The darkness behind the Umbral door didn't feel like a corridor.
It felt like a page being turned.
Lina stepped through with Kai's hand locked around hers, Mira pressed close to her side, Seren's fingers gripping Mira's wrist, and Reyon trailing like he was trying not to breathe too loudly in case the air charged rent.
The door sealed behind them with a soft, final click.
Silence dropped—thick, velvet, listening.
And then light came from everywhere at once.
Not torches.
Not runes.
Reflections.
The room opened wide into a library that made Lina's stomach twist with awe and dread.
Tall shelves spiraled upward, vanishing into shadow. Floating ladders hung in the air as if held by invisible hands. Books lined the walls—old, bound in leather and metal and something that looked like dried petals.
But the walls themselves weren't stone.
They were glass.
Mirror-glass.
Hundreds of tall panels, each framed in silver filigree carved with runes so fine they looked like handwriting.
The Mirror Library.
One of the forbidden wings that unlocked itself.
And Lina's reflection—her reflection from the corridor—stood inside already.
It leaned against a shelf with her face and the wrong kind of patience.
It smiled at Lina like they were in on a joke together.
Shhh.
Lina's blood went cold.
Reyon whispered, barely audible, "Okay. Nope. This is—this is deeply illegal."
Seren's eyes glowed brighter, and she swallowed like she was about to throw up. "The glass is full of death echoes."
Mira squeezed Lina's sleeve. "I don't like it."
Kai didn't look at the mirrors.
He couldn't. Not fully.
His voice came out low and controlled: "Don't look at any reflection longer than a heartbeat."
Lina forced her gaze away from her own reflection and tried to focus on the shelves.
The mirrors around them shimmered faintly as if reacting to their presence—like animals smelling blood.
A whisper slid through the room, not from one mirror, but from all of them at once:
"Welcome back."
The words weren't addressed to them.
They were addressed to something beneath them.
The cage.
The academy's belly.
Seren flinched. "The wing is awake."
Kai tightened his grip on Lina. "Stay close."
Lina tried for sarcasm—failed. "I feel like that's our entire relationship now."
Kai's mouth twitched—almost—but his eyes stayed hard. "Don't make me laugh in here."
"Wasn't planning on it," Lina whispered, throat tight.
Ahead, Lina's reflection drifted toward a central dais—an old reading platform surrounded by mirrors angled inward like a ritual circle.
On the dais lay a single book, open, pages blank.
Above it floated a quill of black light—ink made of shadow.
Lina's stomach dropped.
🖋️
The Quill.
Here.
Not just on the wall.
In the room.
Her reflection touched the edge of the dais and looked up at Lina, eyes too bright.
"You're late," it said, with Lina's voice.
Mira gasped softly. "That's… you."
Lina clenched her fists. "No. That's the thing wearing me."
The reflection smiled. "Wearing is such an ugly word. I prefer… correcting."
The mirrors along the walls shimmered.
And Lina felt it again—pen-scratch behind her eyes.
Facts shifting.
Witness memories loosening.
Her VOID status wasn't just making the academy reject her.
It was making the mirrors want to assign her.
A reflection for an unwitnessed girl.
A replacement for a missing record.
Kai's voice was low. "Don't talk to it."
Lina's throat tightened. "It's already talking to me."
Seren stepped forward slightly, eyes glowing, voice trembling. "The mirrors are full of trapped echoes. Names. Last words. They're… storing witness fragments."
Reyon's voice cracked. "So it's a data center, but haunted."
Seren didn't laugh. "Exactly."
A mirror to their left shimmered and showed not their reflections—but a scene:
A student running, sobbing, hands over their ears.
A door refusing them.
A name fading from their lips.
Then the student looked directly into the "mirror" as if it was a camera and whispered:
"Don't say it out loud."
Seren's breath hitched. "That's one of the old victims."
The reflection on the dais tilted its head.
"Yes," it said pleasantly. "We keep stories here. We keep names here. We keep—"
Its smile widened.
"—permission."
Kai's shadow rippled under his feet.
"Lina," Kai murmured. "Say your name."
Lina swallowed hard. "Lina Veris."
The reflection repeated instantly, too smooth: "Lina Veris."
Lina's skin crawled. "Stop."
The reflection's eyes glinted. "You can't stop a mirror from reflecting."
Kai's fingers tightened around Lina's hand. "Stay real."
"I'm here," Lina whispered, and her voice sounded thin in a room designed to make voices unreliable.
The mirrors shimmered again.
Then one mirror showed Kai.
Not the Kai holding Lina's hand.
Another Kai.
A version kneeling, blood on his knuckles, Oathbreaker mark burning bright, eyes hollow.
A Councilor towering over him, voice like iron:
"By Founder's law… swear obedience."
