Irlenne is gone.
The mirror sealed itself the moment her body passed through, its molten-glass surface hardening like ice over a lake. Lucien stares at his own reflection, breathing hard, as if he can will it to open again.
It doesn't.
She vanished without a scream. Without a goodbye.
And it feels like punishment.
---
He runs his palm along the mirror's surface. It's cold. Smooth. Nothing to suggest that just moments ago, it had swallowed the girl he—
No.
Not past tense.
Not had.
He loves her. Still. Now.
And the silence she left behind is unbearable.
---
> "Lucien?"
Alira's voice.
He turns. She's in the doorway, barefoot, wearing a loose gray sweater and a face that looks far too calm for what's happening.
> "She went into the mirror," he says, voice thin.
> "I know."
> "You knew this would happen?"
Alira walks toward him slowly, deliberately, like someone approaching a frightened animal.
> "I knew the mirror wasn't done with her," she says. "It never is."
Lucien's fists tighten.
> "And you let her go?"
> "Would you have stopped her?"
That shuts him up.
Because he tried. And failed.
Because deep down, he knew she'd made her choice the moment the glass cracked.
---
> "You saw what it showed her," Alira continues, tone quiet. "Versions. Echoes. Memory twisted into trap. The mirror doesn't just reflect—it hunts."
> "Then we pull her out before it devours her."
Alira sighs.
> "It's not that simple. You don't dive into the mirror to rescue someone—you follow them only if you're willing to risk never coming back as yourself."
---
Lucien stares at the glass again. His reflection flickers at the edges.
For a moment, it isn't him.
It's a version of him that stayed with Mara.
That let Irlenne rot in doubt.
That smiled when she wept.
He steps back, shaking.
> "Then I need an anchor," he says.
> "What?"
> "If I go in after her, I need something real. Something that's mine. So the mirror can't take it."
Alira eyes him warily.
> "You're not trained for this."
> "No one is."
> "You barely survived Mara."
Lucien looks her dead in the eyes.
> "That's why I'll survive this."
---
She studies him a long moment.
Then pulls something from her pocket.
A sliver of black quartz. The same kind the mirrors are carved from—but scorched, burned, unusable.
> "This belonged to Theda," she says. "She tried to change her reflection once. Broke the rules. The mirror punished her."
Lucien swallows.
> "And now?"
> "She sees ghosts in the corners. Remembers futures that never happened." Alira presses the shard into his palm. "But it made her strong."
> "How do I use it?"
> "You hold it and speak your truest name."
> "My what?"
> "Not the one they gave you. Not the one you pretend to be. The name that's yours, when everything else is stripped away."
---
Lucien closes his fingers around the shard.
It bites into his skin.
He exhales.
And whispers:
> "I am the boy who doubted love and paid for it with silence. I am the man who will not let her drown in my shadow."
The mirror ripples.
Alira steps back.
> "You'll have to find her memory by memory. She won't look like herself. Neither will you."
> "If I don't come back—"
> "You'll come back." Alira's voice softens. "Just don't try to fix what's already broken. Just bring her home."
---
Lucien steps forward.
The mirror breathes him in.
---
✴︎
It feels like falling through silk.
Cold, endless silk soaked in tears and fire and fragments of songs he's never heard but somehow remembers.
His body lands hard.
He opens his eyes.
And the world is...
...wrong.
---
A palace, rotting from the inside.
Its chandeliers drip candlewax like blood.
Its halls are lined with hundreds of mirrors — each one flickering with a different life.
Lucien stands.
He looks at the nearest mirror.
In it: Irlenne dancing.
Wearing a gold mask. Spinning alone in a ballroom made of bones.
She's smiling.
And yet — the mirror begins to crack.
From the pressure of a lie.
---
A voice behind him speaks.
> "Do you like the version where she never met you?"
Lucien turns.
Mara.
No—a version of her. Paler. Almost spectral. Her lips stained black.
> "This isn't real," he says.
> "Oh, Lucien." She smiles, teeth sharp. "None of it was. That was the trick."
---
He doesn't stay to argue.
He runs.
---
Hall after hall.
Mirror after mirror.
Irlenne crying.
Irlenne laughing.
Irlenne burning down a library of secrets.
Each version more unhinged, more surreal.
Until he finds it.
The one mirror that's silent.
Dark. Still. Waiting.
He steps closer.
Sees himself.
Kneeling in a field of glass shards.
And Irlenne, in front of him, saying:
> "I don't need you to fix me."
> "Then what do you need?"
> "Someone who sees the broken and still chooses me."
---
Lucien breathes in.
And whispers:
> "I do."
---
The mirror shatters.
Light pours through.
And from the light—
Irlenne emerges.
Not whole. Not healed.
But real.
Eyes tired. Mouth trembling.
She looks at him.
> "How did you find me?"
> "I stopped looking for the perfect version," he says. "And started looking for you."
She closes the space between them.
And this time—
When she kisses him—
There is no lie in it.
Only glass.
Only truth.
Only two hearts sharp enough to cut through everything they were told to be.