The alarm on Agent Mara Vance’s HUD flashed a violent crimson.CRITICAL BREACH: SECTOR 7.She checked the digital character counter in the upper-right corner of her tactical visor—a habit formed over years of strict operational constraints. 5,000 characters. That was her absolute hard limit for field reports, but tonight, it felt like the maximum length of her remaining lifespan.Mara racked the bolt of her suppressed carbine and stepped out of the shadows of the ventilation shaft, dropping quietly onto the rusted catwalk below. Below her, the cavernous interior of the abandoned offshore rig hummed with a sick, high-frequency resonance. In the center of the room, suspended inside a cage of reinforced titanium and glowing energy conduits, sat Artifact MIR-1842-G—the black-glass mirror her agency had spent a decade trying to contain.Except it wasn't contained anymore.Standing before the glass was Julian Vance, her former partner—and her dead husband. Or at least, the thing wearing his face. His eyes burned with an ancient, dark hunger, reflecting no light from the emergency strobes above. Beside him, three mercenaries in unmarked black armor were firing heavy-caliber rounds into the security enclave where the rest of Mara's team lay pinned down.Time to break the silence.Mara fired two controlled bursts. The first mercenary collapsed before his brain could register the subsonic rounds tearing through his neck joint. The second turned just in time to take a steel-core penetrator through his visor."Vance!" the third mercenary yelled, diving behind a crate of heavy ordnance.Mara didn't waste breath answering. She leaped over the railing, using the pneumatic dampeners in her boots to absorb the twenty-foot drop. She hit the deck in a low slide, brought her sidearm up, and put a bullet through the mercenary’s exposed shoulder, spinning him out into the open before finishing him with a headshot.Silence descended, heavy and thick, punctuated only by the low rhythmic thrum of the mirror."You always did prefer the direct approach, Mara," Julian said. His voice didn't carry through the air; it vibrated straight into her teeth, a rich, dark cadence that pulled at something deep inside her chest."You died three years ago in Prague, Julian," Mara said, stepping into the circle of light, her carbine raised, sights aligned with his chest. "I buried you.""You buried a shell," he murmured, turning slowly to face her. Velvet shadows coiled around his arms like living snakes, creeping across the steel floor toward her boots. "The mirror showed me what lies beyond the threshold. I promised I would find you in every life, Mara. I’m just keeping my word.""Stay back."He took a step forward. Mara fired.The heavy bullet flattened against an invisible wall of distorted air inches from his skin, dropping uselessly to the metal floor with a sharp chime. Julian smiled, a cold, elegant gesture that sent a shudder down her spine."My turn," he whispered.The shadows whipped upward. Mara threw herself sideways as a blade of hardened darkness sliced through the steel catwalk behind her, sending a shower of sparks into the abyss. She hit the deck, rolled, and pulled a thermite grenade from her tactical vest. Striking the primer, she hurled it directly at the mirror’s containment housing.If she couldn't stop him, she would destroy the bridge.Julian flicked his wrist. A wave of kinetic force blasted the grenade back toward her. Mara raised her arm shields just in time; the detonation blossomed into a roar of blinding white fire, scorching her armor and hurling her violently against the bulkhead.Pain flared in her ribs. Her visor cracked, the digital readout flickering wildly: 3,210 CHARACTERS REMAINING."You can't burn away what's already immortal, my love," Julian said, his boots clicking rhythmically as he approached her crumpled form. The air grew impossibly cold. Frost bloomed across her chest plate.Mara coughed up blood, her hand creeping down to her belt, searching for her last resort—the shock-charge detonator wired directly into the facility's power core."I'm not trying to burn it," Mara spat, looking up into those glowing, terrifying eyes. "I'm overloading the deck."She slammed her thumb onto the detonator.Underneath them, ten thousand volts of raw electricity surged through the floor grid. The shockwave blew out every light in the facility and shattered the mirror's containment field in a blinding flash of blue arc-fire. The shadow-tendrils unravelled into smoke. Julian staggered back, a hiss of genuine pain escaping his lips as the sheer wattage disrupted his ethereal form.Mara pushed herself up, ignoring the agonizing scream of her fractured ribs. She sprinted toward the mirror, pulling her combat knife—tipped with a high-density quartz edge designed specifically to disrupt dimensional fields.Julian lunged to intercept her, his face contorting into a visage of demonic rage, but Mara was faster. She sidestepped h