Ash still clung to Eldrenvale like a second skin.
Not the normal soot of hearthfires or forgework—this ash was too fine, too patient. It drifted even when the wind stopped, settling into corners as if the city had been marked and the mark refused to fade.
I walked with my ribs bandaged and my eye refusing to stop throbbing, each step a reminder that the Master didn't need a blade to cut me. He only needed me to look.
The citadel gates opened without questions.
That was the first wrong thing.
Crimson-clad guards escorted me through halls that smelled of brass polish and old soap, their armor edged with gray. Their boots were quiet on the stone—not because they were disciplined, but because the stone itself seemed to swallow sound. Runes guttered along the walls, burning faint and sickly as if they'd been awake all night.
A city could survive a fire.
A city could survive a siege.
But it couldn't survive the moment its reflections stopped agreeing on what was real.
"Lord Felix von Frederick," the captain said, visor down, "you will be examined."
"I was already examined," I replied.
He didn't flinch. "Not by physicians."
My golden eye ached at the word examined, like it recognized the language of cages.
We passed a corridor lined with banners—houses older than the academy, older than the duke's name, older than the war. The crests looked familiar and foreign at once, like characters from a book I'd written and then forgotten.
At the end of the hall stood a door that wasn't decorated.
It didn't need to be.
Two guards pulled it open and stepped back as if they didn't want their shadows to cross the threshold.
Inside: a chamber of red stone and cold air.
And at its center—
A mirror.
Not large. Not ornate.
Just a plain rectangular slab of silvered glass set into an iron frame, positioned upright like a judge who refused to sit.
Behind it, the wall was carved with a circular scripture in the old tongue. I couldn't read it, not truly—but the Golden Eye translated the intent the way it translated threads.
This is not for seeing. This is for keeping.
A figure stood to the side, thin and precise, wearing a dark robe with a chain of keys around his neck. His face was narrow, his eyes the color of dried ink. He held a leather ledger against his ribs as if it might bite him.
"The Archivist," the captain said.
The man bowed with minimal motion. "My lord."
His voice was soft but firm. A person trained to speak in rooms where sound mattered.
"You are Felix von Frederick," he said, and it wasn't a question.
"Yes," I answered.
The mirror did nothing.
No reflection. No shimmer.
It was as if it didn't acknowledge I existed.
The Archivist stepped closer to the base of the mirror and pressed a ring against the iron frame. The ring had a symbol like a thin slash—like a dagger line through a page.
The air tightened.
A pressure settled over my skin like invisible hands.
"By decree of the Council of Eldrenvale," the Archivist recited, "and by the Compact of Glass and Oath, you will be measured by the Unbroken Mirror."
Compact of Glass and Oath.
I hadn't written that phrase. Not once.
So why did it feel like the world had been waiting centuries for someone to say it in front of me?
The captain backed away until he was outside the chamber. The door remained open, but the air inside felt sealed.
The Archivist flipped open his ledger, his quill already inked.
Then he spoke the words that made my stomach turn:
"State your name."
I hesitated.
"Felix," I said.
The mirror remained blank.
The Archivist didn't look up. "State your name."
My throat went dry.
I felt it—the shape behind my ribs. A memory that wasn't mine. A life that had ended on a winter street under a lamp.
"...Carter," I whispered.
The mirror breathed.
Not air—light. A thin sheen slid across its surface like oil catching flame.
And then it reflected the room.
The torches. The red stone. The Archivist. The keys. The iron frame.
Everything—
Except me.
Where I should have been, there was only empty space, like the mirror had erased the concept of my presence.
The Archivist's hand tightened around his quill.
"Proceed," he said, voice almost too calm.
The mirror's surface rippled.
Letters appeared across it, forming in a language the eye didn't need to translate because the meaning crawled into my bones:
CHECK ONE: BLOOD
Something pricked my palm.
