Ash still fell at noon.
Not like snow—snow forgives.
This ash clung to corners, to eyelashes, to the inside of lungs. It settled on rooftops as if the city had been branded and the sky was too ashamed to look away.
Felix stood at Marianne's clinic window, watching Eldrenvale wear its gray like mourning cloth. The candle on the sill burned low, its flame leaning toward the mirror shard as if it were listening to it.
The shard was small enough to hide in a fist.
And yet it felt heavier than any sword he'd ever held.
He turned it over.
His face stared back—sharp, pale, too young to carry what his eyes had seen.
And behind him, for the briefest blink, there was... nothing.
No faceless shadow. No red eyes.
Just his own reflection.
He exhaled.
Maybe it had been a warning. Maybe it had been a promise. Maybe it had been his mind trying to invent an enemy out of fear.
Then the candle flame tilted again—harder this time—despite sealed windows and still air.
Marianne, seated at the table, didn't look up from the ancient book. "Stop checking to see if it's there," she said softly.
Felix kept his eyes on the shard. "If I don't check," he replied, "I'll start imagining it everywhere."
Marianne finally lifted her gaze. Her pupils looked tired, but her expression was all precision. "That's how it wins. It turns your caution into superstition. Superstition becomes panic. Panic becomes a door."
Felix closed his fist around the shard until the edge bit skin. A bead of blood surfaced.
Marianne's eyes flickered to it.
Felix didn't let go. "You said we go higher," he said. "We go to the council mirror."
Marianne's fingers paused on the page. "We don't go to it," she corrected. "We approach it carefully, as if it's a sleeping animal."
"You said some mirrors are made to keep," Felix said. "Not show."
Marianne nodded once. "The keepers of those mirrors don't hang them for vanity. They hang them for custody."
"Custody of what?"
Marianne's mouth tightened. "That's the part no one survives long enough to write down plainly."
A soft knock came at the clinic door.
Three taps.
Then two more.
Then one.
Felix's spine went rigid.
Marianne's eyes narrowed. "That pattern," she whispered.
Felix frowned. "It's just knocking."
"No," Marianne said, already rising. "It's counting."
She moved to the door, placing a palm against it without opening. Her voice dropped. "Who is it?"
A familiar tone answered—dry, impatient, trying very hard not to sound afraid.
"Emily. Open. Before I break something and blame you for it."
Marianne unlatched the door. Emily stepped inside with ash dusting her shoulders like a cloak she didn't ask for. Her uniform was clean in the way only discipline could make it clean, but her eyes were not. Her eyes looked like they hadn't blinked since the bridge.
She didn't greet. She didn't sit. She didn't even glance at Felix's bandages.
She went straight to the mirror shard on the sill and turned it slightly so the candlelight struck it full-on.
Felix stiffened. "Don't—"
"I'm not afraid of glass," Emily said.
Marianne's expression turned sharp. "You should be afraid of this glass."
Emily's jaw flexed. "Good. Then I'm finally afraid of something worth being afraid of."
She turned toward Felix. "You were right. He adapted already."
Felix's throat tightened. "What happened?"
Emily didn't answer immediately. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a thin strip of cloth.
Not a handkerchief.
A strip torn from a blanket.
She unfurled it on Marianne's table. The fabric was pale—but across it were charcoal marks: smudged lines, like fingerprints dragged across soot.
Six marks.
A pause.
Six more.
Felix stared. "That's the melody."
Emily nodded. "It followed me. Not as sound. As... pattern. Everywhere I went, I found it. On doorframes. On stair rails. On the edge of my sword sheath. Always six, rest, six."
Marianne leaned closer, studying the marks with the intensity of a physician examining a wound that pretends it isn't bleeding. "That's not random," she murmured. "That's a binding cadence."
Emily's eyes sharpened. "Meaning?"
Marianne's finger traced the six marks lightly. "Meaning someone is teaching the city how to open."
Felix felt cold collect under his ribs. "Teaching it to open to the Master."
Emily's voice went quiet. "Worse. Teaching it to open to me."
Felix blinked. "What?"
Emily swallowed once, and for a heartbeat the proud S-rank swordswoman looked like a girl forced to admit she didn't understand her own shadow.
"I went to drills," she said. "I stayed visible. I acted normal."
Her gaze flicked toward Marianne, then back to Felix. "And every time I turned my head, I saw my reflection one step behind. Not in mirrors. In water. In polished armor. In the blade of a sword."
Felix's hand tightened on the shard. "A second Emily."
Emily nodded, barely. "But it wasn't copying me. It was... rehearsing me. Like it was practicing how to be me."
Silence fell heavy.
Then Marianne spoke with quiet certainty. "We go to the council mirror. Tonight."
