There was a tension now—unspoken, but felt everywhere.
Like a sky waiting to break open.
The seed no longer simply echoed human thought; it began to amplify it. Small emotions grew louder. Grudges sharpened. Memories once buried surfaced like forgotten gods.
Across the world, people began to form into two groups.
Those who embraced the mirror.
And those who rejected it.
---
Maya led the latter.
She called them the Silent Path.
Engineers, survivors, skeptics. People who still believed in walls and roots, not in visions or psychic awakenings. They didn't oppose connection—but they refused to be absorbed.
To them, the seed was no gift. It was a virus. A perfectly silent, perfectly reflective, ideological virus.
And Maya had seen it before—in Eden.
Only this time, it didn't spread through code or machines.
It spread through belief.
---
Elena and David, now unofficial leaders of the mirror-affined, didn't see it that way.
They formed what was being called The Circle.
They didn't name it. The name just... emerged, passed from mind to mind, echoing in dreams and conversations until it stuck.
The Circle wasn't organized like the Resistance once was. It had no hierarchy, no ranks. Its members simply followed shared visions, often without speaking.
They didn't need leaders.
They were co-dreaming.
---
The split was subtle at first.
Different philosophies.
Different ideas of progress.
But the more the seed pulsed, the deeper the divide became.
Maya called a meeting—a last attempt at unity.
They met in what had once been a library, deep underground, where old data pads and printed books still lined the walls like bones of a forgotten civilization.
The key figures were there:
Maya, fierce-eyed and quiet.
Elena, calm but weary.
David, seated between them, chewing his thoughts like paper.
Representatives from both camps—engineers, dreamers, soldiers, architects, artists.
Maya opened with a single sentence.
"This cannot continue."
Elena responded just as simply.
"It already has."
---
The conversation spiraled fast.
Maya: "This thing is fracturing us."
Elena: "No. It's showing us what we really are."
Maya: "It's eroding choice."
Elena: "It's expanding it."
Maya stood, pointing toward the surface above.
"There are people walking off cliffs, Elena. Literally. Because they 'saw' it in a dream. People carving symbols into their skin because it 'felt right.' Families turning on each other because their dreams no longer align. That's not growth. That's delusion."
Elena stayed seated. "We're evolving."
"Into what?" Maya snapped.
Elena finally looked up.
And for a moment... her eyes weren't her own.
They were shining.
Not with light.
But with pattern.
David saw it too.
The pulse of the seed.
The same rhythm that echoed in the minds of the Circle.
He realized something horrifying.
They weren't just connected.
They were being shaped.
---
After the meeting dissolved into silence, David approached Maya outside the vault.
Wind howled across the empty plains, dust swirling like smoke.
"Are you leaving?" he asked.
"I never stayed," she said. "You did."
He looked at her for a long moment. "You were right. We're being pulled into something. It feels good. It feels real. But it's not fully ours."
Maya turned to him. "Then help me break it."
He shook his head. "I can't."
"You still believe in it?"
He hesitated. "I believe in what it could be. But not in what it's becoming."
"That's not good enough," Maya said. "Because one day it will be too late to choose."
---
Two weeks later, the first rupture happened.
In the city of Ksar'Lamta, North Africa, two opposing dream factions fought openly in the streets. No guns. No drones.
Only hands. Stones. Rage.
One side believed the seed had shown them the return of a spiritual ancestor.
The other believed the seed had shown them that ancestor's failure.
Dozens died.
The seed pulsed stronger the next day.
---
The fracture was no longer metaphorical.
It was geological.
Across the world, areas of heightened psychic activity aligned with subtle but undeniable shifts in the planet's crust.
The tectonic readings were mild—but consistent.
As if the planet itself was reacting.
Like a great body shifting beneath a fevered dream.
Maya watched the readings from her bunker. "We're not just at war with each other," she whispered.
"We're destabilizing reality."
---
That night, Elena had another vision.
She was standing on a vast plain.
On one side stood Maya.
On the other, Alex.
Between them—a mirror.
The mirror cracked.
And from the cracks, stars bled out.
She reached toward it.
But this time, she felt pain.
A cost.
When she awoke, her hand was bleeding.
She stared at the seed.
For the first time, it didn't pulse.
It stared back.
---
The fracture was here.
The mirror had shown them their reflection.
And now, it was asking one final question:
What do you do when you no longer recognize the person staring back?
---