"Some mirrors don't reflect — they remember."
The wind had stopped lying.It no longer pretended to be a song; it hissed like sand through broken lungs.Ruin Emberfall moved through the wreck of night, boots cracking frost that refused to melt. The world was colorless again — a sketch half-erased by time — yet light clung to the edges of everything, thin and trembling, as though afraid to be noticed.
Ahead, the land rose into a shimmer.At first he thought it was another illusion of the storm: ice, maybe, or smoke.But when he drew closer, the haze resolved into trunks of translucent crystal, hundreds of them, stabbing upward like blades. Each caught the dim light and bent it inward, refracting entire constellations within its veins.
A forest made of glass.Every breath he took echoed inside it.
He reached the first tree and brushed its surface. Cold bit through his glove, slicing clean and deep. The glass did not cut; it remembered. His reflection flared across its face — then shifted. A child looked back at him — a boy with soot on his cheeks and wonder in his eyes.
The boy whispered, "You left me."
Ruin jerked his hand away. The image shattered into ripples that moved from trunk to trunk, the forest murmuring with thousands of half-formed voices. Some laughed, some cried, all carried the cadence of things he'd tried to forget.
He forced a breath.
"Not real," he muttered. "Just echoes."
But the forest heard that too.Every tree answered with a sound like wind through chimes — a harmony of denial.
He walked deeper.The path twisted, each step setting off quiet music: crystal ringing underfoot, notes overlapping in uneasy rhythm. Between the trunks, frozen shapes lingered — faces trapped in reflection.Flame's face flickered first, lips parted as if about to speak. Then Sheo's — his calm dissected by cracks running across the glass. Bobey's grin appeared for a heartbeat before splintering into dust.
"Stop it," Ruin said, voice sharp.The reflections stilled, obedient for once, and he hated the silence that followed even more.
A faint glow pulsed at the forest's heart — a single tree brighter than the rest. Its branches swayed though there was no wind. Each branch held shards like leaves, and within each shard flickered a different scene: cities burning, oceans healing, skies rewriting themselves. The tree was a library of everything the world had ever tried to be.
He approached, drawn by the low hum vibrating in his ribs. The nearer he came, the louder it grew, until the sound became a heartbeat — not his, not human. A planetary rhythm, slow and immense.
"You shouldn't have come here," a voice said.
It came from everywhere, from inside the glass itself. The tone was neither threat nor welcome; it was observation.
Ruin turned, scanning the reflections.
"Then tell me where else there is to go."
The voice paused, as if considering.
"Forward. But forward costs."
He almost laughed. "Everything costs."
"Then pay."
The forest erupted. Light cascaded from the treetops, splintering into a storm of shards that swirled around him. Each shard showed a moment — his mistakes, his cruelties, the small mercies he'd let rot. The shards struck his coat and vanished, leaving warmth that hurt more than cold.
He fell to his knees.
"What do you want from me?"
"Not want," the forest answered. "Remember."
The ground beneath him turned transparent. Through it he saw the storm that once was — the hail that had carved him, the silence that had named him. But beneath even that he saw something else: a faint red glow, steady and patient, the core of the world still beating.
Flame's words drifted back to him: Even the dark has a heartbeat.He had thought she meant comfort. Now he knew she meant warning.
The hum deepened until his bones vibrated. Cracks ran up the trunks, light bleeding through. For a moment he thought the forest would shatter entirely. Instead, every tree bent toward him, branches arching as if in prayer. The glow gathered at their tips, converging into a single thread that descended and touched his chest.
Pain flared — not burning, not freezing, something older. His vision blurred; he saw faces he'd loved, people he'd lost, all dissolving into light. He felt the forest pour memory into him — not to punish, but to return what he'd abandoned.
When the light receded, the trees straightened again. Their colors dulled, voices quieted. The forest had given its offering.
He rose unsteady, chest aching where the thread had entered. Inside him, beneath the heartbeat, another rhythm pulsed — glass and thunder intertwined.
"Is it done?" he asked.
The forest answered with a whisper barely audible:
"Not done. Begun."
The glow faded. The path behind him collapsed into shadow, forcing him onward. Ahead, the trees thinned until the glass gave way to frost-covered plain. Beyond it, at the horizon's edge, something vast waited — a line of light curving upward into the black sky, too straight to be natural.
A tower, perhaps. Or a scar.
Ruin looked once more at the forest. Every tree now reflected only darkness.
"Thank you," he said softly.The sound broke and multiplied, a thousand voices repeating his gratitude in tones of wind and sorrow.
He stepped out of the forest. The ground crunched beneath him. Behind, the glass trees began to crack, collapsing in slow motion, falling without noise. When the last trunk hit the earth, it didn't shatter — it dissolved into snow.
The world exhaled.
Ruin Emberfall walked toward the horizon, the faint rhythm of two heartbeats echoing in his chest: his own, and the dark's.