The staircase of ice groaned beneath Larissa's steps, each footfall resonating like a bell struck in a cathedral of snow. Around her, the spiral wound higher and higher through gray mist, threading through the veins of the house itself. Not rooms. Not walls. Just cold and memory and the soft, distant rhythm of something alive—and ancient—breathing beneath it all.
When she reached the top, she stepped into a vast chamber made entirely of frozen glass.
It wasn't a room, not really. It was inside the mirror.
Reflections drifted by her like spirits: a thousand versions of herself, some childlike, some monstrous. One wept. One bled. One smiled with a mouth full of icicles.
At the center of the chamber pulsed a throne—not made of ice, but of obsidian shadow, veins of frost webbing its jagged arms. No one sat on it.
Yet.
She approached, and the voice came again. Not Anya's this time.
Something older.
"The house does not choose without cost."
The words didn't sound in the air—they sounded inside her bones.
Larissa turned slowly.
A figure emerged from the wall of mirrors. Not Lukyan. Not Anya.
A man. Robed in frost-threaded silk. His face was a smooth mask of porcelain, cracked across the left cheek.
His eyes were stars. Distant. Dying.
"The Ice King?" she asked, throat dry.
The figure inclined his head, not quite confirming, not quite denying.
"I am what was left behind when the house first awakened. The shape of sovereignty. The cost of order."
"And I'm supposed to replace you?"
"No. You are meant to destroy me."
Larissa blinked. "What?"
The mirrors began to tremble around them. The fractured versions of herself screamed—each in a different voice. A thousand Larissas dying. A thousand Larissas becoming queens.
"Anya failed her trial because she chose to sit on the throne," the King said. "To rule is to chain the house. To bind it. It always fights back. But you… you are something else."
"What am I?"
The King stepped closer. The frost on the floor recoiled from her bare feet.
"You are not the heir," he said. "You are the reset."
Meanwhile – Inside the Mirror, Deeper Still
Lukyan fell into darkness.
Not the absence of light, but the absence of self. The mirror didn't just reflect—it devoured.
He remembered her hand slipping from his in the garden, years ago. A child's laugh echoing down the hallway. Snowflakes that never melted, even when the sun touched them.
He remembered the first time he realized the house loved her more than it ever loved him.
And now he was here.
The mirror realm greeted him not with cold—but with flame.
He stumbled into a corridor lined with ash and flickering torches, the walls made of black stone that whispered names.
Every few steps, he heard his own.
Lukyan… coward… traitor… brother… beast…
He didn't flinch.
Not anymore.
He would walk through every curse this place could throw at him—because she was in it. And he had always followed her, even when she didn't know.
He reached a door with no handle. Only a sigil—Larissa's mark—glowing on the surface.
He placed his hand on it, and the door vanished.
Back at the Heart
The Ice King stepped aside.
"The throne is bait. Power offered to the desperate. But the house doesn't need a ruler. It needs a soul brave enough to unmake it."
Larissa stepped toward the throne. Not to sit—but to touch it.
It pulsed beneath her fingers.
Pain exploded through her mind—visions of the manor across time: noble blood spilled on ice. Children lost to its hunger. Anya weeping in the cold. Lukyan fighting shadows. Dimitri laughing with blood on his lips.
And beneath it all—her. A cradle of snow. Her mother's voice whispering:
"We gave her to the house. But one day, she'll take it back."
Larissa screamed.
But didn't let go.
Instead, she pushed her power into the throne.
Cracks spiderwebbed across its surface.
The house howled.
Behind her, the King stumbled back, eyes wide.
"You're unraveling it!" he roared.
"No," Larissa whispered. "I'm freeing it."
The throne shattered.
And the mirrors exploded into light.
Elsewhere – At the Manor's Core
Dimitri stood in the great hall, staring at the mirror.
It had gone dark.
Then—
It flared.
A wind surged through the manor. Doors blew open. Paintings fell. The chandeliers wept frost that turned to rain.
And from deep within the house… something woke up.
Not Anya.
Not the King.
The House itself.
It breathed.
And it said one word:
"Larissa."