The village reeked of smoke and salt. Ash clung to the air like an uninvited spirit, drifting through the narrow alleys where the sea-wind could not reach. Nysera moved first, her steps silent across the charred timbers. Her fingers brushed the hilt of her blade, but it was the hum beneath her skin—the whisper of restless bones—that guided her more than steel.
They had come too late.
The roofs were caved in. Doors hung broken, and the ground was strewn with shattered clay pots and blackened fishnets, still damp from the tide. Somewhere in the ruin, a child had cried once. Nysera had heard it when they crested the ridge. Now there was only silence.
Seliora knelt in the center of the square, her palms pressed to the earth as though she could coax the life back into it. Green light bloomed at her fingertips, a trembling radiance that spread across the cobbles in thin veins. The spell sank deep into soil and stone. Nysera felt it as a pulse in her own marrow, life thrashing against death's claim.
But the light flickered. The veins withered before her eyes. Seliora gasped, collapsing forward onto her hands, shoulders trembling.
"No," she whispered. "No, no, no—" Her voice broke, thin as cracked porcelain.
Nysera stepped toward her, shadows curling around her boots. "Seli," she said quietly. "It's gone."
Seliora lifted her head, green fire still burning in her eyes. Her cheeks were streaked with tears she hadn't noticed falling. "I could have—" She swallowed hard, choked. "If I'd been faster—"
"You weren't," Nysera said, sharper than she intended. She crouched beside her sister, laying a hand on her shoulder. "You can't heal ash."
Seliora's magic guttered out. Her fingers clawed at the cobbles as if she could drag breath from the stones themselves. Nysera didn't press. She knew the agony of trying to bend the world into something it would not yield.
The sound of footsteps echoed softly. They both turned.
Orryn stood at the edge of the square, her cloak clinging to her like mist. Her gaze was unreadable, silver eyes catching what little light remained. She carried no torch, no weapon. The shadows seemed to make way for her, parting as she approached.
"You felt it too," Orryn said. Her voice was calm, disturbingly so. "The curse passed here."
Seliora pushed to her feet, glaring. "You knew."
"I guessed," Orryn corrected, head tilting. "And my guess was right." Her gaze swept over the burned houses. "The mirror drinks deepest where life is gathered. Villages, markets, temples. It's drawn to community, because community is what can shatter it."
Nysera rose as well, stepping subtly between them. She had seen this fire in Seliora's eyes before, but never aimed at their sister. "Don't start."
Seliora's lips trembled. "She knew," she repeated, softer now, the accusation cracking into grief. "She knew, and still we were too late."
Orryn said nothing.
The silence pressed in heavier than the ash. Somewhere a beam shifted, collapsing with a dull thud. The smell of brine seeped stronger, carried on the tide.
Nysera exhaled slowly. "We need to move. If the curse touched here, it won't linger. It feeds, then flees." She tightened her grip on the hilt at her hip. "But there may be something left behind."
They searched.
The sisters moved through the ruins, each in her own orbit. Nysera followed the trail of whispers only she could hear—the rattling sighs of bones beneath the rubble. Some begged, some accused, most only drifted on in meaningless echo. She had learned long ago to ignore them, but tonight their chorus grated deeper.
Seliora found what little survived: a half-burned prayer book, a scattered string of wooden beads, a child's shoe blackened beyond repair. She clutched each relic as though her hands could sanctify them. Her power itched beneath her skin, desperate to pour itself out, though she had nothing left to heal.
And Orryn? Orryn wandered like a ghost between them, fingers brushing broken doorframes, shattered mirrors, shards of glass catching starlight. She moved with purpose, though her purpose was hidden. Nysera watched her from the corner of her eye. Her twin's power screamed in her veins, but Orryn's presence gnawed colder still.
The three of them reunited in what had been the meeting hall. Half the roof was caved in, the benches scorched skeletons of wood. At the center of the ash lay something different.
A mark.
Carved deep into the floor, untouched by fire, glowing faintly as if the heat of it lingered. Three overlapping circles, one jagged with cracks, one lined with petals, one smoothed like a mirror.
Their sigils.
Seliora's breath hitched. "It knows us."
Orryn stepped closer, crouching above the mark. Her fingers hovered an inch above the carved mirror. The glow pulsed faintly in response. "No," she murmured. "It is us."
Nysera caught her wrist before she could touch it. "Don't."
Orryn's eyes flicked to hers. "If we do not test it, we learn nothing."
"If you feed it, it learns us," Nysera snapped. "It's not a game, Orryn. That thing wants us broken."
Seliora closed her fists, trembling. "Then we fight it."
Nysera turned on her. "Fight ash? Fight a curse that burns people alive before you can breathe their names?"
"Yes!" Seliora's voice cracked like lightning. "Because if we don't, then what am I for, Nysera? What are you for?"
Nysera opened her mouth, but the words refused to come. She looked at her sister, light searing in her eyes like a star desperate to burn itself out.
Then Orryn spoke, quiet as falling glass. "She is not wrong."
Both twins turned to her. Orryn straightened, stepping back from the mark. "The mirror has chosen us. Whether by fate or cruelty, I cannot say. But if it burns villages, if it carves our names into ash, then its hunger will not stop. We are not fighting for the villagers. We are fighting for ourselves."
Seliora shook her head, backing away as though Orryn's words were poison. "You speak as if it were—were some part of us."
"It is," Orryn said simply. "Do you not feel it?"
And Nysera did. She hated to admit it, but she did. The whispers in her veins had grown sharper since they entered this ruin. Death itself was restless.
She thought of the prophecy: One must fall.
Her throat tightened.
"We leave at dawn," Nysera said finally, her voice steady though her hands were not. "We follow the curse. We find where it feeds next, and this time—we stop it."
Seliora nodded, though her eyes burned with doubt.
Orryn only smiled, faint and unreadable, as though she had been waiting for those words all along.
The night was restless.
Nysera kept watch at the edge of the ruined square, her blade across her knees. The ocean's tide whispered against the rocks below, a lullaby of something endless, something patient. She tried not to hear the voices that slithered from the black water, voices that sounded too much like her own.
Behind her, Seliora slept fitfully, curling around the fragments of relics she had gathered as though they might anchor her dreams. Light flickered faintly from her palms, restless even in sleep.
And Orryn? Orryn sat awake, back against a broken wall, her eyes reflecting the moonlight like silver glass. She watched both her sisters as though studying her own reflection.
Nysera met her gaze once. It was like staring into the mirror of a mirror: endless, unbroken, terrifying.
The night dragged on. Dawn came pale and thin.
When they left the village, the mark still burned faintly in the ash, waiting.
And Nysera knew, with a weight that pressed deeper than bone, that what could not be saved was not just the village.
It was them.