Chapter 62 – The Faces Beneath the Glass
The Mirror Recess shattered around them.
Not with sound — but with memory.
Every broken shard rippled like water, refracting fragments of time that didn't belong to either of them. Yue's heartbeat pounded in her throat as light and darkness folded together, forming silhouettes that hovered just beyond reason.
Each reflection — once just distorted echoes — now began to move with independent will.
Figures climbed from the fractured sky, their bodies translucent and faceted, their expressions sculpted from grief and fury frozen in divine glass.
The air trembled with their whispers.
Some voices spoke prayers.
Others — accusations.
> "Why were we erased?"
"Where were the heavens when faith burned?"
"Who decides which gods deserve remembrance?"
Yue staggered backward. The ground beneath her shifted like a living mirror, images bending beneath her feet. Every step distorted the faces staring up from below — some crying, some laughing, some begging for acknowledgment.
"Ne Job!" she shouted over the cacophony, shielding her eyes as the reflections burst into prismatic light.
Ne Job stood at the center of it all — motionless, his aura thrumming in resonance with the chaos.
The energy that had once flickered unpredictably now pulsed in sync with the Mirror Recess itself. His reflection multiplied across every fragment — each version of him slightly different, each carrying a different expression: rage, sorrow, serenity, defiance.
And all of them stared back at him.
> "They're responding to your presence," Yue said, voice shaking. "You're triggering them somehow—"
Before she could finish, one of the reflected Ne Jobs spoke. Its tone was deeper, older — an echo that carried weight across lifetimes.
> "He carries the unsealed spark," it said. "The one the heavens failed to contain."
Yue froze.
The phrase burned through her thoughts — unsealed spark.
That was what the Shard Court feared. What the Judge had whispered about in secrecy.
> "Who are you?" she demanded.
The reflection smiled, though its expression wasn't malicious — it was almost… mournful.
> "Once, I was called Soltharion. Keeper of Equilibrium. The first to fall when the Divine Hierarchy fractured. When chaos and order split, I chose neither. I became forgotten."
Yue's eyes widened. "You're— you're one of the erased gods."
The being nodded slowly.
> "And he—" it gestured toward Ne Job, "—is the fragment that escaped erasure. The Chaos Spark is not destruction, assistant of the Bureau. It is memory — raw, ungoverned remembrance of what the Heavens chose to delete."
Yue's mind reeled. "That doesn't make sense. The Bureau's archives—"
"—were rewritten," Soltharion interrupted. "Do you truly believe Heaven's laws have never been edited? That the so-called Shard Court is merely justice and not censorship incarnate?"
Yue's hands shook. The logical part of her — the Bureau-trained analyst, the archivist who trusted records — screamed that this couldn't be true. But another part, quieter and older, whispered that it explained everything.
The missing case files. The sealed directives. The sudden memory gaps around Xian's early years.
The Bureau wasn't preserving order. It was curating reality.
Her thoughts snapped back as Ne Job doubled over, clutching his chest. His aura flared violently, pulsing like a heartbeat trying to escape his body.
"Stop—" Yue ran to him, trying to stabilize his energy with a binding glyph. "You're resonating with this place too strongly—"
"I'm fine," he gasped, voice distorted. "I just—"
His eyes widened. "They're inside my head."
Yue saw it then — not physically, but through the reflection of her own panic. In the mirrored air around him, countless faces flickered behind his — divine visages merging and dissolving within him. Every one of them was reaching outward, as if trying to escape the cage of his soul.
"Get out of him!" Yue shouted, releasing a burst of sealing light. The energy hit the nearest reflection — but instead of shattering, it absorbed her spell and reflected it back with amplified force.
The blast hurled her backward into the glassy ground.
She hit hard, air leaving her lungs. Fractures spiderwebbed beneath her body, spreading outward in rings of light. For a heartbeat, she glimpsed something beneath the transparent surface — a city buried below the mirror, its towers made of petrified divine bones.
And within that city… eyes.
Thousands of them, watching.
Yue scrambled up, coughing. "Ne Job— we need to leave this layer now!"
But Ne Job wasn't listening.
