The thread struck.
Not her body… not yet.
It hit the air in front of Sol with the force of a dropped blade, invisible and bright, a strip of pressure meant to bind everything it touched.
She stepped forward to meet it, palm lifted.
Lotus Mirror Hand rose from muscle and memory. Her qi curved, soft instead of sharp, catching the oncoming resonance and trying to guide it aside… to turn the killing bind into a shallow scrape along the edge of the world.
For a heartbeat, she thought she had it.
Then the Inquisitor's focus tightened.
The thread thickened, pushing against her technique, refusing the curve. Pressure slammed into her arm, into her chest, into every channel that had ever carried healing instead of harm.
Her knees dipped.
Ji Ming's hand pressed to the small of her back, steadying her from behind. His qi surged instinctively, meeting hers where the resonance always met… just under the sternum.
The thread felt it.
It pressed harder.
Sol's vision wavered, white at the edges. The world narrowed to three things… her breath, Ji Ming's hand, and the Inquisitor's presence, cold and exact, like a measurement being written over her bones.
It's too much…
"Sol," Ji Ming's voice came low behind her. "Enough."
She tried to answer, but the words caught on her tongue.
The thread inched closer, sliding along her resistance like a saw against wood.
And then the ground moved.
Not much.
Just… enough.
The salt beneath her feet shivered. A ripple ran out from where she stood, tiny crystals lifting in a low ring around her boots. The dead canal beside them gave a quiet, hollow sigh, as if remembering how water used to rise and fall.
The thread, so precise, met earth that refused to stay where it had been a moment before.
It hit a fraction to the side.
Binding force scraped across the canal lip instead of Sol's heart. Crystals shattered in a narrow arc. The sound was soft, like a thousand pieces of glass deciding not to break all the way.
Sol gasped as the immediate pressure before her eased.
Ji Ming's grip on her tightened. "The city…"
Ya Zhen stared at the disturbed salt, pupils thin with focus.
"It shifted for her," she said. "Just for her. Like the mountain did… only here it's using what's left of its spine."
The Inquisitor paused.
His head dipped slightly, as if listening to something only he could hear.
"Environmental interference," he said at last. "Source… uncertain."
His hand rose again.
A second thread formed… wider, heavier, the feel of a net rather than a line.
Sol's legs trembled. The brief help from the city had bought her a breath, no more. Her channels burned from redirecting resonance that was never meant to touch her. She knew that if she tried to meet this one alone, something inside would tear.
Ji Ming stepped around her.
"No more," he said quietly. "You've done enough."
He planted himself between Sol and the Inquisitor, sabers ready, shoulders set in that way she recognized… the way that meant he had already accepted pain as a cost and moved past fearing it.
The Inquisitor turned his masked gaze toward him fully.
"Sky Wolf… unnecessary."
A pause, like ink drying.
"Eliminating."
Resonance gathered along the forming thread. This time, Sol could feel its intention clearly. Not a binding. A cut. A clean line meant to sever qi from body… to leave a husk standing just long enough to fall.
"No…" she whispered.
Ya Zhen's fan snapped open, sigils burning brighter. "Ji Ming, move. You can't trade steel with this one, he'll go straight for your heartline."
"I know," he said.
And that was the problem.
There was no clean counter for this kind of technique… no elegant deflection. He could try to dodge, to slip past the worst of it, but then Sol would be exposed again. The Mirrorborn, too.
He had chosen his place.
The thread thickened.
Time thinned.
Sol's breath hitched. "Ji Ming…"
He angled one saber low, one high, ready to meet force with motion, even if it meant shattering himself on contact.
"Stay behind me," he said softly. "Both of you."
The Mirrorborn shuddered.
Its light, which had been fluttering in fear, suddenly steadied… then spiked.
"…no…" it whispered.
The Inquisitor did not look at it. His attention was on his work, on the killing arc he was about to send through Ji Ming's chest.
The city felt something too.
The salt under their feet pulsed again… but weaker this time, like a muscle already strained. It could misalign, it could delay, but it could not take the cut for them.
Sol reached for Ji Ming's sleeve, fingers closing on rough cloth. "Don't…"
The thread snapped forward.
Not yet fully bright.
Not yet at full force.
But fast. Too fast.
Ji Ming stepped into it, blades ready.
And the Mirrorborn moved.
