Sol woke to the taste of stone on her tongue.
For a moment she thought she was still in the Echo Monastery, breathing dust and old incense. Then the air burned the back of her throat, sharp and crystalline, and she remembered.
Salt Fell Proper.
Inspection station.
The Mirrorborn asleep sitting up, like a statue that had forgotten it was allowed to move.
She pushed herself upright, cloak crackling faintly where salt had dried in the folds. Even the fabric here seemed to age faster. Tiny white grains had crept into every seam, dusting her sleeves like frost.
Across the small shelter, Ji Ming was already awake. He sat near the broken doorway, one knee drawn up, sabers resting beside him. He had not lit a fire again. In this city, fire felt… wrong. Too alive.
The Mirrorborn sat a few paces to his left, hood shadowing its head, long fingers loosely curled over its knees. It did not appear to breathe, but its chest pulsed with faint, slow light, like a lantern buried under cloth.
Sol watched them for a few heartbeats.
Ji Ming, motionless as a carved guardian.
The Mirrorborn, mimicking the same stillness.
She smiled, very slightly. "You have a shadow now," she said quietly.
Ji Ming glanced back at her, the hint of sleep still at the edges of his eyes. "If it starts sharpening blades, I might complain."
The Mirrorborn turned its head, as if parsing tone. Slowly, carefully, it straightened its spine to match his posture more closely.
"Too late," Ya Zhen's voice drifted from somewhere above.
Sol blinked.
Ya Zhen appeared on the low piece of roof that remained, having used the fallen beams as a ladder. She dropped lightly to the ground, veil pushed back, dark hair pulled into a practical knot. The wind had brought a faint flush to her cheeks, but her eyes were sharp.
"I have already taught it to climb," she said. "If we must travel with a relic, it should at least be agile."
Sol rubbed sleep out of her eyes. "You went to the roof?"
"I wanted to see whether Salt Fell remembered us from the basin." Ya Zhen brushed grit from her sleeves. "It does."
Sol's pulse skipped. "How do you know?"
Ya Zhen crossed to them, unfurling her fan with a soft flick. "Because the tower turned once. Just a fraction. As if it was checking whether the breeze smelled familiar."
Ji Ming's shoulders tightened.
"The tower moved?" he asked.
"Not the stone," Ya Zhen said. "The light. There was a pulse along its surface when dawn hit the upper levels. It ran down the side facing this station, then faded."
Sol drew her knees closer, wrapping her cloak around herself.
"So it knows we're here," she murmured.
"It already knew," Ji Ming said. "The moment we stepped back into the city. The Mirror's residue and our resonance… they recognize each other too easily."
"And now we've added this one," Ya Zhen said, tipping her chin toward the Mirrorborn. "Which is either very clever, or extraordinarily foolish."
The creature shifted slightly, as if aware it was being discussed. Its hood slipped back a finger's breadth, letting a shard of pale light escape from the center of its chest. There, for just an instant, Sol saw herself reflected again, faint and small.
She met her own gaze, then looked away.
"We knew the city would react," she said. "The question is how quickly the Empire will follow."
Ya Zhen snapped her fan shut. "No Imperial banners on the skyline. No dust trails. The Mirror Division is either still climbing out of their new tomb, or coming at us from another direction."
Ji Ming rose to his feet with a controlled breath.
"Then we use the time we have," he said. "Eat. We move as soon as you're steady enough."
Sol stood more slowly, feeling the stiffness in her legs, the dry ache in her throat. Even after a night's rest, the city left her feeling like she'd walked all day.
She chewed a piece of dried fruit that might once have tasted sweet, now overpowered by the lingering mineral tang in the air.
"Is it always like this?" she asked quietly. "The inner city?"
Ji Ming nodded, adjusting the cloth at his collar. "The basin is emptiness. The city proper is all the residual of everything left but water. Every breath here is a bargain."
Sol's gaze wandered past the station's broken wall.
Salt Fell Proper spread out beyond, bleached and intricate. Dead canals cut rigid paths through the ground, their banks layered in white and gray. The buildings leaned at odd angles, some half-submerged in salt, others crusted entirely over, only their outlines hinting at former shape.
Here and there, faint shimmer scars marked where the Mirror's influence had once pooled: warped patches of ground, glassy and dull, reflecting light in ways that felt almost… resentful.