He stood suspended midair, surrounded by spirals of mirrored fragments orbiting him like satellites. His hair lifted in the energy current, eyes glowing with alternating hues — divine gold and chaotic violet.
The reflections chanted in unison:
> "The Spark remembers. The Spark returns. The Spark unchains."
Soltharion's form approached, voice echoing like thunder inside a crystal.
> "You cannot flee remembrance, assistant. Chaos is not your enemy — it is the truth Heaven buried. The intern's existence proves the Rebirth Directive was never salvation, but suppression."
Yue gritted her teeth. "Then tell me how to stop it!"
> "You can't stop memory," the reflection said. "You can only choose what to forget."
The words struck her like a physical blow.
Suddenly, the Mirror Recess darkened — the light draining from every surface until the entire plane glowed only from Ne Job's aura. His reflection split again and again, until there were dozens of him — each one whispering fragments of his suppressed thoughts.
> "I remember the fire."
"I remember drowning in paperwork."
"I remember… dying?"
Yue's heart sank. He doesn't even realize these aren't hallucinations — they're recovered fragments of who he was before the Bureau found him.
She stepped forward, shielding her eyes from the glare. "Ne Job! Listen to me — you're not them. You're you. Whatever chaos you came from, it doesn't own you."
For a moment, his gaze flickered toward her — a flash of recognition, the faintest trace of that clueless intern she'd yelled at a hundred times.
But before she could reach him, the air tore open behind him — a rift in the glass itself, bleeding light like molten data. From within, another presence emerged — colder, more deliberate.
It wasn't a reflection. It was a projection.
A tall figure stepped through, its form outlined by Bureau insignias restructured into containment chains. Its voice was calm, familiar, and utterly emotionless.
> "Containment breach confirmed," it said. "Target: Ne Job, anomaly class Omega. Initiating Directive 404-C — memory erasure in progress."
Yue froze. "No… they found us already?"
The figure's face resolved into something she recognized — the Shard Judge's crystalline visage, flickering through transmission. It wasn't physically there, but its will was.
> "You were not authorized to survive," the Judge's voice rang. "Eradicate the spark before recursion completes."
Yue moved instantly, throwing herself between Ne Job and the Judge's projection. "You'll have to erase me first!"
The Judge regarded her silently, then raised a hand. The mirrored world responded like a command line executing — reality bending to his will.
Yue braced for the attack — but before the strike landed, another voice cut through the static.
> "Judge," said a calm, low voice from the rift. "That won't be necessary."
The Judge's light flickered. "Lord Xian."
Through the reflection, Lord Bureaucrat Xian stepped forward — expression unreadable, robes untouched by the distortions of the Recess. His eyes glowed faintly, scanning both Yue and Ne Job.
> "You've exceeded your jurisdiction," the Judge hissed. "This containment is under the Court's domain."
Xian's tone remained perfectly even. "And yet your domain cannot reach this plane without collapsing it. The Mirror Recess is my design — a failsafe against your kind of order."
Yue's eyes widened. His design?
The Judge's projection crackled with interference. "You planned this chaos?"
Xian's faint smile was almost sad. "No. I planned the intern."
Silence fell — heavier than any verdict.
Yue's stomach dropped. "What… what did you just say?"
Xian looked at her, then at Ne Job, who was still suspended midair, the chaotic energy stabilizing around him like a cocoon of refracted light.
> "He was never an accident, Yue," Xian said softly. "He was a seed — planted within the Bureau to test if Heaven could remember what it chose to forget."
The Judge's tone turned to fury. "Blasphemy. You've resurrected forbidden essence!"
"Correction," Xian replied. "I preserved it."
As his words echoed, the rift sealed shut behind him — cutting off the Judge's projection completely.
The Mirror Recess stilled. The faces withdrew, the light dimming to a pale shimmer. Only Ne Job remained glowing, floating between wakefulness and memory.
Yue stepped toward Xian, voice trembling with both awe and anger. "You used him. You knew this would happen—"
"I did," Xian admitted. "But the Court's world was built on erasure. Someone had to remember."
He looked up at the shattered sky — his reflection splintered across a thousand mirrored planes.
> "And now," he murmured, "the heavens will remember him too."