The Breaking Mirror
In the highest sanctum of the Ebon Spire, silence no longer ruled. It cracked under the weight of fear.
Councilor Marlyns paced beneath the mosaic ceiling, the veins at his temples twitching as he barked over the scrying pool. "They've breached the Hollow Veins. The pulse signature confirms it. The Dreamroot lives again!"
Across the circle of obsidian thrones, shadows flickered. Elder Liris, ever-calm, dipped her finger into the pool's rippling surface. Her voice emerged like silk wound with wire. "Let them play at myths. Ridgefall is a ruin clutching bones. The dreamers are but dust. They cannot hold against what we've become."
"But what we've become," hissed Marlyns, "was only powerful because the lie held."
The pool shimmered again, revealing fragments: Alaric emerging from the pillar's light. Mira speaking to the Ridgefall elders. The horn sounding in the Vale.
"They are not just gathering," Marlyns said. "They are converging. The dream is spreading like rot beneath our marble floor. We must crush it now, before it bears fruit."
There was a long pause.
Then another voice spoke—deep, gravel-edged, and wrong.
"They are not dreaming. They are awakening."
Every councilor turned as the sealed wall behind the thrones melted away. A figure stepped through, draped in a mantle of twilight iron. His skin bore ancient runes carved and healed over so many times they looked like molten scars.
Verik.
Not dead. Not forgotten. But remade.
Liris stood, the calm finally breaking from her voice. "You were sent into the Varn Abyss."
"I volunteered for the Abyss," Verik said, his smile sharp as an axe edge. "Because only in the deepest dark can truth become weapon."
He stepped into the council circle, his boots whispering against the ancient stone.
"You sought to bury the dream with silence. I learned how to weaponize its echo. Alaric and his seer think they hold fire. They hold only the match. We still have the storm."
He dropped a bundle on the floor. It unrolled—maps etched in Ridgefall ink, stolen council plans, even Caelen's name circled in blood. "We've had agents close to them for weeks. You want to stop the dream? Then we stop its symbol."
Marlyns paled. "You mean—"
"Yes," Verik snarled. "We kill Alaric. And we turn Mira into a weapon."
Liris leaned forward. "You would risk invoking the old rite?"
Verik raised his hand. "I already have."
Lightning split the ceiling above them. Across the Council's hidden chambers, chains of ancient magic stirred. Beneath the Ebon Spire, the Obsidian Mirror—long sealed—cracked.
It was once used to bind rogue dreamwalkers. To fracture memory and bend will. They would use it again.
That night, black carriages left the Ebon Spire in silence, drawn by hollow-eyed beasts bred in the Null Vats. Atop them rode Inquisitors with silver-threaded blades and memory-siphons. Their mission was simple: infiltrate Ridgefall. Tear its root from the soil. And bring Mira back, alive or broken.
But even as they moved, something shifted in the Council itself. Some seats were empty. Some glances too long. Whispers slipped between walls. Not all within the Spire agreed anymore.
Some had seen the horn light.
Some had heard the pulse beneath their feet.
The mirror was breaking—and reflections could no longer be trusted.