Kai's grip tightened violently. His breath hitched.
Lina felt it—his trauma pulled into the glass and played back like a script.
The reflection on the dais watched Kai like it was studying him.
Reyon whispered, "Okay, so it's also an emotional blackmail theatre."
Kai's voice came out rough. "Stop showing me that."
The mirror didn't.
Instead, it rewound the scene—again and again—until Kai's jaw clenched so hard Lina thought it might crack.
Seren whispered, shaking, "It's trying to trigger the mark."
Kai's shadow flared.
For the first time, Lina saw the Shadowsteel resonance in its raw form—not just darkness, but a metallic, runic shimmer inside the shadow, like black iron threaded with ancient script.
Kai lifted his free hand toward the mirror, fingers spread.
"Enough," he said quietly.
And with a sharp motion, he sliced the air.
Shadowsteel didn't cut the glass.
It cut the thread between the mirror and Kai's name.
The mirror shuddered.
The playback scene flickered.
Then it went blank.
A hush fell across the library.
The reflection on the dais smiled wider, delighted.
"Oh," it whispered. "There you are."
Lina's ribs burned.
Because Mirror Tax hit her instantly, like the library punished the tether for resisting.
Her head snapped back with sudden dizziness—
and a memory slipped away.
Not harmless this time.
Not candy.
Not rain.
It was…
Mira's laugh.
The sound of it.
The exact pitch that made Lina feel safe.
Gone.
Lina gasped, hand flying to her mouth. "No—"
Mira's eyes widened. "Lina?"
Lina stared at Mira, panic surging. She knew Mira was her best friend. She remembered the shape of Mira's face, the chaos, the warmth.
But the laugh—her laugh—was suddenly a blank space.
Kai's voice went sharp with fury. "Stop."
The reflection on the dais looked almost sympathetic.
"Mirror Tax," it murmured. "Truth has fees."
Seren's voice cracked. "It's making Lina pay for Kai's resistance."
Reyon swallowed hard. "That is… messed up. Even for this place."
Lina's throat tightened, grief turning hot. "Give it back."
The reflection smiled. "Can't. It's already filed."
The mirrors along the walls shimmered, and Lina felt the Quill scratching behind her eyes again.
The blank book on the dais began to fill with faint ink, like someone was writing without a hand.
Lines appeared.
Not sentences.
Prompts.
SCRIPT PROMPTS.
The reflection's voice turned sweet, coaxing:
"Say your name."
Lina's stomach dropped.
It wasn't asking to anchor her.
It was asking to submit.
Seren whispered urgently, "Don't say it to the mirrors. Names spoken with intent have power down here."
Kai's grip tightened. "Don't give it permission."
But the library pulsed, pressuring. The mirrors angled inward slightly, focusing.
Lina's VOID status hummed—unwitnessed, unprotected.
The Quill wanted her to fill the blank book with consent.
To sign herself into reassignment.
The reflection stepped off the dais and walked toward Lina, smooth and confident.
It stopped so close Lina could see her own eyes in its face.
Only… wrong.
Too still.
Too sure.
"You want your name back," the reflection whispered.
Lina's pulse spiked.
"You want doors to open for you again," it murmured.
Lina's throat tightened. "I want you gone."
The reflection laughed softly—Lina's laugh, but empty. "You can't erase a correction."
It leaned in, voice lowering into intimacy like a trap.
"I can give you your name," it whispered. "I can restore you to the academy's memory. I can make you witnessed again."
Kai's hand tightened violently.
Seren inhaled sharply.
Reyon froze.
Mira's nails dug into Lina's sleeve.
Lina's heart hammered. "What's the cost?"
The reflection's smile widened with quiet triumph.
"One thing," it whispered. "A fair trade."
Lina felt the pen-scratch behind her eyes like a blade.
The reflection's voice softened, almost tender:
"Kai's true name."
Kai went still.
The air went colder.
Because Lina understood instantly what that meant.
Not "Kai Rhen."
Not the name on the wall.
The real name beneath it.
The one the Council used.
The one the Oathbreaker mark recognized.
The name that—if spoken into the Quill—would give it permission to rewrite him completely.
Seren's voice came out broken: "Don't."
Reyon whispered, shaking, "That's not a trade. That's a murder contract."
Kai's eyes locked on Lina through the mask, dark and furious and terrified.
And the reflection—Lina's face, smiling wrong—whispered like it was offering candy:
"Give me his true name… and I'll give you yours."
Lina's throat tightened until it hurt.
Because she could feel the temptation like gravity.
To be seen again.
To be recognized again.
To stop being VOID.
And the library waited—silent, shimmering—ready to write whatever she chose.
To be Continued
© Kishtika., 2025
All rights reserved.