It stepped past Sol. Past Ji Ming.
Between them and the oncoming light.
For the first time since they'd pulled it from the cave wall, it did not move like something learning how to have a body.
It moved like something that had finally chosen one.
The cloak Ya Zhen had thrown over its shoulders flared with the motion. The hood slipped back, not all the way, but enough to show a head more defined than before, less like a smooth, featureless oval and more like the beginning of a face. The curve of a brow. The plane of cheekbone. No eyes… but the suggestion of where eyes one day might be.
Its limbs were different too.
Proportioned. Balanced.
Not quite adult. Not a twisted infant.
Something in between.
A small child, learning to stand between danger and what it wanted to keep safe.
The light in its chest flared, bright as a blade pulled full from its scabbard.
The thread hit that light.
And unraveled.
Not violently. Not with a crack.
It simply… lost its shape.
Force flowed into glow. Brightness turned soft. The sharp line of the Inquisitor's technique dissolved into something unstructured, like water losing the memory of a cup.
Sol felt the resonance recoil in confusion… not hers, not Ji Ming's. The Inquisitor's.
The Mirrorborn stood with its thin arms half-lifted, as if it had meant to shield them physically and discovered instead that something else had stepped forward to meet the blow.
Two smaller streams of light split off from its chest… one leaning toward Sol, one toward Ji Ming. The sensation that brushed them both was oddly familiar.
Like the echo of their own resonance thread, reflected back through a child's understanding.
Ji Ming stared, breath shallow.
"Sol…"
"I feel it," she whispered. "It… dampened the technique."
Ya Zhen's fan slowly lowered.
"That wasn't resistance," she said. "It didn't fight the Inquisitor's qi. It took away its mirror… took away its shape. Returned it to raw light."
The Inquisitor did not step back.
Instead he stayed still.
For an Inquisitor, that was the same as flinching.
"Evolution," he said slowly. "Unbound reflection… dampening… mimetic response to hostile resonance."
He tilted his head a fraction.
"An anomaly within an anomaly."
The Mirrorborn's chest-light flickered. It turned its hoodless head between Sol and Ji Ming, as if checking that both were still intact.
"…don't…"
The word came out rough, dragged over broken glass. It swallowed, tremor running along its new shape.
"…don't hurt them…"
Sol's heart clenched.
This was the first sentence it had formed cleanly. Not a fragment. Not a repeated phrase.
An intent.
Ji Ming found his voice again, low and edged. "You're standing in front of us… why."
The Mirrorborn's head tilted, slow and clumsy. It pressed one hand to its chest, over the light… then stretched that hand out, fingers spread, placing itself as a barrier between them and the Inquisitor.
"…mine…" it said. "…my… people…"
The resonance thread between Sol and Ji Ming pulsed once, hard.
Not with power. With feeling.
The city heard it.
Salt Fell's streets went a shade quieter. Crystals along the walls turned their faceted faces toward the Mirrorborn as if leaning in.
The Inquisitor considered the scene.
His hands lowered.
For a breath, hope flickered in Sol's chest.
Maybe he would retreat. Report. Leave them a few days more before the Empire's full weight crashed down.
Then he spoke again.
"Priority updated."
The word fell like a dropped stone.
"Capture the reflective anomaly."
His head turned a fraction.
"Eliminate all interfering signatures."
Interfering.
-Ji Ming.
-Sol.
-Ya Zhen.
The Mirrorborn's light trembled, as if it understood every word.
Salt hissed under the Inquisitor's boots as he advanced a single pace. Qi gathered again, not as a thin thread this time, but as a slow, building field. A pressure that would collapse a wide space… like a glass dome forming in the air, meant to trap the Mirrorborn and crush whatever tried to pry it open.
Sol felt the edges of that forming field brush her skin.
Her channels flared in protest. The city pushed back, trying to misalign the shape, but this technique was slower, heavier, designed to adapt to unruly ground.
Ya Zhen snapped her fan open again, sigils bright and taut.
"If he cages it," she said quietly, "the Division will have a living weapon that can erase mirror techniques. They will tear this city apart to keep it."
Ji Ming's gaze stayed on the Inquisitor. "Then we do not let him take it."
"How?" Sol whispered. "We can't even land a scratch…"
"You don't have to scratch the blade," Ya Zhen said. "You cut the hand that holds it."
