"Some doors don't open... they swallow you whole when you get too close."
⸻
The silence ran deeper than the darkness.
Luin opened his eyes—or thought he did—but saw nothing except a swimming blackness. No walls, no ground, no sound… just a coldness that touched his skin from within.
Then, a voice.
A voice like his own... but older.
Deeper.
Broken at the edges, like stone dragged across glass.
"Luin..."
The name echoed as if someone was repeating it from inside his chest.
"Luin, how many of us are buried inside you?"
He spun around. No one there.
But his body moved against his will. His hands grew heavier, his chest tightened, as if something deep within was rising... no, emerging.
Before him appeared a black mirror, reflecting nothing but fog.
In a soundless instant, the glass cracked down the middle.
From it emerged a shadow without features, a head taller than him, its eyes two points of ash.
It approached, pressed a finger to Luin's chest, and spoke in his own voice:
"The Judge... has started counting knives."
⸻
Luin gasped and jerked awake.
He was still in the cellar, his head on cold stone, the oil lamp flickering.
He looked around, then at his forearm...
The seal hadn't vanished, but the crooked lines had grown clearer. As if his skin was trying to write something... and failing.
William entered, carrying a water flask and chunks of bread.
"Finally awake... you were motionless for three hours. I thought you were—"
"Was I talking?" Luin cut in.
William stopped.
Studied him carefully.
"You were whispering... but not in your language. Not in your voice, either."
Luin's breath caught.
"I... I saw the mirror again. It was cracking... and there was a shadow coming out of it. Looked like me... but it wasn't."
William set the food aside and moved closer.
He touched Luin's forehead, then looked into his eyes.
"Your left eye..."
"What about it?"
"There's a gray streak in it... not a color, more like a fracture, as if it cracked from the inside."
Luin went quiet.
Then said:
"He told me... that the Judge has started counting knives."
William's voice dropped:
"Then they've begun. The Third Order won't waste time, Luin."
He whispered as if afraid the walls might hear:
"The Soul Division's Third Order... they don't watch. They only pass judgment."
⸻
On gray stone ground, in a hidden temple five floors beneath the city, six white flames gathered before an empty throne.
A deep voice emerged from the shadows:
"The inverted mirror is complete. The seal has deviated. And the entity... has begun to resist. The Judge will be sent soon. The target... is no longer unknown."
⸻
A Mirror Breaking Inward
⸻
"Not everything brought back to life... returns as it was in death."
⸻
He didn't know how much time had passed.
The night felt heavier than usual—measured not in hours, but in what it tore from within.
Luin sat alone in a half-dark room, a forgotten shelter between walls painted with mold and silence.
Even the oil lamp had extinguished itself moments ago.
Everything in him was shaking, choking, tightening.
The first seal—which used to pulse quietly in his forearm—now hammered violently, as if something was trying to get out... or get in.
Then... the voice came.
Whispering at first, like the breath of a child who died in their sleep:
"Remember me?"
He gasped.
Looked around. No one.
Then again, closer than it should be:
"You were there. When the name was forgotten... when the voices burned."
Luin collapsed to his knees, his body writhing as if lightning was tearing through him.
The mark on his forearm flared suddenly, then red cracks split from it, spreading under his skin toward his chest... like a web of fiery veins.
⸻
The air shifted. This wasn't William's shelter anymore.
He found himself standing in a room without doors, without a ceiling.
Its walls were made of blood, and the floor pulsed like human skin.
And across from him... a mirror.
It didn't reflect his image, but another shadow.
A shadow that resembled him... yet didn't.
When it spoke, the voice didn't come from its mouth, but from inside his own skin:
"I am what remains. What was left in you when you were stripped... what they didn't want them to find."
Luin couldn't speak.
"Now... the second door has opened, but there's no place for you in it yet. Either you merge... or you split."
He wanted to scream, to run, to understand.
But the mirror shattered before he could speak, and black ink poured from it, pooling at his feet.
Suddenly, he felt the entire seal burning.
Not just in his forearm... but in his heart, in his eye, in his soul.
He fell.
And in that moment of falling... something opened.
⸻
A hidden scream tore from him, heard by no one... but the ancient city of Kroma trembled for an instant, as if a heart beneath the earth beat for the first time in centuries.
In the darkness, creatures were waking.
And the second seal... had been drawn, like an organic tattoo beneath his left eye, writhing with every pulse.
⸻
Consciousness returned slowly.
Luin opened his eyes to find the crumbling ceiling above him.
His hands were shaking, his clothes torn at the shoulder.
Black ash filled the air around him, as if he'd gone through a fire ritual that never ignited.
William rushed in and froze when he saw him.
"Damn it... were you alone?"
Luin didn't answer.
But he looked at him... and in his eyes was a new depth, unlike anything before. A depth with something else in it.
"Did you open it?" William asked.
Luin whispered hoarsely:
"I didn't open anything... it opened me."
⸻
Somewhere far away, beneath a majestic white church, a secret chamber's temperature rose.
A black mirror shattered on its own, and ash fell onto its walls.
An ancient voice called out:
"The mirror has split. The second seal bears no signature of ours... Send the Eraser."
⸻
The sky was gray, but it wasn't raining.
That kind of gray that hangs over cities after they've emptied all their hopes. Luin walked behind William, his steps heavy, his features exhausted.
"Don't look back."
William said it low, didn't turn, didn't slow down.
"Are they still following us?" Luin asked, though he knew the answer.
"Not anymore. But they'll return. They don't forget the smell of blood, or the trace of a seal."
Luin fell silent. The cold air stung his cheek, as if the entire city was rejecting him. They passed through alleys he'd never seen before—cracked houses, windows boarded with wood, men with extinguished faces smoking on the thresholds of ruin.
"Where are we going?"
"There's a place. Temporarily safe... outside the range covered by the Church's eyes. We need some time to think."
"Think? About what?"
William stopped suddenly, turned to face him for the first time since they'd started walking. His eyes were gray, carrying something closer to worry.
"About who we are, and what we're heading toward... and what it means to carry a seal inside you, Luin. It's not what you think."
"I don't think anything." Luin muttered, but didn't even convince himself.
They crossed a small bridge, beneath it a shallow waterway as if dying. On the other side, the ground began to change—from stone to dirt, from the city's edges to the remnants of the Black Forest that was told about in stories on cold nights.
"We can't stay in the city. They've seen you."
"What about you?"
"Me? They've seen me before. But they haven't seen me with you. And that's a problem."
Luin whispered: "Everyone who gets close to me regrets it."
William ignored him. He lifted his cloak from a withered tree trunk, then revealed a small stone door barely visible between the roots.
"We'll stay here tonight. Don't open the door for any voice you hear."
"What about you?"
"I'll be back before dawn. There's someone I need to see."
"Should I trust you?"
William smiled that sad smile that belongs only to a man who's lost an old friend.
"You don't need to trust me... just stay alive."
Then he disappeared into the shadows, leaving Luin alone, before a stone door, between trees that resembled skeletons, and a wind blowing from the depths of a merciless land.
⸻
End of Chapter Eleven