Emily's eyes flared. "Tonight?"
Marianne nodded. "In daylight, the council will hide behind ceremony. At night, the mirror may stop pretending to be obedient."
Felix's voice came out rougher than he intended. "And my father?"
Marianne's gaze held his. "If your father is involved, you'll feel it before you hear it. Blood recognizes old oaths."
Emily crossed her arms. "So what's the plan?"
Felix looked at the ancient book, then at the mirror shard, then at Emily's ash-dusted shoulders like a crown.
He breathed in.
"We steal a look," he said. "Without becoming one."
That night, Eldrenvale dimmed like a candle someone meant to snuff but hesitated over.
The citadel's outer gates stood tall and indifferent. The guards posted there wore crimson armor and the kind of fatigue that made even suspicion feel expensive.
Marianne moved like she belonged. Not like a noble, not like a servant—like someone who had learned how to slip through institutions by becoming invisible to their rules.
Emily walked at Felix's left shoulder, sword sheathed but ready. The ash made her footsteps soft, but her presence was loud in the way a drawn bow is loud even before it sings.
Felix kept his right hand inside his cloak, fingers curled around the mirror shard.
The word No scratched on its back bit his skin whenever his grip loosened.
As they passed the first checkpoint, a guard stepped forward.
"Halt."
Emily's posture didn't change. Felix's did—subtly, as if he remembered the original Felix's arrogance and let a hint of it return like a mask.
"I'm Lord Felix von Frederick," he said calmly. "Summoned by the council's request for additional testimony."
The guard hesitated. "At this hour?"
Marianne stepped forward. "Medical oversight," she said, holding up her satchel. "The duke's son is bleeding from his eye. If the council wants him alive tomorrow, they'll allow him to be treated tonight."
The guard's gaze flicked to Felix's bandage. He flinched as if the idea of cursed sight made his teeth itch.
Then he moved aside. "Proceed."
As they passed, Felix heard the guard whisper to another: "Don't look at him too long."
Felix kept walking.
But the whisper followed anyway.
Not behind his ears—inside his skull.
six... rest... six...
He didn't react.
That was the first rule now: don't react when the city tries to speak your thoughts back to you.
Inside, the citadel's hallways were darker at night. Not unlit—just reluctant. Torches burned, but their light seemed to hesitate on stone, as if something had taught the flame to be careful.
They reached the council chamber door.
Two guards stood posted. One of them was young enough to still believe in the council's righteousness. The other looked old enough to have seen that righteousness crack and still stand anyway.
The older one stepped forward. "No one enters the council chamber without writ."
Felix lifted his chin. "Then fetch one."
The guard didn't move. "No one enters."
Emily's fingers flexed once.
Marianne didn't argue. She simply reached into her satchel and drew out a small glass vial sealed with an old sigil.
The older guard's face tightened. "What is that?"
Marianne held it up so the torchlight slid across its surface. The liquid inside looked like pale silver thread.
"A physician's emergency sanction," she said flatly. "Issued by the old covenant."
The older guard's eyes widened a fraction. "That covenant—"
"Is older than this council," Marianne finished. "Move."
The guard hesitated one heartbeat longer—then stepped aside as if the choice wasn't his to make anymore.
The door opened.
And the council chamber swallowed them like a mouth that had been waiting.
The room was vast, lined with polished banners and carved pillars. Even empty, it felt crowded—as if the ghosts of arguments still hung in the air.
At the far end, behind the central chair where the duke sat during hearings, hung the mirror.
The only intact mirror in Eldrenvale.
It was taller than a man and framed in black wood so old it looked like it had forgotten how to be a tree. The mirror's surface was flawless—too flawless. It didn't reflect torchlight the way ordinary glass did. It drank it. Held it.
Felix felt the Golden Eye behind his eyelid stir like a sleeping predator.
Marianne's voice came low. "Don't open it unless you have to."
Emily's whisper was even lower. "I hate it."
Felix forced a breath. "We don't touch it," he said. "We observe. We leave. We breathe afterward."
They approached slowly.
Every step felt like walking closer to the edge of a sentence that wanted to finish itself.
When they were ten paces away, the mirror surface rippled.
Not like water.
Like skin reacting to a cold hand.
Emily's hand moved instinctively to her sword hilt.
Marianne raised two fingers—warning.
Then the mirror spoke without sound.
Felix didn't hear words.
He heard meaning, pressed straight into his mind like a seal into wax.
YOU RETURNED.
Felix stopped.
Emily hissed, "Did you—"
"No," Felix said through clenched teeth. "I didn't open the eye."
Marianne's voice sharpened. "It doesn't need your eye. This mirror is not a door."
Felix swallowed. "What is it, then?"