"It's different, seeing it in daylight," Sol said. "When we arrived at dusk, the city felt like a memory. Now it feels awake."
"The Mirror's attention was elsewhere before," Ya Zhen replied. "Now it has two things to look at. You. And that." She nodded again toward the Mirrorborn.
Sol glanced at the creature.
"Does it… feel different to you?" she asked Ji Ming, softer.
He considered the question.
"Not yet," he said. "But last night, when you slept… it moved closer to the doorway without making a sound. Whenever the wind shifted, it would tilt its head toward the tower. As if listening for something."
Ya Zhen added, "It also tried to copy how you hold your blade when you rest, Sky Wolf. Terrible form. But earnest."
Ji Ming gave the smallest sigh. "Should I be flattered or concerned."
"Yes," Ya Zhen said simply.
Sol finished eating and took a sip from her waterskin. The water was warm and faintly tinted with the salt air already, but it eased the scraping in her throat.
"We need a plan," she said. "If the tower is watching, we can't wander aimlessly. And if the Mirror Division arrives while we're lost…"
Ji Ming nodded.
"The inspection station marks one of the old inner checkpoints," he said. "From here, there are three paths deeper in."
He knelt and traced a rough diagram in the dust: three lines radiating from a small circle.
"This one follows the canal rims," he said, tapping the left path. "Fastest, most exposed, easiest for the Division to spot."
He tapped the second line. "Here, through the trade tier. Collapsed warehouses, old guild houses. More cover, but more residue. The Mirror will like these buildings. They hold echoes."
His finger moved to the third. "And here, through the servants' quarter. Narrow alleys, small homes. Less residue, more places to vanish."
Sol studied the lines.
"Where does the tower sit?" she asked.
"At the center of all three," Ya Zhen said. "Like a spider waiting in its own web."
Ji Ming's gaze flicked to Sol. "You wanted to understand the Mirror. The heart of its influence is there. But getting close will not be simple."
Sol felt the resonance stir low in her chest at the thought of the tower. Not a pull, exactly. More like a steady awareness, as if a drumbeat very far away had started again.
"We don't need to reach the very base today," she said. "We need information first. What the Mirror Division has done since we left. How much the Empire knows."
Ya Zhen folded her fan half-closed, thinking.
"There is an old Red Courier dead-drop in the trade tier," she said slowly. "Near the shell of a glassmaker's hall. If any of our people passed through in the last season, they may have left a sigil trail."
Ji Ming nodded. "Then we take the middle path. Enough cover to avoid arrows, enough structures to hide a message."
Sol looked to the Mirrorborn.
"And it?"
The creature straightened a little under her attention.
"…go…" it said, voice rough but clearer than before.
She smiled. "Yes. We go."
Ya Zhen eyed it critically. "The cloak will hide most of it, but if anyone looks directly for too long, they'll notice its… absence of face."
"We avoid notice then," Ji Ming said. "We move like couriers, not like sect elders. No posturing, no open displays of qi."
Ya Zhen smirked. "You'll manage that, Sky Wolf?"
"For at least half a day," he replied.
Sol drew her cloak tight and stepped toward the broken doorway.
The moment she crossed the threshold, the city's air settled around her like a weight. Sound shifted, her footsteps became slightly muffled, swallowed by the salt.
Ji Ming fell into place at her right. The Mirrorborn moved to her left, exactly where he would have stood if it had been a junior disciple. Ya Zhen walked a pace ahead, eyes scanning alleys and upper windows, fan half-raised against the glare.
They followed the line of a dead canal, its bottom filled with layered salt like rings in a tree trunk. Rusted lantern poles leaned over the emptiness. Once, they would have cast light on water. Now they watched nothing.
As they passed one of the old bridges, Sol's gaze caught on a faint discoloration along the stone railing.
A smooth patch.
Duller than the surrounding salt.
Like glass that had tried to form, then failed.
She slowed, fingers itching to touch it.
Ji Ming noticed and spoke quietly. "Don't. The last time we let the city show you something, it tried to make you drown in what you wanted."
She nodded and walked on.
Still, out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw the outline of that earlier illusion: water filling the canal, lantern light reflecting two shadows that stood a little too close.
