The hour was black, between the second and third bells. The castle breathed in its sleep—deep, uneven, full of teeth.
Seren moved alone.
He left Elara's chamber with the wedge still in place, as if he had never stirred. His steps were small, weight spread across the balls of his feet. He did not carry a lamp. The stones knew the way; he had learned them with his hands, not his eyes.
The south stair opened like a throat behind the mildewed tapestry. He slipped through. The ivy smell of damp cloth clung to him as he descended.
One landing. Two. Three.
He slowed at the third. The air here held that faint cinder taste. Ashroot again. He turned, as before, chose the iron trace instead.
Four. Five. Six.
On the seventh, the wall waited—blank stone to anyone who hadn't read a note in ink that refused to shine.
Seren pressed his palm to it. Twice. Feather light.
The wall shivered. Dust fell in soft clouds. The seam broke, and the stone gave way.
---
The chamber beyond was unchanged and yet different.
The cracked mirror still hung, its surface webbed with fractures, light leaking where it should not. But tonight, it did not wait silently. Words already bled across its broken skin.
Drink, and step.
Seren's jaw tightened. He had drunk Elara's water, plain and safe. The command in the note echoed here. Drink before you come.
He had.
The mirror pulsed faintly, as if acknowledging that obedience. Shadows curled in its depths, shapes of figures not yet born or long dead.
Seren stepped closer. His reflection was fractured: a dozen versions of himself, each calm, each watching. Some wore scars he did not yet have. One bore eyes brighter, burning with mana. Another stood taller, shoulders broad, a sword across his back.
He reached a hand toward the glass.
Cold kissed his fingertips.
The reflection moved first.
His mirror-self lifted its hand faster, pressed palm to palm against his, though no warmth passed through. The glass hummed under his touch. Cracks glowed faintly like veins of molten silver.
Words burned again:
Two bloodlines. Two seals. One debt.
Seren's breath hitched. He had heard whispers of his lineage—Astralis mother, Drakoria father—but no one had spoken of seals. He thought of the Patriarch's eyes measuring him, of Zephyros's knife, of the absence in his veins when he tried to summon what others called mana.
The glass flared.
His reflection's mouth moved. No sound came, but the words formed clearly:
Awakening begins with the willing.
Then the reflection shattered into a thousand shards.
---
Seren stumbled back, but the chamber held him.
The mirror darkened, its surface now a pool of ink. From its depths rose a voice—not human, not beast, but a chorus of whispers woven together.
"Seraphina's son."
His heart clenched. The name of his mother had not been spoken since her death. Not here. Not in this house.
"You carry what they tried to bury. You bleed Astralis. You breathe Drakoria. Both chains. Both keys."
Seren steadied his breathing. Four in. Two held. Eight out. His voice came calm, as if he spoke across a laboratory bench, not into the maw of a cursed mirror.
"What do you want from me?"
The whispers trembled like leaves in storm.
"Not what we want. What you will need. To live. To stand. To return."
Images flared in the ink—fleeting, sharp: his brothers, their faces twisted in shadow; a battlefield where banners burned; an isle black with fog and towers of ash.
Then silence. The mirror stilled.
Only his reflection remained: a boy with calm eyes too old for his years.
---
The seam in the wall groaned. The door was closing.
Seren turned once more to the mirror. "I will come back," he whispered, though he did not know to whom he spoke.
The cracks glimmered faintly, as if in reply.
He slipped out as the stones sealed behind him.
---
Back in Elara's chamber, the wedge slid into place. She looked up from her seat, spoon across her knees. Her eyes searched his face, found no fear there, only calm.
"You saw," she said.
"I did."
"And?"
Seren sat on the cot. His voice was quiet, but steady. "They sealed me. Both sides. But seals can break."
Elara's breath caught. She looked at him long, as if weighing whether to speak the truth or let silence stand guard. At last, she said, "Then you are more dangerous than they know. Or more doomed."
Seren lay back, his eyes on the beams above. "I will decide which."
The bells tolled faintly in the distance. Another day waited. Another lesson.
And deep beneath the castle, the mirror dreamed in silence.