The Salt Fell never slept; it only waited.
Even under moonlight, the city glowed faintly, its streets laced with mineral veins that pulsed like forgotten nerves. The tower at the city's heart shimmered in intervals, its surface catching every flicker of starlight as if tasting it.
Sol sat near the edge of their small camp, fingers pressed to the salt-crusted ground. The reflection dust still shimmered faintly where the mirror had shattered hours before. Each grain seemed to hum with its own pulse.
"Don't touch it," Ji Ming said from behind her. His voice was low, roughened by fatigue. "We don't know if it's done with us yet."
"I wasn't going to," she murmured. "I just… wanted to see if it still remembers."
He moved closer anyway, kneeling beside her. The faint wind caught the edge of his cloak, scattering a few salt crystals between them. His eyes watched the dust with wary stillness.
"It shouldn't remember anything," he said quietly. "Not without a mind."
"Then maybe it's borrowing ours."
The words slipped out before she could stop them, and once spoken, the air seemed to tighten, as though the city itself had heard.
Ya Zhen's voice came from the shadows. "You're not wrong."
She stepped into the light of the talisman stone, her veil lowered, her face pale beneath the glow. "The Mirror Forge was designed to imitate qi, to learn patterns through resonance. What you two share is the strongest resonance I've ever seen. It's no longer mimicking you… it's becoming you."
Sol turned, her pulse quickening. "You mean it's alive?"
Ya Zhen hesitated, eyes unreadable. "Alive enough to dream. And dreamers, as we know, reshape the world when they wake."
Ji Ming rose slowly, one hand at his chest. "If it's tied to us, can we sever it?"
Ya Zhen shook her head. "You could try. But you'd have to separate your qi first. Do that wrong…"
She left the rest unsaid.
The silence that followed wasn't empty, it was a living thing, a deep and rhythmic pulse that seemed to echo from beneath the salt.
Sol's gaze drifted toward the tower again. "It's calling."
"Don't answer," Ji Ming said, but even his voice had softened, like he was speaking to himself more than her.
She closed her eyes anyway, just long enough to feel the faint hum in her chest sync with something far away, a deep vibration, like a drumbeat submerged in water. The same rhythm she'd felt the night their qi first overlapped.
When she opened her eyes, the tower was glowing faintly with silver light.
"Ji Ming…"
"I see it."
The light rippled downward, traveling through the streets like veins filling with blood. In its wake, faint illusions began to bloom, reflections of lanterns that no longer existed, faint laughter that belonged to no one living. The city wasn't reviving… it was remembering itself.
Ya Zhen swore under her breath. "We woke it fully. This place is part of the Forge's body now."
Ji Ming's hand went instinctively to his blades. "Then we move before it finishes waking."
He reached out, offering Sol his hand to stand. She hesitated, then took it. The contact sent a jolt through both of them, not pain, but resonance flaring bright enough to make the air tremble.
For a breathless moment, Sol's vision split.
She saw herself through Ji Ming's eyes: small, fierce, trembling. She saw Ji Ming through her own, storm and stillness bound together. And in both reflections, the Mirror lingered, watching from inside the light.
She gasped, tearing her hand back. "It's inside the bond now."
Ya Zhen's fan snapped open with a sound like a blade. "Then it's no longer listening from outside the glass. It's listening from your hearts."
The resonance stilled abruptly, as though startled by being named. The air settled again into a fragile quiet.
Ji Ming looked toward Sol, his jaw tight. "Then every heartbeat we share—every thought—is feeding it."
Sol's throat went dry. "Then we stop feeling."
He shook his head. "You can't stop a river by refusing to breathe."
Ya Zhen's gaze drifted toward the glowing tower. "Then maybe the only way to silence the Mirror… is to let it finish what it started."
"Let it finish?" Ji Ming said sharply.
She met his eyes, and for once her calm fractured. "If it's already part of you, fighting it might only teach it to fight better. But if it learns what mercy feels like, maybe it forgets how to kill."
The wind picked up, carrying fine salt through the air like ash.
Sol whispered, "Then we teach it mercy."
Ya Zhen exhaled a tired laugh. "You sound like a priest."
"Maybe," Sol said softly. "Or maybe I just don't want the last thing that remembers us to be a weapon."
They stood together beneath the tower's glow, its reflection spreading across the cracked ground like water reclaiming its shore.
For the first time since the Echo Vault, Sol didn't feel afraid of being seen.
Because even if the Mirror was listening… it was also learning to breathe.