I looked down and saw a hairline cut opening on my skin as if the air itself had decided I should bleed. A single bead of blood rose, trembled, and drifted toward the glass like it was being pulled by gravity I couldn't feel.
It touched the mirror.
The mirror drank it.
For a moment, the surface turned dark—then bright again—then the letters changed.
MATCHED: DUKE FREDERICK
MATCHED: HOUSE VON FREDERICK
MATCHED: FELIX VON FREDERICK
Relief tried to rise—
Then the mirror paused.
The light hesitated, like a candle reconsidering whether to stay lit.
A new line appeared beneath the rest:
MATCHED — UNSTABLE
The Archivist's quill scratched too hard, tearing his paper slightly.
"What does unstable mean?" I demanded.
He didn't answer.
His silence was an answer.
The mirror's writing shifted again.
CHECK TWO: DESTINY
The chamber dimmed.
Not the torches—the world.
It was as if the mirror stole the brightness from everything to feed its own sight.
My Golden Eye heated behind my skull, trying to open.
I forced it shut.
I didn't need double sight right now.
I needed to survive.
The mirror turned into a moving window.
A scene flashed: me in the training yard, wooden sword, the guard's purple mana, the moment my eyes turned gold.
Then another: Emily's duel—the moment my fingers touched her forehead, her sword falling like she'd been disarmed by fate itself.
Then another: the clinic—Marianne's sanctuary circle, the faceless shadow, the spear of darkness, the Severance page splitting the room like a blade through fog.
Those were known.
That was the path I could trace.
Then the mirror changed.
It showed a corridor I had never described in my writing—walls made of black glass, lit by a floating sun trapped in a cage of bones. In that corridor, a version of me walked without casting a shadow.
It showed Emily standing before seven stone arches, each arch reflecting a different sky. Her sword was raised, and behind her was something that wore her face wrong—like her reflection had decided it deserved a body.
It showed Marianne older, hands stained with ink and blood, binding a book shut with chains that screamed like living things.
And then—
It showed a blurred shape.
A faceless figure holding a sword of darkness.
But this time, the faceless figure wasn't just a drawing.
It moved.
It turned its head as if it could feel the mirror watching it.
As if it could feel me watching it.
A cold pressure pushed into my chest.
The mirror's surface trembled.
The letters returned:
PATHS DETECTED: 4
PATHS AUTHORIZED: 1
PATHS UNKNOWN: 3
Authorized.
Unknown.
The language of a system that believed it owned the story.
The Archivist swallowed, throat bobbing.
He wrote without looking at his paper. "Proceed," he said again.
The mirror darkened.
CHECK THREE: REFLECTION
The air became heavier.
I could feel my heartbeat in my teeth.
I realized something terrifying:
This mirror wasn't testing whether I was Felix.
It was testing whether the world should allow me to continue pretending I was.
The glass brightened, and a single sentence appeared, simple as a blade:
WHICH LIFE DO YOU CLAIM?
My mouth went dry.
My mind tried to be clever. Tried to lie.
But lies were cheap in rooms like this. Mirrors ate them.
So I answered with the only truth that mattered.
"The one that continues," I said.
The mirror didn't respond instantly.
For a long moment, nothing happened.
Then, slowly, new words formed:
ACTIVE VARIABLE
DO NOT CULL
The chamber exhaled.
Not relief—warning.
The mirror's surface cracked.
A hairline fracture, no louder than a whisper, slicing down the glass like a thin scar.
The crack didn't spread.
It simply existed.
A wound on a thing that wasn't supposed to be wounded.
The Archivist went pale.
"You cracked it," he breathed.
"I didn't touch it," I said.
But we both knew that wasn't what he meant.
The mirror had been harmed by my answer.
By my existence.
By my refusal to choose a clean identity.
The pressure in the room shifted.
Not from the mirror—
From behind me.
Footsteps entered the chamber.
Slow. Heavy. Controlled.
The Archivist stiffened like a man caught stealing.
The captain outside straightened as if a statue had learned fear.
I turned.
