The first sign that something inside her had changed came with the sunrise.
Mary had not seen daylight in what felt like centuries. It bled through the cracks of the Loomspire's ruin like liquid fire, too bright, too alive. The golden light spilled across the shattered marble, crawling toward her as if curious.
And when it touched her skin — it did not burn.
She stared down at her hand, trembling. The light clung to her like silk, warm and heavy. Her pulse quickened, her fangs aching with a hunger she couldn't name.
She whispered, "That shouldn't be possible."
A voice answered — her own, yet not.
"Perhaps it's not."
Mary turned sharply. No one was there. Only her reflection, wavering faintly in a sliver of broken glass near the wall.
But the reflection was smiling.
Mary's breath hitched. "No."
The reflection tilted its head, mimicking her movement but a fraction late — as if savoring the difference. "We shared the light," it said softly. "You called me forth. You invited me to stay."
Mary's chest tightened. "You're not real."
"Neither are you," the reflection whispered. "Not entirely. Not since the Queen wrote your name into her blood."
Mary backed away, but the reflection stepped closer — and the shadow beneath her feet shifted on its own, stretching forward across the stone floor like a living vein of darkness.
It pulsed once, twice.
She froze.
The shadow's edges rippled like ink dropped in water. And when she looked closer, she saw movement inside it — shapes forming and dissolving, fragments of faces, memories, moments she'd lived and moments she had not.
The reflection's smile deepened. "You think you're the author, Mary. But tell me — when was the last time you wrote something that didn't write you back?"
The Codex on the table behind her rustled, pages fluttering without wind.
Mary turned toward it, jaw tight. The book's surface was slick with faint moisture, as though it had been breathing. The runes along its spine pulsed in rhythm with her heartbeat — and with the pulse of her shadow.
The same rhythm.
Her voice shook. "What are you doing?"
"Not I," the reflection said. "We."
Mary's eyes flicked from the Codex to the reflection. "No. You're trying to fuse with me."
"Trying?" The reflection laughed softly. "We already have."
The shadow surged forward, wrapping around her feet. Mary gasped as the cold shot through her bones. She tried to pull free, but the darkness clung tighter, rising up her legs, crawling like liquid night.
She grabbed the Codex and flung it open.
"Obey me," she hissed. "I am your author!"
The words on the page flickered and rearranged themselves.
"Then write your command," the book replied — not with sound, but with text appearing as she watched.
Mary snatched a quill from the table. Her hand shook as she dipped it into the dark ink that had begun to pool along the floor.
She scrawled:
"The reflection releases me. The shadow dissolves."
For a moment, nothing.
Then the ink bled backward, swallowing her words one letter at a time.
New text appeared in their place:
"The reflection releases nothing. The shadow learns hunger."
Mary's hand went cold. The ink splattered across the page pulsed once and then leapt from the parchment, streaking up her wrist like veins made of night.
Pain exploded. She screamed.
The reflection laughed — not cruelly, but with a strange, childlike joy. "You shouldn't have tried to bind it," it said. "You wrote the Codex in your own likeness. You gave it your hunger."
Mary stumbled backward, clutching her arm. Her skin beneath the spreading veins shimmered faintly, as if something beneath it were moving — flowing.
The shadow's voice rose beneath her, soft and low, almost like a heartbeat. thrum… thrum… thrum.
She fell to her knees, gasping. "Stop. Please."
The reflection knelt too, mirroring her perfectly. "I can't stop what you started."
For a long moment, the two versions of her stared at each other — one flesh, one glass.
And in that silence, the Loomspire breathed again.
The walls shuddered. Dust rained down from above. Through the fractured windows, Mary saw the horizon ripple — as if the world outside were no longer stable. Buildings wavered, the air thickened, and time itself seemed to stutter, skipping between seconds.
The Codex hummed with a sound like blood boiling.
Something had changed in the structure of reality — something tied to her.
Mary forced herself to stand. Her voice was raw. "If you're my reflection," she said, "then you feel everything I feel. That means if I suffer, you suffer."
The reflection's smile faltered — for just an instant.
Mary seized her chance. She drew a silver blade from her belt — one of the last relics from the Blood War — and pressed it against her palm. The metal hissed against her skin, smoke rising as her blood touched it.
The reflection winced, clutching her own palm.
Mary stepped forward, holding up her bleeding hand. "If you're part of me," she said, "then your pain is mine to command."
She slammed her bloodied hand onto the Codex.
The book screamed.
Light erupted — black light, blinding and cold. The reflection's form fractured, its outline flickering violently. The shadow beneath Mary's feet convulsed like something alive.
And in the midst of the chaos, she heard another voice — deeper, smoother, the one she feared most.
"You wound yourself to wound me. Clever, my child."
Mary froze. "No…"
The Queen's laughter echoed faintly, carried through the Codex. "Every thread you cut, every reflection you break — it leads back to me. Did you truly think you could separate hunger from its source?"
Mary's throat tightened. "You're dead."
"Then why do I bleed when you do?"
The Codex's pages flipped violently, each one flashing an image — not drawings, but memories. Hers. Every sin. Every death. Every betrayal. All written and rewritten until she couldn't tell which version had truly happened.
The reflection whispered, "She's inside you now. She always was."
Mary screamed and slammed the Codex shut. The light vanished, and she dropped to the floor, trembling. The air was thick with ash and whispers. The shadow beneath her had gone still.
When she looked up, her reflection was gone.
The only sound was her ragged breathing — and the slow, rhythmic throb in her wrist where the dark veins still pulsed.
She whispered, "What have I done?"
Hours passed. Or maybe minutes — time no longer obeyed her. She sat in the ruins of the chamber, staring at the Codex, afraid to touch it.
She could still hear faint echoes in her mind — her own voice layered atop the Queen's, their words tangled. Mine. Yours. Ours.
Then, faintly, she heard something else.
Footsteps.
Mary tensed. She reached for her blade.
A figure emerged from the dust — tall, cloaked, his face half-hidden by shadow. But she recognized the scent before she saw him.
"Lucien."
He stepped closer, eyes faintly luminescent beneath the hood. "You've torn the veil again," he said quietly. "The Loomspire's foundation is collapsing. Do you have any idea what that means?"
Mary's voice was hoarse. "Reality will bleed."
He nodded grimly. "And she'll use that breach to finish what she started."
Mary looked down at her arm. The dark veins had spread to her shoulder now, pulsing faintly in time with her heart.
"She already has," she whispered.
Lucien reached for her, then stopped — the air around her shimmered, unstable. "What did you do, Mary?"
Her answer was soft, broken. "I wrote myself into her story."
Lucien's eyes darkened. "Then we'll have to unwrite you."
That night, as the Loomspire trembled and reality bled through its wounds, Mary lay awake beside the closed Codex. The reflection did not return — not visibly. But every time she blinked, she saw it watching from behind her eyes, smiling faintly.
When she finally drifted into sleep, she dreamed of ink turning to blood, of mirrors whispering her name in a thousand voices.
And beneath all of it, the Queen's murmur lingered:
"You cannot kill the part of yourself that still remembers me."