Fog drifts through the iron gates like spilled milk, thick and oddly vanilla-scented, as though the graveyard had bathed in cursed pudding. Westwood's oldest deconsecrated cemetery stretches out in solemn decay, gravestones leaning like old drunkards exchanging secrets.
"Charming," Valen mutters, brushing cobwebs from his shoulder with theatrical disdain. "Ten out of ten for ambiance. Just needs a banshee quartet for a full mood."
Rowan's hand hovers near his blade, spell-light whispering around his boots in soft glows of steel-blue. He surveys the crumbling paths ahead with the expression of someone already composing five different battle plans and all of them involve decapitation.
"This place is cheerful," Valen adds. "I particularly enjoy the oppressive silence, scent of mildew, and lingering sense of imminent doom. Very inviting."
"Thank you for your optimism," Elara replies sarcastically, squinting into the mist. "Now shut up and look for a fountain."
No sooner had she spoken, when the eerie chime of a bell rings.
"The bell still rings," she adds stupidly, after a pause, more to herself than to anyone else. The ghostly chime rings again, once, soft and hollow, as though struck by memory rather than hand.
Moony pads up beside her, ears twitching. "Oh yes, let's definitely comment aloud on the creepy, invisible bell in the definitely haunted dead zone. That never ends badly in stories. Or, you know, life."
They follow the cracked stone path until the fog peels back to reveal the fountain: dry, fractured, ringed in ivy that looked far too interested in living things. The centrepiece was a rusted iron bell hanging from a spindly frame…rocking gently in a breeze that most certainly did not exist.
Valen tilted his head. "That's cursed."
"Everything's cursed," Moony says, tail flicking. "This is a theme park of bad decisions."
Elara steps forward, counting softly under her breath. "Left of the fountain. One. Two..."
Her voice falters on the third.
The tombstone is barely visible, half-swallowed by time and dirt, tangled in gnarled roots that looked more like claws. A faint sigil, obscured by growth, glimmers once…silver and old as forgotten vows.
Rowan doesn't hesitate. One clean sweep of his blade severs the roots like silk, revealing the carved stone beneath.
Elara's shard flares in her pocket, heat pulsing like a heartbeat made of glass.
"That's it," she whispers.
When her fingers touch the tombstone, it bleeds. Fresh, red, and impossibly warm.
Valen crouches beside it, frowning. "Bloodstone. Rare stuff. It bleeds when strong magic is broken…or trying to break free."
"Well, that's comforting," Moony mutters, climbing up on Rowan's shoulder like a living warning sign.
They pry the stone open, revealing a narrow cavity beneath. Inside sits a glass box…black veined with gold. It looked simultaneously ancient and surgically precise. Beside it, wrapped in faded velvet, is a leather-bound journal, edges singed.
Elara reaches out (Has she not learned her lesson yet?)...the air snapping around her.
A ringing note hits the ground, vibrating through her bones like the chime of fate itself. The mist closes inward, swallowing their shadows. The graveyard tilts. Time stutters.
Then...
Darkness.
And then...
Light.
Shattered. Blinding. Everywhere.
Elara blinks.
She is alone.
Though not quite alone.
The graveyard is gone. She stands in an impossible space…an endless hall of mirrors, stretching in every direction. The air shimmers like heat waves over glass. Floor, walls, ceiling…almost every surface reflects back at her. But none of the reflections are truly of herself or quite right.
One Elara is taller. One is grinning with too many teeth. Another is crying silently, shoulders shaking. And another is hanging upside down.
Though one mirror shimmers not with her reflection, but with a door.
A frame of frost-rimed silver, pulsing softly.
She steps towards it.
Her hand brushes the glass.
A voice slices through the silence like a blade dipped in ice:
"This is the Trial of Reflection."
From the nearest mirror a form steps out...her.
Not warped. Not monstrous. Just different.
This Elara wears black robes stitched with gold thread. Her hair is twisted into a severe knot, her eyes glinting with too much knowledge and not enough mercy. She looks like Elara…if Elara had never smiled.
Power clings to her like perfume. But it is cold.
Distant.
Dangerous.
"You want the shard," the mirror-Elara asks, voice flat and echoing. "Then answer me this: Who are you willing to become to claim it?"
Elara's lips part. "I'm…"
"No," says the other her. "Not your name. Not your story. Your truth."
The mirrors flicker.
Memories dance across their surfaces like ink spilled into water.
Her shouting at parents as a child…"You never tell me anything!"
She is fleeing from her foster family in the snow.
Her stepping past a sobbing classmate, teeth gritted, eyes fixed on grades.
Then more:
Rowan, bound, burning.
Valen, blood pooling under him.
And herself…eyes bright, soulless, weapons in both her hands like blades.
The Name no longer scattered.
Awakened.
A weapon against evil.
"I won't become her," Elara says.
The other smiles, thin as a knife's edge.
"Won't you? Power doesn't care what you mean to do. Only what you do to reach there."
The mirrors begin to tremble.
All around her, versions of herself step out. One wears Council robes. One weeps over loved one's graves. One kneeling down, chain around her throat. One walking away from Westwood and never looking back. One has no eyes…only gold light.
"I don't want to be any of you," Elara cries out, voice shaking.
The real shard pulses in her coat…steady, warm, alive.
She closes her eyes.
"I don't know who I'll become," she states. "But I'll choose. Every time. I'll choose to set the truth free and save everyone."
"I won't pretend I know the end. But I'll walk to meet it. My way."
The mirror-Elara watches her in silence.
Then nods—just once.
A single mirror cracks.
Then all of them shatter at once, exploding into light and sound.
And Elara falls.
She lands hard, gasping like she'd been punched by the air itself.
Rowan is gripping her shoulders, voice ragged. "Elara…Elara, gods...talk to me!"
Moony is slapping her face with his tiny paws.
"She's back! Blinking! You're blinking again! Oh thank all the cursed constellations. I was about to start screaming poetic things and no one wants that."
Valen crouches beside the box, eyes distant. "She passed the gate trial. A mirror-based enchantment. Memory trap. Not the fun kind."
Elara shivers. "It made me...choose."
Rowan's brows knit. "Choose what?"
"Myself," she says. "Which version I'd become."
Valen tilts his head. "And?"
"I chose not to know. But to walk the path anyway."
Moony nods. "Existentially bold. I'd have asked for a third option with a picnic."
She laughs. Weakly. But a genuine laugh, despite the circumstances.
Elara opens the glass box. The second shard shimmers…black glass, veined this time in deep blue. Beside it sits Isadora's journal, bound in cracked leather and humming faintly with old magic.
Elara picks it up. It vibrates in her hands like something trying not to let all its secrets out.
Valen glances towards the rusted bell. "Let's leave before the local ghosts want autographs."
"Too late," Moony mutters. "I'm already haunted. Look at my fur. Permanently distressed."
Elara tucks the shard away, the journal close to her chest.
She feels... altered. Not completely.
And somewhere in the Name's fractured memory...
A whisper stirs.
Four still dream. One waits. One was stolen. One forgot its name. One will be tested.