Duke Frederick stood in the doorway.
My father.
Tall. Still. His presence filled the room the way war fills lungs—with weight you can't cough out. His eyes moved once: from the mirror, to the crack, to the drying blood beneath my golden eye.
And then to me.
The mirror's surface rippled again, as if it recognized him more cleanly than it recognized me.
The Archivist bowed deeply. "My lord Duke—this is council business."
"Quiet," my father said.
One word, and the Archivist fell silent.
Not obedience.
Submission.
My father stepped forward, his boots echoing in the chamber now—sound returned because he allowed it.
He looked at the mirror's crack.
Then he spoke, not to the Archivist.
Not to me.
To the mirror.
"He is not ready to be measured."
The mirror's light stuttered.
Letters tried to form, failed, formed again.
The system resisted.
My father's gaze sharpened.
"If you name him," he said softly, "the city will hear."
The Archivist's quill trembled.
The mirror's crack brightened faintly, like a vein of light.
My father finally looked at me fully.
I waited for disgust.
For disappointment.
For the cold certainty of a hero seeing his son as a mistake.
But what I saw in Duke Frederick's eyes wasn't anger.
It was calculation.
And something older beneath it—
like grief that had learned to wear armor.
He spoke, and the room seemed to lean in.
"Tell me, boy," he said, voice quiet as a knife sliding free, "are you my son... or are you borrowing him?"
I couldn't answer.
Because any answer would be a confession.
My throat tightened.
My Golden Eye throbbed, begging to open—to see threads, to see lies, to see a path—
But I didn't.
I kept it shut.
For the first time since arriving in Kirin, I chose not to look.
The Duke stepped closer until he was within arm's reach.
His shadow fell over my feet, clean and sharp.
Then I noticed something that made my blood run colder than the ash outside:
His shadow was perfectly normal.
But the mirror—
The mirror showed it wrong.
Behind him, in the glass, his silhouette didn't match.
For a blink, it was too tall.
Too thin.
And the eyes in his reflection were not his.
Two red coals sat where human eyes should have been.
Then it was gone.
The mirror steadied.
As if it had never slipped.
As if it hadn't just revealed a secret that could gut the city.
My father didn't react.
Either he didn't see it—
Or he was pretending he didn't.
He turned his head slightly toward the Archivist.
"Close the ledger," he ordered.
The Archivist hesitated.
The Duke didn't raise his voice.
He didn't need to.
The Archivist snapped his book shut like it was burning his fingers.
My father faced me again.
"You will come with me," he said.
"Where?" I asked.
His gaze didn't soften.
"To the only place in this city where the mirror cannot listen."
That sentence hit harder than any threat.
Because it implied there were places even the Council's rules couldn't reach.
Places built for secrets.
Or for prisons.
The Duke started to leave, then paused at the doorway.
Without turning, he said:
"And Felix..."
He used Felix, not Carter.
Not my old name.
Not the name that the shadow had spoken.
Felix.
As if he was choosing what to call me—and in doing so, choosing what I was allowed to be.
"If you open that eye inside this citadel," he said, "I will cut it out myself."
The door didn't close behind him.
But the chamber felt empty anyway.
I looked back at the mirror.
The crack was still there.
The Unbroken Mirror was no longer unbroken.
And as I stared, the surface fogged—just once—just enough for a single word to appear like breath on glass:
SOON
My fingers went to the shard in my pocket automatically.
The one I'd scratched with No.
I held it tight until the edges bit.
Outside, Eldrenvale's bells tried to ring their three spaced notes again, farther apart than before—as if the city was running out of room to breathe.
And deep in my skull, beneath the ache, beneath the hunger, beneath the cursed gold—
a thought formed that didn't feel like mine:
The mirror that keeps... is already keeping something.
I followed my father into the hall of banners, into the lungs of the citadel, carrying the quiet certainty that the next time the Master reached for a door—
he wouldn't use glass.
He'd use blood.
To be continued...