Moonlight filtered through the branches as Ana stepped past the last rune-marked tree. Behind her, the Deadwillow Forest sighed like a creature left sleeping too long. The binding spell from the night before still clung to her skin like frost, and in her satchel, the silver thread whispered—its song now unmistakably shaped by Mara.
The Mirror Grove awaited.
No birds sang here. No insects stirred. Dozens of still, silvered pools lay scattered across the grove, their surfaces perfectly calm, like pieces of broken sky. It was said the grove was once a sanctuary, long before the schism of the Old Blood. Now, it was a place where truths hunted their seekers.
Ana knelt beside the first pool. Her reflection looked back—older than she remembered, eyes rimmed with violet. She held the thread above the surface.
"I seek what was promised," she whispered. "I seek her."
The mirror rippled. Mara's face emerged—not as she was now, but as she had been before. Younger. Brighter. Her smile real. She stood beside Ana, laughing beneath a tree Ana didn't recognize, where birds with silver feathers perched and sang songs in a forgotten tongue.
The pool shifted.
Mara again, but this time cloaked in shadow, her eyes blank, her hands bound in thornvine. She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came—only the silver thread stretched tighter, drawing taut between them.
Behind her, a voice.
"You shouldn't have come here alone."
Ana rose. Slowly. Carefully.
Across the grove, on the far edge of the oldest pool, Mara stood. Not the image, not the memory—but her. Now. Pale. Watching.
"You're not her," Ana said.
"Not entirely," Mara answered. "But I remember enough."
She stepped forward, barefoot, her presence bending the air. Pools near her trembled. "The grove shows us the selves we leave behind—or the ones we become when we're not careful."
Ana felt the thread twitch between her fingers.
"There's a door," Mara said. "In the last mirror. One only we can open. But it costs."
Ana's voice was quiet. "What does it cost?"
Mara's gaze didn't waver. "One of us."
The grove held its breath.
Ana stood still, the silver thread curled between her fingers like a living thing. Across from her, Mara—or something wearing her shape—waited beside the last mirror pool. This one was deeper than the others, its surface completely black, not silver, and it did not reflect the moonlight. It didn't reflect anything.
Ana stepped forward.
Each pool she passed whispered pieces of forgotten truths: a cradle set aflame, a woman with eyes of smoke, hands slick with ink and blood. A voice—her mother's?—wept a name that had never been spoken aloud. The further she went, the louder the grove became.
But Ana's gaze stayed on Mara.
"You said the mirror is a door," Ana said when she reached her.
Mara nodded. "To the Threaded Path. Where our choices begin to split. Where I… you… made the first cut."
The black pool pulsed. It recognized them.
Ana whispered, "And the cost?"
"One must go through," Mara said. "The other must stay. Forever."
The wind picked up then, strange and sudden, and from the mirror's depths came a third presence.
A third Ana.
She rose silently from the water's surface—no ripples, no sound. Her skin shimmered with old spells, and her eyes glowed gold, not violet. She looked at them both like someone staring at faded paintings.
"You were never meant to be split," she said. Her voice was layered, like bells and knives. "One heart. One soul. One fate."
"But we were split," Mara said, stepping forward. "By choice."
"By fear," the golden-eyed Ana corrected.
The thread tightened again—between Ana and Mara now, not Ana and the mirror.
Golden-Ana raised her hand. The thread responded, unraveling in the air between them into seven strands. Each shimmered with a different shade: sorrow, fire, hunger, silence, memory, blood, and shadow.
"You must choose," she said.
Mara looked at Ana, and for the first time in days, her eyes were truly hers again.
"I'm not the same," she said softly. "I don't know if I'm even… real anymore. But I remember enough to want this. To want you to survive."
"No," Ana said. "I didn't come here to lose you again."
"Then don't," Mara whispered. "Become me."
And with that, she stepped into the mirror.
The surface cracked—spiderwebbing light across the grove.
The thread snapped.
Ana screamed.
But the mirror held.
And Mara… began to change.