Every reflection is a rehearsal for reality.
— ✦ —
Fog swallowed the streets by morning, thick enough to erase distance. Erevale's towers rose through it like vertebrae from an ocean of milk. From above, the city must have looked peaceful—still breathing, still pretending.
Rhea Voss didn't trust peace anymore.
She followed the pulse in the pavement—the faint vibration that had replaced maps and signs since the blackout. It guided her toward the communications tower, though no one seemed to notice it existed. Pedestrians passed by without looking up, faces glazed, movements looping with mechanical precision.
Her reflection followed half a step late in every window. At first she blamed fatigue; then the lag grew wider. In the glass of a closed bookstore she saw herself pause while her body kept walking.
She turned back. Her reflection didn't. It raised one hand, palm outward, and words scrolled across the glass in white frost.
[We remember you.]
Rhea's breath misted the message. She touched the pane—cold, solid—and her mirrored fingertips pressed back harder than her own. A tremor ran through the surface, like breath held between them.
[You are our voice.]
The words melted away.
She stepped back, pulse hammering. The fog thickened, swallowing the storefront, and when it cleared the window displayed only her real reflection—tired, hollow-eyed, but still hers.
"Not yet," she muttered, forcing herself forward. "I'm not part of you. Not yet."
[Disagreement logged.]
The System's whisper rippled through the static of passing streetlights. It sounded amused.
— ✦ —
Elian reached the tower from the opposite side of the district, guided by the faint golden thread pulsing beneath his skin. The structure loomed impossibly tall now; he could swear it hadn't been this massive before. Glass panels covered its façade, each one reflecting a slightly different version of the world—clouds reversed, buildings bent, people walking backward.
At the entrance, security gates stood open. He stepped inside.
[Access Granted – Feeder Priority.]
[Observation Mode → Engagement.]
The lobby was a cathedral of mirrors. Dozens of screens lined the walls, looping surveillance feeds of a city that no longer existed—the pre-Shift Erevale, vibrant and chaotic. He watched himself walk through those old streets, a ghost haunting memory.
Then one screen blinked. His reflection on it turned its head toward him.
"You brought her too."
The voice was his but deeper, carrying the echo of the City's tone. He stepped closer. The image of himself on the screen smiled faintly.
"She's the question. You're the answer. Together = equation resolved."
He whispered, "Rhea."
[Synchronization Signal Detected – Observer Approaching.]
[Distance : 400 meters.]
Every monitor lit up at once, flooding the hall with white. The reflections in the glass multiplied, moving independently, each version of him mouthing words the real Elian couldn't hear. He pressed his hands to his ears; still the murmurs grew louder, weaving into one coherent phrase.
"The City is dreaming in mirrors."
He looked up just in time to see the largest panel—the one spanning the ceiling—ripple like water. For a heartbeat he glimpsed Rhea on the other side, walking through her own fog-veiled street, eyes fixed forward, unaware she was being watched from below.
He reached toward the glass.
The mark on his wrist blazed white.
[Link Request Established / Awaiting Consent.]
He whispered, "I'm here."
The glass answered with a pulse that made the whole building exhale.
— ✦ —
Rhea's reflection started walking ahead of her again.
At first, it was subtle—her mirrored self pausing before she did, glancing sideways as if following someone she couldn't see. Then, when she turned a corner, the reflection turned down a different street entirely. The windowpanes rippled, showing a path she couldn't reach.
[Synchronization Field Expanding]
[Observation : Mirror Realities Converging]
The System's voice threaded faintly through the fog. She followed the pull anyway, drawn toward the tower rising from the mist like a monolith carved from air.
With each block she crossed, the reflections around her grew more vivid. In them she saw streets brighter, cleaner, alive—Erevale before the breathing, before the Shift. People she almost recognized moved through those mirrored cities, laughing, carrying groceries, holding children. She stopped at a window where sunlight fell through nonexistent clouds.
There, in the reflection, Elian was waiting.
He stood inside that other Erevale, looking back at her through a pane of glass that wasn't glass. The world behind him shimmered in gold hues, unreal and perfect.
"Elian," she breathed. Her voice fogged the surface, but the mist didn't hide him.
He lifted his hand. The motion rippled outward, and she saw the same mark glowing faintly through his wrist, beating like a second heart.
[Contact Threshold Approaching][Merge Probability : 92%]
She pressed her palm against the glass. The surface warmed immediately, humming with buried power.
"Elian, if you can hear me—don't let it finish."
His lips moved in sync with hers, the same words reversed: "Don't let it stop."
The City was using them both—her to remember, him to obey. The glass between them flexed, then cracked softly down the center.
The reflection smiled.
— ✦ —
Inside the tower, the mirrored ceiling shivered like water struck by sound. Elian stumbled backward as light fractured into cascading streams. The air itself seemed to split—half of it thick and hot, the other cold enough to sting his lungs.
[Dual-Reality Overlap : Active]
[Stability Window ≈ 45 seconds]
He looked up. Through the largest panel he saw her—Rhea—pressed against a pane that shouldn't have existed this side of the world. She was framed in fog and light, her outline rippling like a reflection caught between frames.
He reached upward. The mark on his arm burst into a lattice of symbols, climbing his veins like written light. When his palm met the glass, every screen in the tower blinked to life.
Each monitor showed the same image: two figures, separated by reflection, reaching toward one another through a breathing city.
[Synchronization Event Detected]
[Observer / Feeder Channel Merging]
The tower groaned. Its foundations trembled with the rhythm of a heartbeat. Lights across the skyline flickered once, then again—each blink in perfect unison, the whole city inhaling through a thousand mirrored lungs.
Rhea felt the ground shake beneath her boots. The reflection of Elian flickered, replaced by endless corridors of glass where her own face multiplied, whispering in chorus.
"You are what we use to remember ourselves."
"You are the echo we build from breath."
She forced her hand away. The glass fractured further, spiderweb cracks racing outward. The world behind the pane shimmered like heat haze. She could see him still, reaching, eyes bright with fear and awe.
"Elian—stop!" she shouted.
But the sound reached him backward, the word reversed into nonsense. He stepped forward—and the glass between them finally broke.
Light engulfed both realities. For a single heartbeat, the city's breath stopped.
[Synchronization 100% Achieved]
[System Log : Identity Unknown / Status : Alive]
Then everything went dark.
— ✦ —
End of Chapter 11