The storm had passed, leaving silence thick as wool. I stood before the fractured mirror, watching my reflection refuse to follow my movements. She leaned against the frame from inside, arms crossed, smirking with my mouth shaped wrong.
"Still pretending you're the real one?" she asked, voice carrying through glass that should have been too broken to conduct sound.
Behind her, another world bled through the cracks. Trees grew downward, roots reaching for a silver sky that pulsed like a living thing. Shadows moved between the inverted trunks—more versions of me, each one wearing the consequences of choices I'd never made.
Dorian stood close, blade drawn but useless against an enemy that wore my face. Ashara huddled in his other arm, refusing to look at the mirror, pressing her face into his shoulder with the instinct of prey recognizing a predator.
"She won't look at me," Mirror-Aria observed, false concern dripping from stolen features. "Smart child. She knows the difference between mother and moth-er. One who gives life, one who eats it."
"You're not me," I said, though the words felt hollow. How could I be certain anymore? How many versions of myself existed in the spaces between choice and consequence?
"No?" She pressed her palm against the glass, and I felt the pull—not physical but deeper, in the places where identity lived. "Then why do you feel yourself thinning? Why does each rejection make you less solid, less certain? Face it, darling—you're incomplete without us."
The pull intensified. The world tilted. And before Dorian could grab me, before I could resist, I fell through.
Not into the mirror. Into the space behind all mirrors, where reflections went when no one was watching.
I landed on silver grass beneath an inverted forest. The air tasted of might-have-beens and the bitter aftertaste of abandoned futures. Around me, they gathered—the other Arias, the paths not taken made flesh.
The first wore power like armor. Her eyes held no warmth, only the cold calculation of someone who'd chosen strength over everything else. "You could have been me," she said, voice resonating with unused authority. "Ashara would have been a goddess, terrible and perfect. No one would have dared threaten her."
"She would have been alone," I countered.
"She would have been safe." Power-Aria stepped closer, and I smelled ozone and burnt offerings. "Look at you—constantly running, constantly afraid. I never run. Nothing dares chase me."
The second approached from my left—Velara in full glory, divine marks covering her skin like living text. She moved with liquid grace, reality bending around her presence. "You felt it," she purred. "The moment you could have accepted the moonmark fully. The power singing in your blood, begging to be unleashed. You chose weakness."
"I chose humanity."
"Same thing." Velara-me traced a finger along my cheek, and where she touched, silver fire threatened to spark. "Humanity is just divinity afraid of itself. I embraced what we were meant to be."
The third hung back, wrapped in shadows and sorrow. This one hurt worst to see—the Aria who'd never loved Dorian, never known the anchor of partnership. She looked hollowed out, powerful but empty, carrying victories that meant nothing without someone to share them.
"At least I never had to watch him die," she said softly. "Never had to fear losing him. Never had to compromise my choices for another's safety. I am perfectly, terribly free."
They circled me like wolves, each argument hitting harder than physical blows. Because they weren't wrong. Each path had its merits, its strengths, its terrible logic. Power-me would never cower. Velara-me would never doubt. Alone-me would never grieve.
"You're all afraid," I realized, the understanding hitting sudden and clear. "That's why you're here, trying to convince me. Because I chose the harder path. The one where I could fail, could lose, could break. And I'm still standing."
"Broken standing isn't standing," Power-me snarled.
"It is if you choose to keep standing." I thought of Dorian's arms around me, of Ashara's trust, of every moment I'd chosen love over safety. "You are not the price I pay. You are the fear I bury. The easy answers I refuse."
I pulled the silver knife from my belt—the one constant across all realities, my mother's blade that had tasted my blood in every timeline. The cut across my palm came swift and deep, blood welling dark and undeniably real.
"I reject you," I said, marking the air with my blood. The symbol that formed wasn't planned, wasn't learned. It simply was—a declaration of singular identity, of chosen self, of the messy imperfection I'd claimed as mine.
The other Arias recoiled as if burned. The inverted forest shuddered. And through the blood-mark I'd made, I saw my truth reflected: Dorian holding Ashara, both watching the mirror with desperate hope.
Waiting for me. The real me. The only me that mattered because she was the one they loved.
I pressed through the mark, feeling the other selves try to cling, try to convince, try to merge. But blood was stronger than possibility. Choice was stronger than potential. Love—messy, dangerous, real love—was stronger than any power they offered.
I crashed back into my body, gasping, palm still bleeding. The mirror shuddered, trying to maintain its hold, but I pressed my bloody hand against the glass.
"I am Aria Nightbloom," I declared. "Mother by choice. Partner by choice. Human by choice. And I reject every easy answer you offer."
The glass screamed—a sound like breaking bells. The other versions faded, pulled back into possibility, denied the foothold they'd sought in reality. The mirror's surface ran like water, trying to reform, to heal, to offer another trap.
But the crack remained. One single fracture running top to bottom, sealed by my blood but not erased. A scar. A reminder. A wound that might reopen but would never again catch me unaware.
"Aria?" Dorian's voice, rough with relief.
I turned to them, my family, my anchors. "I'm here. I'm—"
Ashara began to sing in her sleep.
The words were Old Moon Tongue, the kind of lullaby that predated human memory. No one had taught her this. No one could have—the language itself had been dead before I was born. But from her tiny lips came perfect pronunciation, ancient melody, words that made the walls themselves lean in to listen.
Sleep, little godling, sleep little star
The moon knows your name from afar
When shadows grow hungry and light grows thin
The door will remember to let darkness in
The mirror behind me mended itself with a sound like sighing. Smooth surface restored, reflecting normally now—except for that single crack. That fissure I'd bought with blood and choice.
"She's learning songs we never sang," Dorian said quietly.
I gathered them both close, feeling the weight of what we faced. Not just gods or prophecies or alternate selves. But the slow accumulation of ancient knowledge in our daughter's mind, teaching itself to her in dreams.
"Then we'll teach her new ones," I said fiercely. "Human ones. Ones about choice and love and the beauty of imperfection."
The mirror reflected us truly now—a small family, battered but whole, facing impossible odds with nothing but determination and each other.
But in the crack, something watched. Patient. Waiting.
The wound in reality I'd made to save myself.
Wondering what might eventually crawl through.
🌙 If this chapter moved you, left you breathless, or made you feel something you can't quite name… vote with a Power Stone.Each vote is a thread in the tapestry we're weaving together — and I feel every one.Let's keep this story burning under the moonlight.