The False Kai did not attack. He did not need to.
He just stood there, smiling his empty smile. The words he said hung in the hot, wet air of the greenhouse.
Nia lowered her glowing hands. She looked at Lina with deep worry. "Lina," Nia said softly. "Do not listen to him. It is a trick."
But Lina could not breathe. Her chest felt tight. Her mind was spinning.
The False Kai took a slow step backward. The thick vines seemed to part for him. "I will leave you to think," he said gently. "We will talk again soon, Lina."
He turned and walked into the shadows. In a second, he was gone.
Elias started crying again. Nia helped him up. They left the greenhouse together, but Lina felt completely alone.
She walked back toward the dorms, but her legs felt heavy.
Was it true?
She thought about Kai. She thought about his dark hair and his warm smile. She remembered the time he held her hand when she was scared. She remembered him crying when he thought he failed a test.
Can a reflection cry? Can a trick of the light feel real pain?
Her head hurt. The Mirror Tax made her memories feel fuzzy at the edges. She could not trust her own mind. If the real Kai was a mirror monster, then everything she felt for him was a lie.
She stopped walking. She could not go back to the dorm. She could not look at Mira and Seren and pretend everything was okay.
She needed answers. She needed to know the truth.
There was only one person who might know.
Jax.
Jax was the Vessel. The deep thing beneath the academy was living inside his body. If anyone knew the secrets of the mirrors, it was that thing.
Lina changed direction. She walked quietly to the medical wing.
The infirmary was dark. The school nurse was asleep at the front desk, her head resting on a stack of papers. Lina slipped past her and went into the back room.
Jax was lying in the far bed.
He looked very sick. The black cracks on his neck were pulsing with a faint, dark light. They looked like veins filled with shadows.
Lina walked closer. "Jax?" she whispered.
Suddenly, Jax sat up.
Lina jumped back. Her heart hammered against her ribs.
Jax's eyes were open, but they were not his eyes. They were completely black. There was no white, no color. Just deep, empty dark.
When he spoke, his voice did not sound like a boy. It sounded like heavy stones grinding together deep underground.
"You weep for the glass boy," the voice said.
Lina froze. She could not move. "Who are you?" she whispered.
"I am the foundation," the voice rumbled. Jax's head tilted to the side. The movement was stiff and wrong. "You think the mirror trapped him. You think he is a prisoner."
"Isn't he?" Lina asked. Her voice shook.
The black eyes stared right through her. "The mirror is not a cage, little writer. It is a waiting room."
Jax's cracked lips curled into a terrible, unnatural smile.
"The boy in the lake did not drown," the deep voice whispered. "He was pushed. And now, the water is rising. The real owner of that face is coming home to collect."
Jax fell back onto the pillow. His eyes closed. The black cracks on his neck stopped glowing.
Lina stood in the dark room, shaking from head to toe.
The False Kai was not the monster.
The real Kai was just a stolen face. And the thing that originally wore it was coming back.
To be Continued
© Kishtika., 2026
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Next Chapter Summary for Chapter 110: Lina realizes the real threat is not the boy in the mirror, but the thing coming from the lake, while Mira's memory gaps lead her to a dangerous discovery in the academy's basement.