Marianne stared at the mirror as if it were an old patient she'd never been able to cure.
"It's a cage," she whispered.
The mirror rippled again, and this time, the reflection formed.
Felix saw the chamber behind him—torches, banners, pillars.
But he didn't see himself.
He saw Carter.
Not in noble attire. Not with red eyes.
Carter in a hoodie, standing in a city street beneath a dim streetlamp. Snow falling. Wind howling like a warning.
The exact first night.
The exact moment.
The repulsive man with crimson eyes stepped into the reflection behind Carter, smiling like he owned the timeline.
Felix's heart slammed against his ribs.
The mirror was showing him the origin.
And the origin was breathing.
Emily stepped closer, eyes narrowed. "That's your—"
"Past," Felix whispered.
Marianne's lips parted slightly. "It's replaying your first fracture."
In the reflection, the crimson-eyed man leaned near Carter's ear.
His mouth moved.
Felix didn't need sound to understand it.
"You have been chosen."
Then Carter ran.
The man chased.
The blade pierced.
Felix's chest tightened in sympathetic pain.
He felt the spear again—cold sentence entering ribs.
The reflection blurred—
—and then the mirror showed something new.
Not Carter waking in Felix's bed.
Instead, it showed a different bed.
A different chamber.
A different version of Felix—older, scarred, with a golden eye leaking black fluid—sitting upright and staring straight into the mirror.
Staring straight at Felix.
The older Felix smiled.
And spoke aloud—real sound in the silent chamber:
"Finally."
Emily stumbled back. "What the hell—"
The older Felix's golden eye flared.
Felix's own Golden Eye throbbed behind his lid, begging to open.
Marianne snapped, "Don't you dare—"
But Felix couldn't stop it.
The Golden Eye opened anyway.
The room slowed.
The torch flames froze mid-flicker.
The air thickened.
Threads appeared.
Not just a few—hundreds—spanning from the mirror's frame into the chamber like veins into a heart.
Felix saw one thread go straight into Emily's shadow.
Saw another thread vanish into Marianne's satchel—into the ancient book.
And then he saw the thickest thread of all:
It ran from the mirror...
to the duke's chair...
and into the stone behind it.
Into the wall.
Into something deeper than architecture.
Felix's breath hitched.
"My father," he whispered.
The older Felix in the mirror smiled wider, as if hearing him.
"You're late," the older Felix said. "But you're here."
Emily's voice shook, furious at herself for shaking. "Who is that?"
Felix's golden vision sharpened.
He saw the older Felix wasn't fully real.
He was a reflection shaped like a person.
A person shaped like a warning.
"A traveler," Marianne whispered, voice tight. "One of the ones in the Record."
The older Felix lifted his hand and placed his palm against the inside of the mirror.
On the other side, Felix's own hand twitched—wanting to mirror the gesture.
Marianne grabbed Felix's wrist hard enough to bruise. "Do not," she hissed. "If you touch it, it will recognize you as property."
Felix forced his hand down, sweating.
The older Felix's smile faded.
"You can't steal mirrors forever," he said, voice gentle like a knife. "The Master doesn't need glass. Glass is just tradition."
His golden eye darkened.
Then he whispered a word that made Felix's teeth ache:
"Name."
The chamber seemed to tilt.
Emily's shadow stretched an inch longer.
Marianne's satchel strap tightened around her shoulder, as if something inside it pulled.
Felix felt the mirror shard in his pocket vibrate like a heartbeat.
The older Felix leaned closer, and his voice became almost kind.
"If you want theories," he murmured, "here's one."
His mouth curved.
"You didn't write the Golden Eye... because it wrote you first."
Felix's stomach dropped.
The Golden Eye screamed in his skull—voices, collapsing cities, shattering swords—louder than ever.
And then—
A real footstep echoed behind them.
Not in the mirror.
In the chamber.
Emily spun, sword half-drawn.
Marianne's head snapped up.
Felix turned—
—and saw Duke Frederick standing in the doorway.
He wore no armor, no council robes. Just plain dark clothing, like a man who had gotten tired of being a symbol and wanted to be a threat instead.
His expression was unreadable stone.
His gaze went to Felix's bleeding eye.
Then to Emily.
Then to Marianne.
Then—finally—to the mirror.
The duke spoke quietly.
"You shouldn't be here."
Felix swallowed hard. "Father—"
The duke didn't flinch at the word.
He stepped forward, slow and measured, like he was approaching a battlefield he already knew how to win.
"You think you're the first Frederick to stand in front of that mirror and believe he can out-stare it?" the duke asked.
Felix's throat tightened. "You know what it is."
The duke's jaw tightened slightly—barely, but enough. "I know what it was meant to be."
Emily's blade slid fully free now, the steel whisper loud in the chamber's silence.
