The coastline of Valehar was a graveyard of mirrors.
Ice stretched endlessly into the horizon — each frozen wave holding a memory of motion, trapped mid-breath. The sea had long stopped moving here. Even the wind spoke only in whispers, as if afraid to disturb the stillness it had helped create.
Eira Solen walked barefoot across the frost. The cold didn't bite; it recognized her. Her pale hair whipped behind her like a silken flame, scattering faint traces of silver mist in her wake. Her eyes — once the color of stormlight over spring waters — now reflected only the hollow ache of the world's silence.
They used to say the Valehar coast could freeze a soul if it lingered too long.
Eira had never left.
She reached the cliff's edge where the ocean met the ruins of an old harbor — half buried beneath centuries of frost. Beneath her, the sea shimmered faintly, a thousand frozen faces locked in its depths — not corpses, but echoes. Remnants of those who had once sung to the tide, now caught in eternal stillness.
Her fingers brushed the icy ledge. The frost pulsed faintly under her touch — as if remembering her warmth.
A single word escaped her lips, quiet and trembling.
"Wynn."
The name vanished into the mist, swallowed whole.
A tear slid down her cheek and struck the ice, freezing before it could spread.
For a moment, the world held its breath.
Then — crack.
A sound like crystal singing.
Eira froze. Beneath the tear's frozen shell, something stirred — a thread of light, weaving through the cracks in fragile, deliberate lines.
A voice rose — not from the air, but from within the ice itself.
A voice she knew. Her own.
"Why do you cry for what is already gone?"
Her breath quivered.
"Because I still remember," she whispered.
The ice pulsed again — faint at first, then brighter, blooming outward in intricate sigils. They spread like frost flowers across the surface, carving themselves into the ruins and the cliffside, glowing blue-white against the shadows.
Her reflection shimmered up from the frozen sea — not still, but alive. The same face, the same eyes… except the reflection smiled.
"You remember," it said, voice echoing like wind through a cathedral. "Then you are not lost."
Light spiraled upward, wrapping around her like ribbons of mist. Her aura unfurled — translucent ribbons of blue light coiling in the air. From the ground, shards of her frozen tear rose, circling her hand like stars caught in orbit.
They melted, reformed — merging into a slender blade of crystal. Its surface shimmered like frozen moonlight, faint runes tracing its edge. She held it, not as a weapon — but as if it were something she had lost long ago and finally found again.
"You're not gone," she murmured to the reflection. "You've just become the sea."
For a heartbeat, she saw the ocean shift — faces softening, ice whispering. Then came the pulse — deep, ancient, and alive. It wasn't hers. It came from the frost itself.
A voice — neither male nor female — threaded through the wind:
"Come to the Academy."
Her reflection's lips moved with it, perfectly synchronized.
"Follow the echoes, Eira."
The light at her feet gathered, drawing a line northward across the endless white. The glowing thread cut through the silence, faint yet certain, leading toward a horizon she hadn't dared to look at in years.
Eira stood still, feeling the pulse resonate inside her — not painful, but unfamiliar. The same warmth she had forgotten how to feel.
"If the world still remembers color," she whispered, "then maybe I can remember warmth."
Her breath crystallized into tiny prisms that drifted upward, catching the new light. Then she stepped forward.
The frozen sea shivered beneath her feet, faint ripples chasing outward. Ice groaned — not in pain, but in awakening.
With each step, the frost shifted — not breaking, but breathing.
The world of mirrors had begun to move again.
And Eira Solen walked toward it —
silent, radiant, and no longer alone.