The pull didn't feel like gravity.
It felt like being remembered by something that had never met you.
Lina's feet scraped across stone as the Mirror Door dragged her closer, Kai's hand locked around her wrist—tight, desperate, real.
"Kai—!" she gasped.
His fingers trembled like he was holding onto the last thread of himself.
But over his hand—over his knuckles—another hand tightened.
Masked sleeve. Cold grip. Wrong angle.
Using him.
Using the bond.
Seren's voice cracked behind Lina. "Lina! Don't let it take your wrist—don't let it read your tether!"
Reyon clamped onto Lina's other arm with both hands like he was trying to physically hold reality together.
"I am officially declaring mirrors illegal," he wheezed. "We should sue the academy."
Lina didn't answer.
She couldn't.
Because Kai's presence slammed into her bones through the tether—panic, pain, a fractured kind of don't leave me that made her flame flicker wildly.
And then Kai's voice—real, shredded—broke through, barely audible:
"Lina… don't—look—"
Lina froze.
Don't look.
Don't look where?
At the masked hand?
At the other side?
At him?
The Mirror Door widened.
Cold air poured out—air that smelled like wet stone and old ink and something metallic, like blood that had been washed away but never forgiven.
The pleading Kai voice and commanding Kai voice behind them both rose in a whispering chorus.
"Say his name.""Stay real.""Let him go."
Lina's stomach twisted.
The Mirror Library wanted her to hesitate.
Because hesitation was how mirrors learned you.
So Lina did the only thing she could do with a prophecy tightening around her throat:
She chose without thinking long enough to be afraid.
"Seren," Lina snapped, eyes locked on Kai's hand. "Reyon. If I go in, you don't let me get lost."
Reyon's eyes widened. "Oh, you're doing the 'jump into certain doom' thing."
Seren grabbed Lina's sleeve hard. "Lina, the other side rewrites names. It rewrites sense. It rewrites—"
Lina swallowed. "Then you keep saying mine."
Seren's breath hitched.
Lina looked back at her once—brief, fierce.
"Say my name," Lina whispered. "Stay real."
Seren's eyes shone.
"Lina Veris," she whispered back.
The tether burned.
The Mirror Door yanked.
Kai's hand tightened with sudden urgency—as if he heard Seren too—and the pull became a drag, Lina's shoes skidding, flame flaring in her palms.
Lina sucked in a breath and did the simplest, most dangerous thing possible.
She stepped forward.
Into the mirror.
The world turned inside out.
Light didn't blur—it shattered.
Sound didn't fade—it reversed.
Lina felt the Mirror Corridor wrap around her like cold water, and for a second she couldn't tell if she was falling or floating.
Her flame flickered—gold, then black at the edges—then stabilized as her bones burned hotter.
Because the tether was here.
It was a lighthouse in a world that wanted her to forget the shore.
She heard Reyon swear behind her—then his voice stretched, warped, like someone pulling it through glass.
"Liii—naaa—!"
Seren's voice followed, sharp and terrified:
"Lina Veris! Lina Veris! Lina Veris!"
Each repetition hit Lina like a rope around her waist.
Anchoring.
Keeping her from drifting.
Then—
The corridor snapped shut.
A sound like a door sealing underwater.
Silence.
Not quiet—silence that pressed against her ears like a command.
Lina opened her eyes.
They weren't in the Mirror Library anymore.
They were in a hallway made of reflection.
Not mirrors on walls.
The walls themselves were reflective, slick and curved like polished obsidian. Their footsteps didn't echo—they duplicated, three steps behind, then five steps ahead, then nowhere at all.
Light came from nowhere and everywhere, a pale shimmer that made Lina feel like she was inside someone else's dream.
Her bone-tether tugged—hard.
Forward.
"Kai," Lina whispered, and the name tasted strange in her mouth, like it didn't belong to language here.
A figure stumbled ahead in the corridor.
Kai.
He was half-lit, half-shadow, as if the mirror had sliced him down the center and never bothered to put him back together.
One side of his face looked normal—blood at the corner of his mouth, gold-thread Shadowsteel crawling his arm.
The other side looked… wrong.
Not monstrous.
Just blurred, like the mirror couldn't decide what he should be.
His eyes snapped to Lina.
For one second, pure shock.
Then relief so violent it looked like pain.
"Lina—" he rasped.
She ran toward him.
And the corridor responded.
A ripple moved under the reflective floor.
A circle of runes flashed beneath Lina's feet.
She skidded to a stop just as the floor turned liquid-glass and hands reached up—dozens of shadow hands—trying to grab her ankles, her wrists, her flame.
Seren and Reyon appeared behind her, slamming into the corridor like they'd been spat out.
Reyon looked around wildly. "Okay! New location! Still cursed! Fantastic!"
Seren's eyes were glowing dangerously. "This place eats names."
Kai's voice sharpened. "Don't say anything unnecessary."
Lina's heart clenched. "Kai, I'm here."
Kai took a step toward her—
And chains erupted from the walls, snapping toward his wrists.
Kai flinched, Shadowsteel flaring, cutting through one chain—but another wrapped around his arm, yanking him back.
Lina's flame surged.
"Kai!"
He shook his head, desperate.
"Don't," he hissed. "It uses your flame as a beacon."
Lina froze.
Her bones burned where the tether lived.
So she did what they'd locked into canon.
Touch anchors.
But touch here might also trigger a lock.
The corridor shimmered. The runes pulsed as if listening to her heartbeat.
Seren whispered, panicked, "Lina… something is watching."
A figure stepped out of the reflective wall.
Not a mimic.
Not a shadow creature.
A person wearing a mask.
Then another.
Then another.
They moved silently, robes dragging like smoke, faces hidden behind carved porcelain: blank, smiling, crying, screaming—every emotion frozen into art.
Veilbound.
Reyon's breath hitched. "So… the costume party is early."
The Veilbound didn't speak.
They didn't have to.
They lifted their hands together, synchronized—
and the corridor filled with a low, vibrating hum.
A ritual beginning.
Kai's chains tightened.
Lina's tether flared.
Seren's eyes widened, Soul Echoes screaming. "They're trying to bind you, Lina. They're trying to overwrite your identity with a mask."
Lina's throat went dry.
The nearest Veilbound held out a mask toward her.
It wasn't blank.
It wasn't carved with a random expression.
It was carved with runes.
And there, etched into the porcelain like a verdict, was her name:
LINA VERIS.
Lina's breath stopped.
Kai surged against the chains, voice breaking.
"Lina—DON'T TAKE IT—!"
The Veilbound mask tilted slightly, as if it were smiling.
And from behind it, a voice whispered—soft, familiar, too close:
"Mira did well."
Lina's blood turned to ice.
Because the voice wasn't Mira's.
It was Jax's.
Or what wore him now.
And the mask moved closer, floating into Lina's hands as if it belonged there.
To be Continued© Kishtika., 2025
All rights reserved.