**Chapter 16 – Countdown to Maramureș**
Mom turns the living room into mission control.
- Flight bookings: Bucharest, then a tiny prop plane to Baia Mare.
- Rental: a beat-up Dacia Logan that can handle mountain roads (Mom insists on driving stick "for authenticity").
- Gear list pinned to the fridge:
- Titanium board (wrapped in prayer flags from Ana)
- Hellebore dagger + sheath
- Shadow cloak (Seras folded it into a tiny square)
- Blood-rune first-aid kit (Julian's handwriting)
- Three jars of Mom's sarmale for the village elders (bribery, Romanian style)
Dad just keeps muttering, "I'm too old for this," while secretly packing extra magazines for his sidearm.
Remy and I are on the couch supposedly helping, but mostly we're tangled up stealing kisses every time Mom turns her back.
**Mom (without looking):**
"I can hear you two breathing at each other. Focus."
**Remy (grinning into my neck):**
"Yes, ma'am."
Seras and I spend six hours in the orchard doing final sync training.
She's terrifying now: maple fire shaped into wings, phoenix-style, hovering ten feet off the ground while she hurls fire-lances precise enough to thread a needle.
I answer with blood-lightning constructs: spinning rune circles that catch her flames and braid them into crimson-violet dragons that coil around us like living shields.
We collapse laughing in the frost-covered grass.
**Seras (panting):**
"If the Winterglass Mirror tries anything, it's getting barbecued and electrocuted at the same time."
**Celeste (fist-bump):**
"Teamwork makes the dream work."
Remy and I sneak away to the hot springs at midnight for "logistics."
Translation: we needed five minutes alone.
We're floating in the steaming water, only the glow of my bloodstone and his coyote eyes lighting the dark.
**Remy (voice low):**
"Whatever we find in Maramureș… we face it together. No more solo training summers. Promise."
**Celeste (tracing the new scar across his collarbone):**
"Promise. From now on we level up side by side."
He kisses the promise into my skin, slow and deliberate, until the water around us starts to boil from my lightning and his body heat.
Final pack night at the cedar tree.
The whole crew: me, Remy, Seras, Julian, Brittany, Noah (official now, holding hands like it's casual—it's not).
We bury a time capsule under Elowene's roots:
- A photo of all of us (Seras forced a group selfie)
- One of Remy's coyote claws
- A charred maple leaf from Seras
- A drop of my blood sealed in a tiny vial
- Brittany's first edited skate clip on a USB
- Noah's hand-drawn portrait of me on the titanium board
We swear we'll dig it up when we're thirty.
**Remy (arm around me, voice steady):**
"Tomorrow we get the eighth piece.
Day after that, we come home stronger."
**Celeste (leaning into him):**
"And then we finish high school, graduate, and take over the world. In that order."
Everyone laughs.
The valley laughs with us.
**Thursday, December 7th – Departure day, 4:17 a.m.**
Mom's yelling in Romanian about passports.
Dad's double-checking ammo like we're going to war (we kind of are).
Remy's carrying both our boards like they weigh nothing.
Seras is live-streaming the chaos to the pack group chat titled "Romania or Bust."
I pause on the porch, look back at the valley one more time: cedar trees, hot springs steam, the faint glow of the orchard where Elowene rests.
The bloodstone on my forehead flares once—warm, ready.
**Celeste (whispering to the dawn):**
"Eight down.
One to go."
Remy's hand finds mine.
**Remy:**
"Let's go get your mirror, storm queen."
We pile into the car.
Next stop: Maramureș.
Winterglass Mirror.
The longest summer is over.
The real story starts now.
The Winterglass Mirror
Maramureș, Romania**
**Thursday night into Friday morning, December 10th, 2026**
The tiny charter plane drops us in Baia Mare just after midnight.
Only five of us made the trip this time: Mom, Dad, Remy, Seras, and me.
Noah and Brittany stayed behind to hold down the valley (and to keep each other company; they're basically inseparable now).
We drive the last hour in a rattling Dacia Logan, windows fogged, heater barely working.
Remy's arm is around my shoulders the whole way, like he's still proving to himself I'm real.
**3:47 a.m. – Village of Breb**
Ana meets us at the carved wooden gate of the old church, lantern in hand, breath frosting in the air.
She hugs me so hard my ribs creak.
**Ana (voice thick):**
"Eight treasures down, thirty-nine still sleeping.
Tonight we wake the ninth."
She leads us past the church, up a frozen path to an ancient hay barn that smells of cedar and centuries.
Inside stands the Winterglass Mirror: tall, black ice veined with silver, humming like a hive.
It doesn't show our reflections.
It shows futures we're terrified of.
- Me on a throne of frozen blood, crown complete, eyes empty.
- Remy kneeling, broken, dagger at his own throat.
- Seras burning everything she loves because she couldn't stop it.
- The valley silent under eternal winter.
The Mirror speaks with a voice like cracking glaciers.
**WINTERGLASS:**
"One truth for one piece.
Name your deepest fear, or remain here forever."
Remy goes first, hand tight around mine.
**Remy:**
"I'm afraid I'll lose her to the crown before I ever really have her."
Seras next, flames licking her fists.
**Seras:**
"I'm afraid my fire will outgrow my heart."
Mom and Dad speak their fears in low Romanian.
Ana's is barely a whisper.
Then me.
I step forward until my breath fogs the glass.
**Celeste (tears freezing on my lashes):**
"I'm afraid that when the crown is finally whole, the girl Remy fell in love with will be gone.
That I'll forget how to be afraid, how to laugh, how to choose pancakes and twin tails over power."
The Mirror shivers.
A single fracture runs down its center—clean, deliberate.
It opens like a door.
In the heart of the ice floats the ninth treasure: a crescent of winterglass, warm as living skin.
I reach.
The moment my fingers close around it, every heartbeat in the barn aligns—mine, Remy's, Seras's, Mom's, Dad's, Ana's, and the faint echo of the valley 3,000 miles away.
**Crown HUD (quiet, ancient, satisfied):**
```
Ninth Piece Acquired: Winterglass Crescent
Crown Integrity: 9 / 47
New Passive Unlocked: "True Reflection"
→ Illusions and mind-control effects reduced 80 % on you and allies within 50 m
Active Skill: "Mirror Step" – 2/day, step through reflective surfaces (30 km range)
```
The barn dissolves into soft, harmless snow.
We're outside again under a sky turning rose-gold with dawn.
Ana kisses the bloodstone on my forehead—now visibly brighter, nine tiny lights orbiting the center diamond.
**Ana (soft):**
"Thirty-eight still wait, copila mea.
But tonight you proved the crown hasn't taken your heart yet."
Remy pulls me against him, arms shaking with relief.
**Remy (voice rough):**
"Still my storm girl."
**Celeste (laughing through tears):**
"Always."
The first light of morning hits the winterglass crescent and scatters rainbows across the snow.
Thirty-eight treasures left.
One lifetime to find them.
But right now, in the quiet Carpathian dawn, with my coyote's arms around me and my family close, the crown feels a little less heavy.
We did it together.
We always will.