"Step away from him," she warned.
The duke's eyes flicked to her sword.
Then to her shadow.
His expression hardened.
"Ah," he said softly. "So it chose the girl."
Emily's blood ran cold. "What did you just say?"
The duke didn't answer her.
He addressed Felix instead, voice like a verdict.
"You're bleeding from an eye you claim you never wrote. You're being called by a name you don't admit out loud. And you brought the keeper of forbidden records into my chamber at midnight."
He stepped closer until the torchlight carved his face into sharp planes.
"Tell me, boy," he said. "Which son are you tonight?"
Felix felt the Golden Eye twitch, desperate to look at the duke and see the threads.
Marianne tightened her grip on Felix's wrist, warning him without words.
Felix forced himself to breathe.
Then he said it—the smallest truth he could offer without shattering the world:
"I'm the one trying to stop the Master."
The duke stared at him for a long moment.
Then he looked at the mirror.
The older Felix inside the reflection had vanished.
Now the mirror showed only darkness.
Not reflective darkness.
Depth.
Like a well.
The duke spoke quietly, as if confessing to the room.
"The council believes this mirror keeps the city safe," he said. "They believe it holds the fracture closed."
He looked at Felix.
"But the mirror doesn't keep the city safe."
His gaze turned sharp.
"It keeps the Master patient."
Emily's voice was tight. "Then why keep it at all?"
The duke's mouth pressed into a thin line.
"Because," he said, "if we break it... we find out what it's been keeping."
A pause.
Then the duke's eyes went to Felix's pocket—exactly where the shard was.
"How many times," the duke asked softly, "have you seen your reflection move without you?"
Felix's blood turned ice.
He didn't answer.
He didn't have to.
The duke stepped back half a pace, and for the first time, something like fatigue showed on his face.
"I fought wars with swords," he said. "This war is fought with meaning. And meaning is a worse battlefield."
Marianne's voice came low but firm. "If you know all this, why didn't you tell him?"
The duke looked at her, and the air sharpened.
"Because the moment he knows too much," the duke said, "the story recognizes him as a participant, not a witness."
Felix's Golden Eye pulsed in pain.
Emily's shadow twitched.
And then the mirror—
The mirror rippled like skin again.
A soft humming drifted out of it.
Six notes.
Rest.
Six notes.
Emily's breath caught. "No..."
The duke's face went hard. "It's waking."
Marianne's hand went to the ancient book, fingers trembling.
Felix felt the shard burn against his palm.
And from within the mirror's dark depth, two crimson eyes opened—slowly—like something smiling in a place that shouldn't have mouths.
A voice filled the chamber, not loud, but absolute.
"Bring me the girl."
Emily's sword lifted instinctively.
Felix stepped in front of her without thinking.
Marianne whispered, "Felix—don't—"
The duke's hand moved like a soldier's reflex, not toward a weapon, but toward the mirror frame itself.
He pressed his palm to the black wood.
And the mirror screamed.
Not in sound—in pressure.
Felix's vision cracked. The Golden Eye flared open, forced wide.
Threads exploded into view.
And Felix saw it:
The duke's palm wasn't sealing the mirror.
It was feeding it.
Feeding it with blood-oath.
With Frederick lineage.
With old covenant.
Felix's voice tore out of him. "Father—STOP!"
The duke didn't look away.
His eyes were fixed on the mirror's crimson gaze.
His voice came out like a prayer said through teeth.
"Not yet," he said. "Not her."
The red eyes narrowed.
The chamber darkened.
Emily's shadow peeled slightly away from her feet.
Felix's heart slammed.
Marianne shouted, "EMILY—HOLD YOUR SHADOW—"
Emily's face twisted in confusion. "How—"
And then her shadow moved on its own, stretching toward the mirror like a hand reaching for a door handle.
Felix lunged, grabbing Emily's wrist—
But he wasn't fast enough to stop the shadow.
He was only fast enough to feel it.
Cold.
Hungry.
Familiar.
Like a sentence returning to finish itself.
The mirror voice whispered, delighted:
"There you are."
Felix felt something inside him snap—not bone, not muscle.
A rule.
A rule he hadn't known existed until it broke.
And the candle flame in Felix's mind—the one that had flared when his blood hit fire—went out for a single heartbeat.
In that heartbeat, the mirror showed him one last reflection:
Carter, under the streetlamp.
The crimson-eyed man smiling.
The blade piercing.
And behind them both—
Duke Frederick watching from the shadows.
As if he'd been there the first time.
As if he'd always been there.
Felix's scream never reached his mouth before the chamber lights died.
And in the dark, Emily's voice—small, shocked—said:
"Felix... why does your father know your old name?"
To be continued...