The pit still smelled of blood.
Harlan's screams lingered long after the Bone King's collapse. We didn't speak of him. We didn't have the strength.
The three survivors we had freed were weak, barely able to move. Karis insisted we couldn't leave them — "If we abandon them, we're no better than the Harvesters," she said — though every step slowed us.
The boy's glow dimmed and brightened in uneven pulses. Sometimes his veins flared so brightly I thought he might ignite from within. Other times the fire inside him sank low, leaving his skin pale and clammy.
The city around us had changed. Not just ruins — broken glass.
Shards lay everywhere, embedded in the ash like crystals. Windows shattered not from time but from something else. Whole skyscrapers stood hollow, their facades glittering like fractured mirrors. The ground crunched underfoot.
It was Karis who first noticed the silence.
"No birds," she whispered. "No wind. Nothing."
And then the glass began to move.
---
First Sight
At first it looked like the sunlight had shifted. But there was no sunlight. Only pale gray sky.
The shards trembled. A faint ringing filled the air, high-pitched and unnatural, like a finger sliding across crystal.
Then they rose.
From the streets, from the windows, from the shattered husks of cars — shards of glass lifted into the air, swirling together, fusing into long, thin limbs. They stretched tall, humanoid, but wrong — too angular, too sharp. Their bodies refracted light that wasn't there. Faces flat and smooth, like broken mirrors.
The Glasswalkers.
One turned toward us. My reflection stared back from its faceless head — warped, fractured, stretched into grotesque shapes.
The boy gasped. "They're walking mirrors."
The Glasswalker took a step forward. The sound was not footsteps, but shattering.
---
The Fracture
The survivors we'd freed screamed. One bolted down the street, limping on his missing leg stump, falling into the ash. The Glasswalkers didn't chase him. They only stood still, heads tilting, reflections shimmering.
Then one raised its hand.
The shard fingers split apart, refracting light into a beam. Not fire, not heat. Disruption.
The fleeing survivor froze mid-stride. His body warped, bent at impossible angles, his reflection torn from him. For a second I saw two of him — one real, one trapped inside the Glasswalker's body. Then his flesh shattered like crystal, scattering into the wind.
The scream never finished.
Karis pulled the boy against her chest, shielding his eyes.
"Don't look at them," she whispered. "Don't look in the glass."
But it was impossible not to. Every step we took, we were reflected in a thousand fragments. Each reflection warped differently — taller, thinner, stretched with mouths too wide. I felt myself unravel, as though the Glasswalkers were already dissecting me into broken versions.
---
The Chase
They began to move in unison, slow but relentless. Their steps echoed like breaking mirrors, each impact leaving shards embedded in the ground.
We ran through the ruins, dragging the rescued survivors with us. Every reflective surface betrayed us — shards on the floor, cracked windows, even pools of rainwater. Each time I glanced into them, my reflection lagged behind me. Sometimes it didn't follow at all.
Once, I looked back and saw myself standing still in the reflection — eyes black, mouth wide open. Not me. Something else wearing me.
The boy's glow brightened. The reflections twisted around him, drawn to his light. The Glasswalkers turned sharply, their smooth heads tilting. They wanted him.
One stepped through a wall of glass as though it were water, emerging whole on the other side. Another shattered into fragments, then reformed ahead of us, blocking our path.
They weren't bound to space the way we were. They moved through reflection.
---
The Shattered Hall
We found ourselves in an abandoned shopping mall, its walls nothing but mirrors and glass storefronts.
A mistake.
The moment we entered, the walls rippled. Dozens of Glasswalkers emerged from the surfaces, unfolding from reflections like hands from water.
The survivors screamed, clutching at me. Karis held the boy, whispering prayers that dissolved into sobs.
Every mirror showed a different version of us: broken bodies, bleeding eyes, twisted limbs. The Glasswalkers moved between the reflections freely, stepping in and out as if the mirrors were doors.
One reached for Karis. Its shard-hand cut through the air, slicing her arm open. Blood sprayed across the glass — and where it touched, her reflection bled with her.
The reflection reached out from the glass, trying to pull her inside.
I swung my pipe, shattering the mirror. The reflection vanished in shards, the Glasswalker shrieking as it dissolved into fragments.
But for every one destroyed, three more emerged.
---
The Reflection Trap
The boy's glow became blinding. His fire-veins pulsed so brightly the Glasswalkers gathered around him like moths to a flame.
One reached close. He screamed, his reflection tearing free of him — a glowing, molten version, pulled into the Glasswalker's body. For a heartbeat, he went still, as if his soul had been taken.
Then, impossibly, the glow flared brighter. The Glasswalker shattered from within, glass exploding in all directions.
The boy collapsed, gasping. Karis held him tight, her face pale with terror.
"He can destroy them," she whispered. "He can fight them."
But I saw the truth. Each time his glow flared, he came closer to becoming something else. His reflection lingered too long, staring back at me with fire in its eyes.
---