Once…not long ago.
Even though time in Westwood ran more on whims than on hours.
A girl arrives bearing nothing but questions.
Her name is Elara Finch.
She came to a town that should not have existed, guided by the echo of an aunt who had vanished and the pull of a mystery older than its bones.
Westwood welcomed her the only way it knew how: with riddles wrapped in laughter, danger stitched in charm, and just enough magic to make denial look like comfort.
The postman was a talking weasel on Wednesdays. The baker sold regrets in pastry form (the cherry tarts were particularly apologetic). One local goose insisted it was the mayor and legally speaking, it wasn't wrong. The weathervanes debated the forecast in poetry. And no one trusted the clocks. Once, a scarecrow predicted the end of days just to win a bet with the sundial.
There, in crooked cottages and enchanted market stalls, she found fragments of a story she didn't remember starting. She met allies she hadn't known she'd needed…Rowan Thorne, steady as stormlight, dark and brooding, though twice as stubborn; Valen Graye, secretive and sharp, with a smirk like a puzzle box and more layers than a cursed onion…each peel we layered back hinting at something you weren't sure you wanted to find; and Moony, her aunt's familiarly inconvenient cat, who perhaps knows more than he's letting on about the whereabouts of the missing frog.
She fought spectres born out of fear and mirrors that showed too much.
She found the first shard in The Hollow, the second in the Garden of Ashes.
And with each piece of soul reclaimed, the world grew stranger.
The Council, once a distant threat, had begun to close in.
Westwood was no longer merely whimsical…it was strategic.
Shard by shard, Elara Finch was no longer just curious.
She was dangerous. Necessary.
Inconvenient…even, especially, to those who preferred their chosen ones quieter and less sarcastic.
And something…deep in the basement of the Citadel of the Northern Vale…was awakening.
The last time we saw her, she stood beneath the rising sun, wrapped in a new cloak stitched with old magic, the soul shards beating against her chest like silent drums.
Now she walks away from Westwood, towards the next quest.
Book One ended with the kind of pause that isn't an ending at all…but a breath before the plunge.
Because the next trial waits, not only in riddles or romance, but in a place where identity itself is a battleground.
Mirrorwood.
Where memory is a weapon.
Where truth distorts.
Where who you were may not survive who you could become.
Long before Elara, long before Westwood had streets or stories.
No one remembers who planted Mirrorwood or how it came into existence.
Some say it was grown from the shattered spine of a god who gazed too long into itself. Others whispered that Mirrorwood was never grown but summoned, drawn from the depths of a Collective by a witch who wished to see the truth and had seen too much. One theory insists it was a landscaping project gone cosmically wrong. Another accused a bard, who during a creation song, used the wrong word for reflection and couldn't unsing it in time.
It doesn't matter.
What matters is that it remains.
A place where every lie takes root and grows leaves like glass.
Where paths rearrange when you're not looking and sometimes even when you are.
Where mirrors grow on trees, and sometimes a reflection steps out randomly.
Where the owls file complaints if you disrupt their poetry readings.
Where the shadows sometimes listen more closely than the living, and mirrors do more than lie…they remember.
Once, Mirrorwood was part of the Old Realms. A sanctuary, even.
Mages wandered its glades for clarity. Mystics dreamed beneath its canopy and emerged with insight…or madness. It offered both freely.
And when the veil between realities frayed, Mirrorwood held the line.
It saw what was coming.
So it hid to protect its secret.
Overgrown. Forgotten. Watching. Waiting.
For those who've touched its roots, it never forgets.
Elara doesn't know it yet, but Mirrorwood knows her.
It remembers the Finch bloodline, crooked with power and guilt.
It remembers her mother, who once touched its roots and swore never to return.
It remembers Isadora, too.
Yes. Even her.
Mirrorwood dreams of them all. Dreams in strange loops and recursive logic.
Dreams where the trees weep starlight and reflections whisper in languages you never learned, but somehow understand.
Dreams where something else stirs, something old, cracked, and patient.
It has waited longer than names, older than fear.
It does not stir…not yet…but it listens.
And it is listening to Elara.
It knows what she seeks.
It knows the Shard of Fear waits in a place where shadows listen and mirrors lie,
where even the bravest heart meets its echo—and falters.
It has been waiting.
And now, she comes.
But somehow, that is enough.
And somewhere, beneath the shifting boughs of Mirrorwood, a figure slithers through the hush.
It has no face, no voice, and no mercy.
It does not need to hunt.
It waits.
A mimic without memory.
Sent by those who fear what Elara is becoming.
It wears kindness like a borrowed coat and silence like a crown.
Ready to stop her before she reaches the final shard.
And later, after the trials of Mirrorwood, when her path twists toward love,
the forest will whisper of another riddle:
Where something once loved lies unloved, cold in the place she buried it.
But not yet.
First, she must survive Mirrorwood.
And in Westwood, the sky holds its breath.
Whilst in Westwood...
A scarf that is forgotten on a line flutters toward the east, snagging briefly on a chimney shaped like a swan mid-curtsy.
Wind chimes tinkle in a key just off enough to raise goosebumps.
Somewhere, a tea kettle whistles, but no one is home to pour.
A pair of boots walk themselves across cobblestones before remembering they were retired.
Beatrix Morrow pauses mid-stitch, the thread humming beneath her fingers.
She looks up.
And frowns.
Elara Finch has left Westwood.
And Westwood has begun to whisper in earnest.
Further still, at the edge of somewhere else entirely, the Council meets.
Robes rustle. Candles sputter. A name is spoken…twice.
Once in warning.
Once in awe.
Finch.
They had underestimated her.
Assumed she would be frightened by now.
Broken.
But she is nor broken or frightened.
She is collecting herself.
They do not know yet what awaits.
But someone does.
This is how the story begins again:
With a forest that reflects.
With a name the trees remember.
With friends who follow, even when they shouldn't.
With a girl who thought the worst was behind her,
stepping into the place where her worst self waits.
Because every story has its turning.
And this one…
This one is sharp as glass.