The gates of Ederne groaned open with a sound like old thunder. The city beyond looked half-asleep—streets lined with empty stalls, banners faded to ghosts of color, the dawn light slanting through drifting mist.
Seok-min walked ahead, his coat brushing against the cobblestones. "Stay close," he murmured. "Places like this don't stay quiet without a reason."
I followed, every step echoing. Buildings leaned inward as if listening.
Then I saw it.
At the center of the plaza stood a man in armor, motionless, one knee bent as if caught mid-prayer. In his gauntleted hands he held a mirror. The surface rippled faintly, swallowing the dawn instead of reflecting it.
"Seok-min," I whispered. "That it?"
His eyes sharpened, the air around him tightening. "Yes. The Mirror of Echoed Truth. It's the artifact."
We approached slowly. The mirror pulsed once, a faint hum vibrating through the stones. My skin prickled.
"Wait—" Seok-min began.
Too late.
The mirror flashed white. The knight's head jerked up with a grinding hiss of metal. Where eyes should have been, the visor gleamed—reflecting my own face twisted in shock.
Then it moved.
The armored figure rose with impossible grace, dragging a longsword from the ground. Light bent around its blade, turning into shifting reflections that blurred the world.
"Contact!" Seok-min shouted, drawing something from his coat—a short dagger that gleamed like a fragment of a fallen star.
I stumbled back as the knight swung. The sword screamed through the air, missing my chest by inches and carving a trench into the cobblestone. Sparks scattered like fireflies.
Instinct kicked in.
The world slowed. My vision tinted gold. Threads of yellow light unfurled across the ground—curving paths, glowing arcs—truth showing me where to move.
I followed the light.
Steel tore through the air behind me, but I was already rolling aside, boots scraping stone. "Seok-min! It's like it's reading us!"
"It is!" He raised his dagger; light burst from it, forming orbiting motes that spun like miniature constellations. "It mirrors everything—it learns through reflection!"
"Great. Fighting a copycat mirror. My life keeps improving."
The knight lunged again, faster this time. Each movement produced after-images, mirrored duplicates that slashed from impossible angles. My body screamed, but the yellow lines shifted—truth whispering, left, duck, strike.
I obeyed.
My fist slammed against its arm joint. Metal dented. A crack zigzagged across the armor's elbow.
Seok-min moved beside me, his dagger leaving arcs of light that hung in the air like trails of starlight. When the knight's sword swung toward him, he deflected with a sweep—each movement calculated, elegant, silent.
"Cover your eyes!" he yelled.
I did. A burst of white exploded, bright as daybreak. The sound followed—a metallic shriek, wind exploding outward. When I looked again, shards of broken reflection fluttered through the air like glass petals.
The knight staggered, armor trembling. The mirror in its hands flickered—ripples distorting its surface like liquid.
But it didn't fall. It roared—a sound that wasn't human—and slammed its sword into the ground. The earth fractured, sending both of us flying back.
I hit a wall hard enough to see stars of my own. When my vision cleared, I saw the mirror… flowing. The reflective surface crawled up the knight's body, coating the armor until the entire figure shone like living mercury.
"Oh, that's new," I muttered.
Seok-min wiped blood from his lip, eyes narrowing. "It's fusing. It's choosing form over mind."
"Translation?"
"It's about to stop thinking and start killing."
"Perfect."
The knight charged. I rolled aside, feeling the wind of its blade brush my coat. I reached into my jacket and threw a small metal rod—standard detective flashlight, nothing special. But as it spun through the air, one of my yellow lines intersected it, and the beam hit the mirror's surface.
The light split—refracted into dozens of narrow beams. The reflections carved bright scars across the fog.
The knight paused, just long enough for Seok-min to move. He raised his dagger skyward. Tiny points of light formed around him, dozens, then hundreds, spiraling like a galaxy in miniature.
He looked ethereal—calm amid chaos, his hair glowing faintly blue under the radiance.
"Constellation: Falling Comet."
The stars shot forward.
They struck the knight in a cascading explosion of light. Armor cracked, splintered. The mirror shrieked—its surface distorting violently.
"Jihoon!" Seok-min shouted. "Now!"
Truth flared around me. Yellow paths converged on a single point—the knight's chest, where the mirror's heart pulsed.
I ran, boots pounding against fractured stone, following the one path that didn't lie. The knight swung—too late. I slid under its arm, grabbed a fallen sword, and drove it upward.
Seok-min's starlight met my strike mid-motion, fusing gold and silver in one blinding flash.
The blade pierced through. The knight froze.
A sound like breaking glass echoed through the plaza. The mirror's surface fractured, shards hovering weightless in the air before fading into light.
The armored body staggered once, twice, then collapsed to its knees. Steam rose from the cracks along its chestplate.
Silence fell.
I stood there panting, sweat and dust mixing on my skin. The yellow light faded from my vision. "You… alive?" I asked.
Seok-min lowered his arm, breathing hard. "Barely." His dagger dimmed, returning to plain metal. "But it's over."
We waited, listening. Nothing moved.
Finally, I stepped forward. "Let's see who our friend was."
Together we knelt beside the fallen knight. The armor still felt faintly warm. I hesitated, then gripped the helmet and pulled.
It came free with a hiss.
Beneath it was the face of a man in his late thirties—pale, gaunt, but unmistakably human. His hair was black streaked with gray, his eyes closed as if merely sleeping.
I stared. "He's… alive?"
Seok-min leaned closer, touching two fingers to the man's throat. "Faint pulse. The mirror didn't consume him completely."
"So this thing possessed him?"
"In a way. It fed on his reflection until there was nothing left to tell the difference." He looked at me. "We'll need to take him back. His memories might tell us where the mirror came from."
I nodded slowly, gaze drifting to the shattered pieces of reflection still fading into mist.
"What do you think he saw?" I asked quietly.
"Probably the same thing we all see," Seok-min said. "Ourselves, until we don't recognize it anymore."
We stayed like that for a moment, the silence heavy but calm. Then Seok-min straightened, signaling the driver waiting beyond the gate. "Let's move him. Before this place decides to remember we exist."
As we lifted the unconscious man, the first rays of full morning filtered through the mist, casting fractured light across the plaza.