, panting, didn't answer.
He looked at his hands. His reflection still shimmered on his skin. But it was quieter now.
Almost... waiting.
"We need to seal what's left," he said."Or we leave."
Ayélè stood.
"We can't leave. You brought this here. You end it here."
She left him in the ruins of the Hall.
And the last thing he saw before night fell was one final reflection in the broken glass, Rae, not as a queen or priestess, but as a soldier, her eyes burning, walking toward the city from the deserts beyond.
The mirror was not just watching anymore.
It was awakening.