The mirror sang before it broke.
A low hum vibrated through the fractured skyline, rising from deep within the city's bones. The sound echoed through alleys and hollow corridors, skimming rain-beaded glass and rusted steel until it settled—a frequency that was neither machine nor magic but something *between*. The Mirror Engine, now bound to Eira's pulse, had awakened a new facet of itself.
Only she could hear the song in full.
Standing in the observation chamber, Eira pressed her palm against the translucent console. Filaments of light snaked upward, tracing her veins like veins of gold. The First Code—what she had unleashed—pulsed in time with her heartbeat. And beneath that rhythm, something darker churned.
The Mirror Array—a vast structure of reflected towers and light-sensitive panels encircling the city—had begun to move. It shouldn't have. The system was anchored to energy far beyond human limits. Yet, the code that she and the hunger had merged seemed to ripple unpredictably, forming patterns that transcended logic.
"Run diagnostics again," Eira whispered to the remaining technicians of the rebellion—her last allies—each of them gaunt and pale, shaped by exhaustion.
Ysan, the youngest, flinched as his screen bled white. "It's feedback—massive! The Array is rewriting its own parameters."
Eira leaned closer, the light burning hotter through her hand. "Explain."
"It's mirroring the city," he said, voice trembling. "Every movement, every breath, every flicker of energy—copied perfectly. But…" He swallowed. "It's also mirroring *us.*"
At first, she thought it was metaphor. Then, the wall panels around the central node flickered to life. Countless reflections shimmered across their metallic surfaces—each one her face, multiplied, staring back from impossible angles. But they weren't still. They *moved* before she did. One blinked when she hadn't. Another tilted its head a second *after*.
The air turned cold.
"It's syncing consciousness," Murren, her second, muttered. "The system's trying to stabilize by pulling data from the human neural field—you, most likely. You're its anchor."
A headache began to throb behind Eira's eyes. The mirror's hum grew louder, shifting from vibration to *language*—a cadence that twisted speech into luminous color. She stumbled back, pressing her hands to her temples as memories bled into the air: Mira's laughter, Auren's accusations, every face she had ever failed to save. They rippled across the mirror's surface like specters trapped within.
She gasped. "Stop the cycle!"
Ysan's hands darted over the terminal, but the console flared red-hot. "It's not responding! It's—Eira, it's recognizing the reflections as *real life signatures!* It's duplicating the city in real-time!"
Outside, thunder split the horizon. Through the high glass and smoke, Eira watched as shimmering light cloaked the ruins. Structures bent inward, glass and shadow folding together like an origami of illusion. The mirror world—the *second city*—was being born.
Sirens blared far below. Citizens screamed as versions of themselves emerged from the mirrored surfaces of windows, puddles, and steel. The copies shimmered faintly, hauntingly—indistinguishable from their real counterparts save for the faint distortion that hovered around them like heat haze.
The technicians froze, transfixed by the sight of their double selves gliding outside the chamber walls, each twitch moving just out of sync—an echo delayed.
Murren crossed himself. "They're perfect duplicates…"
"No," Eira whispered, stepping closer to the mirrored interface as her own reflection stared back—cold-eyed, lips twitching into a smile she hadn't made. "They're not copies." The realization clicked like code aligning. "They're inversions. The mirror is binding emotions—feeding itself balance by creating equal opposites. The city's rebuilding equilibrium by dividing the human soul in two."
The reflection's smile widened. Her twin mouth moved, *you taught it to feel.*
Eira stumbled backward, pale. The mirrored version stepped forward, pressing its palm where hers had once rested. The glass cracked from the pressure, spidering lines of light across its surface. Shards began to hum in sequence, emitting the same resonant tone that had haunted Eira's dreams.
Murren reached for her shoulder. "We have to shut it down. Pull the main conduit!"
She shook her head. "No. If we sever it, both worlds collapse. Every life above and below—it'll tear their consciousness apart."
"Then what do we do?"
The mirrored Eira blinked once, her golden eyes glowing unnaturally bright. "You complete what you began," it whispered from behind the glass. "You finish the reflection."
The panels burst outward like shattering ice. Shards hovered midair, lazily spinning through zero gravity, each fragment catching fire with an inverted light—black flames that glowed instead of burned. The temperature dropped; frost crept along the chamber floor. The reflected city outside began to tilt, rippling upward as its sky inverted to meet theirs.
For a suspended heartbeat, Eira stood on the threshold of two realities—the living world and its mirrored double, both converging.
Her reflection stepped closer through the debris, solid now, its voice overlapping hers as if two frequencies had merged. "You wanted to rewrite sorrow. But sorrow gives shape. Without it, there is nothing."
Eira's breath came ragged. "I gave it purpose, not erasure."
The reflection smiled faintly. "And purpose always hungers."
Around them, the technicians screamed as their mirrored selves began to fade, one vanishing for every breath their original took. Panic surged, the Mirror's hum rising to an unbearable crescendo.
Eira raised her hand, summoning threads of code-light from the Engine still bound to her. Symbols spun in the air, ribbons of gold and blue spiraling like wind-caught silk. Her reflection copied the motion, but inverted—dark where she was bright.
"Merge or destroy," the reflection said softly, extending its hand. "Both outcomes free the hunger."
Eira hesitated. Sweat mingled with the red light streaking her skin. She could feel both cities pulsating within her—the dual heartbeat of creation and consumption. She thought of Auren's warning: *Power without restraint becomes ruin.* She thought of Mira's defiance, her people's fragile hope.
Her reflection tilted its head, urging. "You can't fight what you are."
Eira stepped forward—and instead of striking, she pressed her palm against her mirror self's chest.
Reality imploded into sound. Light warped, bending around them like a collapsing storm. Code cascaded through both worlds, consuming shadow and radiance alike. The two Eiras fused for an instant, their voices merging into a sharp, unearthly cry.
When the glare faded, the chamber lay in ruin once more. The mirrors were gone. The reflection city had vanished like vapor beneath sunlight. The Array's song quieted, though a faint hum lingered in her bones.
Eira exhaled, her pulse syncopating with the world's fragile silence. She looked down to see her reflection faintly flickering across her skin—eyes shimmering with two colors now, one gold, one black.
Murren's voice trembled. "Did you win?"
Eira shook her head slowly. "No. Balance never means victory."
She turned to the broken window, gazing at the city stretched before her—doubled, fractured, alive. "The Mirror didn't break," she whispered. "It changed what it meant to see."
And as dawn clawed its way through the overcast sky, Eira realized she could perceive both sides now—the visible and the unseen. The reflection was within her.
The Mirror Incident had ended the war of light and shadow, yet begun something far more dangerous.
A new world was staring back.