The air in the City of Broken Mirrors smelled of burned memory and broken promises. Kael walked across a sea of black crystals that crunched like the bones of a forgotten god beneath his boots. Each shard reflected a distorted version of himself: some barely human, others mercury monsters with too many joints, all staring at him with eyes that knew too much.
Then, the eleven mirrors aligned.
They emerged from the void like the teeth of a cosmic beast, each frame carved with the names of extinct realities. Their surfaces didn't reflect, but showed, like windows to places where the laws of physics were only suggestions.
From the central mirror, the Judge of a Thousand Tongues materialized in a swirl of living scrolls.
His coat made of human tongues whispered secrets in forbidden languages, each lingual muscle writhing in words that made the ears bleed. Her face was a blank scroll, save for seven black wax seals that beat like hearts. Where her eyes should have been, there were two holes that showed the exact moment when time had first died.
"Kael Arcanis," he spoke, and a thousand voices spoke through him, some childish, some ancient, all filled with an ancient anger. "The Council of Realities has summoned you."
To her right, the Girl That Time Forgot appeared seated in the air, dangling her feet over an abyss of broken clocks. Her white dress was stained with what could have been blood or mercury.
"Ohhh, how exciting!" she crooned, biting into a bleeding gold gear. "Do you know what happens to eclipsed people who play at being gods, Kael? They lose their toys!"
The other ten mirrors came to life, revealing the remaining members of the Council:
The Horizon Weaver: A giant skeleton whose ribs were needles that stitched universes with threads made of optic nerves. Wherever it trod, galaxies were born and died in its footprints.
The Primordial Hunger: Not a mouth, but the concept of hunger made flesh, devouring a sun as if it were a grape, its teeth like broken clocks grinding time itself.
The Faceless Mask: A human-shaped void that reflected all the forgotten faces of history. When it moved, it left behind a trail of people who had never existed.
The Reverse Twin: Two identical beings sharing a single body, one aging while the other grew younger, their voices intertwined in an endless dialogue about which came first: the beginning or the end.
The Bone Singer: A woman sculpted from human vertebrae, singing a melody that rattled mirrors until they nearly shattered. Each note was the last breath of someone somewhere in the multiverse.
The Nightmare Architect: A small child with chalk fingers, drawing doors in the air that screamed as they opened. Behind each one, something with too many eyes stared at Kael.
The Threshold Walker: An ashen silhouette that existed between the reflections, never completely on one side or the other. Wherever she stepped, the world blurred, like a painting with pieces torn from it.
The Mother of a Thousand Tears: A crystal figure whose tears, as they fell, became small universes that collapsed upon hitting the ground. Her sobs sounded like entire cities screaming.
The Silent Executioner: Not a man, but an armor-like absence, holding a sword made of the materialized word "Never." The air around him trembled as if the universe were afraid.
The Book of Flesh: A living volume made of skin and muscle, its pages turning on their own, showing possible futures. Sometimes, the eyes within its pages flickered.
At that moment, between the mirrors, Lirya appeared.
Or at least something that resembled Lirya.
Her body fluctuated between human form and a swarm of mercury figurines, as if reality couldn't decide what it was. Her silver tears didn't reflect Kael, but something else, something moving behind the glass.
"Don't listen," she whispered, but her voice came from everywhere and nowhere. "They don't want to rule reality, they want to devour it."
The Girl jumped from the Judge's shoulder, landing on a mirror that shattered beneath her bare feet:
"Lies, lies, lies!" she laughed, as the glass shards swirled around her like planets around a mad sun. "What if you are the lie, Lirya-who-maybe-doesn't-exist?"
The Judge extended an arm, and his coat of tongues flapped violently, spitting acidic saliva that burned the floor:
"Case number 11-42-666: Kael Arcanis vs. His Right to Exist."
The trial began.
The Judge unrolled a scroll made from the hide of a forgotten god. The words wrote themselves in the blood of eclipsed ones:
—Sentence: As a member of the Council, you will purge The Bleeding Error, a being like you, an unauthorized eclipse that threatens to reveal our secrets.
Two books fell from the Judge's eyes, each more alive than dead:
"The Way of Screaming Gates": A volume bound in prophetic skin, its pages beating like a heart. It allowed one to open portals to specific realities, but each use caused the user to forget a name.
"The Way of the Remembering Shadow": A book made of muscle and bone, which groaned when moved. It summoned a dark double that knew all your secrets... because it was everything you had tried to forget.
Lirya (or was it Lirya's echo?) struggled against the shadow chains, managing to cry out:
—Don't use them! They're alive and hungry!
The Girl leaped for joy, her clockwork teeth gleaming with their own light:
"Of course they are! What fun would there be otherwise?"
The Judge concluded, his words etching themselves in the air like scars:
"Go to the Plane of Dried Tears. Find Error. Purge it. And maybe... just maybe... we'll tell you what you really are."
The eleven mirrors shattered in unison, and for an instant, Kael saw the truth behind the Council:
They were only shadows.
Shadows of something much older.
Something that was awakening.
When the world reformed, Kael stood in another reality.
At his feet, the two books breathed heavily, like starving dogs.
And on the horizon, under a sky of closed eyelids, something was moving.
Something that shouldn't exist.
Something was calling his name...
...in Lirya's voice.