The Salt Fell did not welcome them, it only tolerated their footsteps the way an old man tolerates rain.
Every street was a vein carved from salt and bone. Empty canals divided the city like scars, their edges white and brittle where brine once rose and fell. The air shimmered faintly, heavy with minerals that clung to skin and breath alike.
Sol paused at the first crossroads, watching the sunlight fracture across the crystalline ground. For an instant, it looked like rippling water… until she blinked, and the illusion died.
Ya Zhen's voice carried from ahead. "Keep close. The Salt remembers what it used to be. And sometimes, it tries to prove it."
Ji Ming's eyes lifted toward the horizon, gray-blue, and full of searching hope. His gaze made the dead city look alive again, if only for a moment.
They passed beneath a fallen archway engraved with eroded sigils. Each line glimmered faintly when Sol's shadow crossed it. "Mirror residue," Ya Zhen murmured. "The Forge once fed here."
Sol brushed her fingers over the markings. A pulse shivered through her palm, warm then cold, like a memory that changed its mind. She pulled back sharply. "It's still listening."
"Then stop giving it words," Ji Ming said softly. He was trying to sound detached, but the tension in his voice betrayed the truth, he could feel the resonance hum between them, a low vibration threaded through every heartbeat.
They walked until the light began to wane. The Salt Fell's color shifted from white to rose, then to the muted violet of dusk. At the center of the city rose a tower that looked carved from glass, half-melted by time. Its surface shimmered faintly, not with reflection, but with memory.
"The Mirror's heart once anchored there," Ya Zhen said, pointing. "If we want answers, that's where they'll wait."
Ji Ming studied the structure. "And if it's a trap?"
"Then it's a polite one," she replied. "Only the desperate visit their own ghosts willingly."
They made camp in the shadow of the tower. No fire, only the faint glow of a single talisman stone Sol placed between them, its light trembling like a pulse.
Salt wind moved through the streets, whispering what almost could pass for words. When Sol leaned closer, she thought she heard her own name.
Ji Ming looked up from where he was binding his ribs again. "Don't answer it."
"I wasn't going to."
"You were thinking about it."
She smiled faintly. "Maybe."
He shook his head, that quiet half-smile returning, the one that softened his sharpness. "You'd talk to ghosts if they promised to listen."
"But only if they promised not to repeat what I said."
Silence settled again, gentler this time. The resonance between them softened, turning from ache to comfort. Sol watched the faint silver shimmer that sometimes appeared along the thread connecting their qi, barely visible now, as though the world itself were holding its breath.
Then the ground beneath the tower gave a single, hollow sigh. The light from the talisman dimmed.
Ya Zhen was on her feet instantly, fan unfolding with a snap. "It's stirring."
From the tower's base, ripples spread through the salt, impossibly, like water that had come back from death's door. A reflection began to form across the flat ground: not of the tower, but of them. Three silhouettes, perfect but wrong.
Sol's pulse leapt. "Reflections aren't supposed to exist here—"
"They aren't," Ya Zhen cut in. "Which means something just made them."
The reflected Ji Ming moved first. Not a mirror image, but a heartbeat too early, raising his blade before he did. The sound of metal meeting metal cracked through the still air as the real Ji Ming's swords flashed in defense.
The resonance flared, wild and uncontrolled. Sol felt her breath hitch, her qi pulled outward as if the reflection were trying to steal the rhythm itself.
"Break the link!" Ya Zhen shouted. "It's feeding on the bond!"
"I can't—" Sol's voice broke. "It's using us as its anchor!"
The mirrored Sol reached out, her hand made of light and salt. The touch grazed the real Sol's cheek, cold enough to burn. For a single moment, Sol saw her own eyes staring back at her… tired, afraid, and longing.
Ji Ming lunged, cutting through the reflection. The blade passed cleanly, scattering the image into a thousand shards of gray-white dust.
The ground went still.
Sol collapsed to her knees, breathing hard. Her skin felt coated in frost. Ji Ming knelt beside her, his hand hovering near her shoulder but not touching. "It didn't hurt you?"
"No… not physically." She glanced at the faintly glowing dust where the reflection had been. "It showed me what I'd look like if I gave up."
Ya Zhen crouched, collecting a pinch of the dust between her fingers. It glittered faintly, pulsing in time with Sol's breath. "Then it learned your fear. The Mirror is not sleeping… it's remembering."
As night settled fully, the tower's surface brightened with ghostly light, as if acknowledging their presence.
Ji Ming watched it. "So now it knows us."
"No," Ya Zhen said quietly. "Now it's waiting."
Above them, the reflection of a moon that no longer existed formed across the salt.
And somewhere beneath that mirror sky, the Forge stirred, whispering a single word through every grain of salt:
Remember.