Her chest tightened.
The resonance between them hummed once, then retreated, as if even their bond knew this was not a place to be loud.
"How far to the glassmaker's hall?" she asked, keeping her voice low.
"Not long," Ya Zhen said. "When we see the collapsed arch with the melted crest, we're close."
The streets narrowed as they moved inward. Buildings leaned above them like watchers. Salt had fused some doors shut; others hung open to expose empty rooms, their contents long turned to powder.
More than once, Sol felt the prickling sensation of being observed… and found nothing when she turned. No people. No obvious mirrors. Just stone, salt, and the occasional faint shimmer where heat and residue mingled.
The Mirrorborn kept its head slightly bowed, hood shadowing its featureless face. But it turned its body always toward Sol, as if keeping track of her heartbeat in a room with too many echoes.
Finally, they reached a square.
Or what had once been a square.
Half-melted pillars jutted from the ground, their surfaces smooth and warped. Fragments of translucent material lay fused to the salt… glass that had flowed and frozen mid-collapse. The remnants of a sign still clung to one pillar, the characters long scoured unreadable.
"The glassmaker's hall," Ya Zhen said. "Or what's left of it."
Sol let her gaze travel across the ruins.
"What happened here?" she asked.
"The Forge," Ji Ming said quietly. "During the first testing cycle. They pushed too much emotion through reflective surfaces at once. It poured out like molten water."
Ya Zhen moved toward one of the intact walls. "The dead-drop is here, if it survived."
She knelt and brushed salt away from the base of the wall with her gloved hands. For a moment there was nothing.
Then faint lines appeared. Not carved, but etched with some kind of burning ink. A sigil, barely visible.
Ya Zhen exhaled slowly. "Someone was here."
Sol stepped closer. "Recently?"
"Within the last month," Ya Zhen said. "The mark hasn't faded yet."
Ji Ming's grip tightened on his scabbard. "Courier or spy?"
"Courier," Ya Zhen said. "One of ours." She traced the sigil with a finger, activating a second layer hidden beneath. New strokes flared, forming simple, clean characters.
Her expression darkened as she read.
"What is it?" Sol asked.
Ya Zhen sat back on her heels.
"The Empire increased Mirror Division patrols along the northern routes," she said. "They've declared Salt Fell a restricted zone. And they've begun searching specifically for… a Lotus healer attuned to resonance, and a Sky Wolf who survived the Envoy incident."
Sol felt the world press a little closer.
"So they know we lived," she whispered.
"Yes," Ya Zhen said. "And that's not the part that bothers me."
"There is more," Ji Ming guessed.
Ya Zhen nodded.
"The courier writes that the Division is no longer just hunting reflections and resonance-bonds," she said. "They're trying to… cultivate them. Contain them. There are rumors of a 'Second Forge' under construction near the capital."
Sol's stomach turned.
"A Second Forge…" she repeated. "Even after what the first one did?"
Ji Ming's gaze went to the melted glass under their feet.
"Power that can rewrite the world does not frighten men who think they own it," he said.
The Mirrorborn shifted beside Sol.
Its hood slipped a little more, light spilling from its chest. For the first time, the glow trembled not with confusion… but with something that felt like fear.
"…home…" it whispered again. "…broken…"
Sol reached out before she could think better of it and touched the edge of its sleeve.
"We know," she said softly. "We won't let them build another one on your bones."
The city's air pressed around them, hot and dry, carrying the faintest scent of something like old smoke and older grief.
Ya Zhen stood, dusting the salt from her gloves.
"Well," she said. "Now we know more than we did at dawn. The Mirror is watching, the Empire is building, and we are walking straight through the throat of the city they maimed to do it."
Ji Ming looked toward the distant shimmer of the inner tower, just visible beyond the crooked rooftops.
"We keep moving," he said. "One step ahead of the Division, one step deeper into the Mirror's shadow. Until we find the point where all of this began."
Sol followed his gaze.
The tower's surface caught a sliver of light at that moment, a thin vertical gleam that ran from its crown to its base. It felt, absurdly, like an eye opening.
Her heart beat once, hard.
"Then we walk," she said.
The four of them left the ruined hall behind and moved on, their footprints pressed into the salt like the first strokes of a letter the city had been waiting years to read.