They walked for what felt like hours.
Or years.
Time had stopped making sense the moment the house collapsed.
The path beneath their feet was no longer dirt.
It was paper.
Thousands of sheets of paper, layered like fallen leaves, each one covered in crayon drawings.
Children's drawings.
Stick-figure families holding hands.
Houses with smoke curling from chimneys.
Suns with smiley faces.
And skies.
Every single drawing had a sky.
But none of them had mirrors in them.
Laura stopped first.
She bent and picked up a sheet.
The paper was warm.
On it: a little girl with silver hair holding hands with a woman who looked exactly like Laura, only older.
They were standing under a sky drawn in careful blue crayon.
No reflections.
No shards.
Just sky.
Laura's hand shook.
Liora took the paper from her.
Her breath hitched.
Because the little girl had drawn herself too.
Standing on Laura's other side.
The three of them.
Together.
The crayon sun had a speech bubble.
It said:
"We're waiting."
Nysera's wolf whined and nosed another drawing.
A boy with black hair and chains for arms, smiling at a wolf the size of a house.
Zero picked it up.
His fingers left bloody prints on the edges.
The boy in the drawing had written underneath in shaky letters:
"The dark isn't scary when you're not alone."
Law kept walking.
Because if he stopped, he would fall apart.
The drawings grew denser.
Hundreds.
Thousands.
Every child Ka'thar had ever taken.
Every child the Mirror had ever watched die.
They had drawn the world they never got to have.
And every single one of them had drawn the Five.
Standing in front of a house that looked exactly like the one Law had just refused.
The path ended at a tree.
A massive, dead tree made of mirror shards instead of bark.
Its branches were hung with more drawings.
Thousands of them, fluttering like prayer flags.
At the base of the tree sat a little girl.
Six years old, maybe seven.
Silver hair.
Eyes the exact colour of Law's when they weren't gold.
She was drawing on a fresh sheet of paper with intense concentration.
The Five stopped.
The girl didn't look up.
She just kept colouring the sky.
Blue.
Careful strokes.
No mirrors.
Laura's voice cracked.
"Who are you?"
The girl finished her last stroke.
Then held the drawing up.
It was the Five.
Exactly as they were now.
Scarred.
Bleeding.
Standing under a sky that had no reflections.
The girl smiled.
It was Law's smile.
Small.
Real.
"I'm the part you left behind," she said.
Her voice was his voice.
When he was six.
Before the Mirror took everything.
She stood up.
The tree behind her began to bleed.
Black glass tears running down the trunk.
The girl walked forward until she stood in front of Law.
She was the perfect height to rest her head against his chest if she wanted to.
She didn't.
She looked up at him.
And spoke with the Mirror's voice.
Soft.
Female.
Ancient.
Proud.
"You kept choosing them," she said.
"Even when it hurt."
Law's throat closed.
The girl reached up and touched the scar on his cheek.
The one he got the night he learned what anchors were for.
"I was proud of you," she whispered.
Then she stepped back.
And began to fade.
The drawings on the tree caught fire.
Not burning.
Just… stopping.
One by one, they turned to ash and blew away.
The girl was almost gone.
Only her voice remained.
"Tell them thank you," she said.
"For teaching me how to be unseen."
Then she was gone.
Only the drawing in her hand remained.
Floating in mid-air.
Law caught it before it fell.
The little girl had written something on the back in crayon.
Five words.
"We love you.
Look away."
The tree collapsed.
The path dissolved.
The world folded in on itself like paper.
And the Five were standing in an ordinary street.
In an ordinary city.
Under an ordinary sky.
It was spring.
A little girl—no older than six—was drawing on the pavement with chalk.
She looked up when they appeared.
Smiled.
Waved.
Law waved back.
The drawing at his feet was the same one.
The girl had finished the sky.
And never once looked over her shoulder to see if anyone was watching.
Laura started crying.
Liora laughed through tears.
Nysera's wolf lay down in the grass and became just a big dog.
Zero lit a cigarette with hands that weren't shaking anymore.
Law looked at the chalk drawing.
Then at the sky.
Then at the Four who had walked through hell with him.
And for the first time in his entire life,
he didn't check his reflection.
Because there was nothing left to watch.