Fourth bell poured itself into Noonspire's Mirror Garden like hot tea into cool glass. Paths of pale stone wound between shallow basins where lilies wore little coins of light; bell-bronze ribs held sheets of water upright so reflections could practice standing. Every surface asked the same question in different scripts: What is your name, as you name yourself?
Aurelia kept that exact inch at my back that makes worlds behave. A discreet Shadow Guard paced the far arcade. On a bench of leaf-stitched cedar, Lady Thalia of Glassmere waited with her chaperone two paces behind and an expression that had traded certainty for attention.
I set the house before the conversation.
Two hair-thin Sunlines circled the nearest basin. I tipped a Peal into the water's skin—tone routing under the day.
"Ceremonial Candor—garden keyed," I breathed. "Speak truly; ask before assuming; no loud Novas where lilies listen."
The water rang in the bones, not the ears. Aurelia's rim touched my spine once—amen in metal.
┌──────────── PRE-MEET STATUS ───────────┐
│ Eirion — HP: 13,180 / 13,180 MP: 360 / 21,100 │
│ Aegis Hymn: 29% Oathbond: Linked (92%) │
│ Buffs: Court Key, Quiet Law, Candor (garden) │
│ Aurelia — HP: 12,460 / 12,460 │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Thalia rose, bow correct but less sharp. "May I ask your names," she said, catching herself before presumption could hop the path, "as you name them?"
"Eirion," I said. "He/him."
"Aurelia," my sister said, rim easy, wolf awake. "She/her."
Thalia nodded as if a knot in a ribbon had just found the hole it was meant to live in. "Thalia. She/her. I would like to walk around the basin and not talk about treaties until the water thinks we deserve to."
We did—the quiet kind of walking where feet and thought keep the same pace. When her chaperone flinched at nothing, I saw why: in the tall standing sheet of water, a shadow did not move when we did.
"Reflection wrong," Aurelia murmured.
The garden's tone shivered. Something old—Regency Ink—bled across the surface as if a calligrapher were writing on the back of the day. Letters we had already annulled—Daughter—strained to reappear in my outline, hunting the place names live.
SYSTEM: Writ-Remnant (Dark/Legal) — "Regency Presumption"
Traits: Mirror Redact (overlay names), Consent Spoof, Paper Hook (bind to reflection)
Terrain: Glass/Water (route tone through, not at). No bursts.
Thalia paled, then chose useful. "I have spent years being taught by this paper," she said tightly. "Is this my fault?"
"Paper doesn't outrank persons," Aurelia said, stepping to the hinge where path becomes pool. "We end its day."
I set a ring on the water, very small, very legible. "Namespring Seal."
New Technique (Built): Namespring Seal — Counter-Signature + Mirror Tutor + Ceremonial Candor + Bond Mirror (water/glass).
Fixes a circle where each voice states self-name; mirror may only reflect declared names; first hostile Redact within ring fails and rewrites to unknown petitioner.
The ink tried Mirror Redact. The ring drank the attempt and returned only our declared names, bright and narrow as reed stems.
"Hooks," Aurelia warned. In the deeper basin, black Paper Hooks unrolled like eels and shot for our reflections—bind first, argue later.
"Umbra Divorce—boots," I said, cutting a tight Counter-Signature around our feet: My shadow is not my consent. The first two hooks completed to us and died on the cut.
More came, schooling. I routed tone under them: Ripple Peal through the basin; the hooks miscounted depth and tangled in lily stems. Thalia's chaperone reached for her sleeve—protective, not territorial. Good.
The Redact changed tactics—letters blew apart into a sleet of assumed pronouns and inherited consents that stung the eyes.
"Screen," Aurelia clipped.
"Suture Screen—garden weave." I unrolled gauze-light over the path; the sleet landed as apologies and slid off into the grass, where they could become compost.
The remnant gathered itself for a Consent Spoof, priming a false "yes" in the water.
I wrote the big line, small: "True Names Clause—again."
Parties to any vow must be named as they name themselves; assent must be present and free; no consent may be ventriloquized through reflection.
The water agreed with relief. The Spoof hit the clause and became silence.
From the hedge, a gardener—too clean, too light on his feet—loosed a silence pouch and a practice net (painted reed, still rude) at my shoulders. Aurelia didn't turn. She met the net with Bellguard—rim kiss, elbow turn, hip math—Aegis +12%, then let her sheathed Mandate roll an inch. The gardener discovered knees.
"Hands visible," she said, weather soft and absolute. "Weeding is not ambush."
He froze. Shadow Guard unmade his choices with silk.
The remnant flared one last time—ink trying to be air. I touched Lysithea to the water and split Prism Mercy off a lily pad—three silent sub-lines that crossed clean: hinge, eye, heart of the clause. No glass shook. No lily complained. The black unspooled into harmless faint—as if a bad habit remembered it could stop.
I poured White Mercy—partial into the basin—Reservoir, not blast—so every cut the paper wind had raised on the day would be healed before anyone noticed it had happened.
Silence returned, shaped like breathing.
┌──────────── POST-GARDEN REPORT ───────────┐
│ Threat: Writ-Remnant (Regency Presumption) — dispersed │
│ Intruder: False gardener — detained (no injuries) │
│ Garden: Glass/Water integrity — 100% │
│ HP — Eirion: 13,180 / 13,180 │
│ HP — Aurelia: 12,460 / 12,460 │
│ MP: 260 / 21,100 │
│ Aegis Hymn: 33% residual │
│ Oathbond Harmony (peak): 95% │
│ New: Namespring Seal (unlocked) │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Thalia was very still, then very honest. "If I had met you a year ago, I would have apologized by signing something on your behalf," she said, grimacing at her own education. "May I apologize by walking you to the next basin and asking questions instead?"
"Yes," I said, because consent feels better when it is present and free. "Ask."
She did: small questions with room for answers. Favorite bells (I named a wafer bell that sounds like bread being patient). Worst habit (I admitted to over-fixing glass that wants to tell people when it hurts). She laughed in a way that didn't take space from air.
Aurelia let the room have her edge without ever unsheathing it. "Glassmere's wax-quenching: write the process for Court," she said, already turning utility into treaty-polish. "We'll trade you Bell Sutures for archive panes."
"Done," Thalia said, eyes bright as women who have discovered work where a romance used to be.
We closed with the small right ends. I left a Sunline bow on the basin's lip with the clause the day had earned: Names first; contracts after. No consent by proxy.
The garden kept it.
The System put a crisp coin on a ledger that pretends not to exist.
┌───────────────────────────────────┐
│ COURT EVENT — MIRROR GARDEN WALK │
├───────────────────────────────────┤
│ Regency remnant dispersed │
│ Consent norms affirmed │
│ Rewards: │
│ ▸ EXP +21,000 │
│ ▸ Court Scrip +100 │
│ ▸ Skill: Namespring Seal (unlocked)│
│ ▸ Mastery: Counter-Signature +1 │
└───────────────────────────────────┘
On the way out, a breeze pretended to be no one and left two lemon-thyme pastilles on the bench where we'd begun. The leaves didn't wink, but the air smelled like cedar and a mother proud enough to hide it.
Aurelia drifted that inch into my back. "Still guarding my six?" I asked, because light words keep law supple.
"In a garden where paper tried to teach the water the wrong name?" she said, dry as good bread. "Especially."
Thalia walked two paces behind for a beat, then came level—asking with her steps rather than taking. The lilies practiced being morning again, and the Mirror Garden rehearsed how to reflect people who had finally learned to call themselves by their own names.