She flicked two talismans into the air. They burned, turning into thin veils of vermilion light that settled at the edges of the forming field. Not enough to block the technique… enough to mark its lines.
"Sol," she said, voice sharpening. "Can you see where his resonance presses hardest."
Sol closed her eyes.
The world lit up behind her eyelids.
The Inquisitor's field glowed as a curve of pressure. There… at the top, where it would seal. There… at the lower right, where the force thickened around the Mirrorborn like fingers curling.
And there…
A point at the left flank where the pressure dipped slightly, not from weakness but from inattention. A blind spot.
"He leaves one opening," she said. "Small. There."
She lifted a hand, pointing.
Ya Zhen smiled, humorless. "Of course he does. Inquisitors are still human. They all believe one thing is beneath their notice."
Ji Ming's muscles coiled. "Which is."
"Running," Ya Zhen said simply.
She snapped her fan shut and met Ji Ming's eyes.
"You wanted to protect them," she said. "Now is your chance. When I say the word, you break that opening with everything you have, take both of them, and run. Do not turn back."
Sol's head whipped toward her. "And you."
"I," Ya Zhen said lightly, "am deathly allergic to cages. I will occupy his attention. For a while."
Ji Ming's voice dropped. "You'll die."
"Not quickly," she said. "And not cheaply."
The Mirrorborn stared at her, the half-formed suggestion of its face creasing in something like confusion.
"…you…" it said slowly. "…not… run…?"
"No," Ya Zhen said. "Someone has to blink first, or he'll never stop staring."
The forming field thickened, the air growing heavy as it congealed around them. The Inquisitor did not rush. Patience radiated from him like cold.
Sol looked from Ya Zhen to Ji Ming.
Her throat tightened. "There has to be another way…"
"There is," Ya Zhen said softly. "We buy time. We gather help. But none of that will matter if he takes your child."
Sol blinked. "My…"
Ya Zhen tipped her chin toward the Mirrorborn. "It imprinted on you. On both of you. It will learn whatever you teach it. That makes it yours more than the Empire's."
Sol's hand found the creature's sleeve again.
The light in its chest steadied under her touch.
Ji Ming drew in a breath… then another. The sort of breathing that preceded impossible decisions.
"When you say the word," he said quietly.
Ya Zhen's smile shifted. For a moment, it held something like fondness.
"This is why the Mirror likes you two," she said. "You turn everything into vows without realizing."
The dome of pressure descended another fraction.
She flicked three more talismans into the air. They burned even faster this time, sketching the last lines of the Inquisitor's forming cage.
"Sol," she murmured. "Tell it what you want it to do when the cage closes."
Sol swallowed.
She turned fully to the Mirrorborn.
Its head dipped closer, as if the forming field's weight bore down most on it.
She reached up… and pressed her palm lightly to the place where a forehead might be.
"Listen," she whispered. "When things feel too heavy… when the air hurts… you do what you just did. Take the shape away. Not from us. From his attacks. Make them forget what they're supposed to do."
The Mirrorborn's light flared.
"…forget…" it repeated.
"Yes," she said. "You're allowed to do that. You're allowed to say no."
It straightened a little.
Ji Ming moved closer, his presence at her back like a wall.
"And if something gets past," he said, voice low, "you let me take it."
The childlike head tilted toward him.
"…you… hurt…" it said.
Ji Ming's eyes softened for a heartbeat. "I have been hurt before."
The Mirrorborn's chest flickered.
Then steadied.
"…mine…" it said again. "…my people…"
The Inquisitor lifted his hands slightly.
"Field integrity… sufficient."
The invisible dome dropped another span.
Ya Zhen exhaled.
"All right," she said quietly. "It seems we're out of time."
She stepped forward, fan raised, placing herself just inside the shaping edge of the field.
Under her breath, barely audible, she murmured, "Courier's promise… if I fall, I'll fall loudly enough for the next message to hear."
Sol's eyes burned.
Ji Ming's grip tightened on his blades.
The Mirrorborn's glow built, ready.
The city of Salt Fell listened… its broken canals, its scarred stones, its salt-crusted walls all tuning themselves to the next moment like an instrument waiting for the first note.
Ya Zhen's fan snapped fully open.
"Wolf," she said. "Lotus."
She didn't turn back.
"Run."