CHAPTER NINETEEN: Mirror of Ruin
931 Words
Lena’s POV — Into the Heart of the Echo
The world broke like fragile glass.
The girl's scream sliced through reality, breaking the Hollow's twilight sky into spiralling shards of light and darkness. Lena shaded her eyes as the wind howled through the clearing, uprooting trees and erasing memories. She barely held Damien's hand.
The girl—the reborn Key—levitated now, her hair floating like white fire and her eyes illuminating with spiralling glyphs. Her mouth twitched, but the sound wasn't human. It was an echo.
Shadow-Lena approached her from behind, her golden eyes glittering with greed. Sahran stood beside her, abnormally motionless, his aura tinged with something off.
Damien raised his sword.
"You should be dead." Shadow-Lena tilted her head.
"I was never really alive. Not like her. Not until she made the mistake of showing me." "You were a part of me," Lena explained, her voice wavering.
"I severed you."
"You cut a thread. But, darling Lena, you forgot that shadows cling to the skin even when the light is gone. So now—" She reached for the key.
"Now I have a body." The girl turned without protesting. Her eyes met Lena's, and a thousand memories flooded back—not only hers, but also Lena's. The Key was evolving into a vessel, a fusion of echoes and choices, resulting in something ancient and frightening.
Lyra stood between them, her palms burning with fire.
"You won't touch her." Sahran relocated.
In a blink, he was behind Lyra, blade at her throat.
Damien shouted.
Steel and steel collided in a flash as he intercepted the strike.
"He's not in control!" Lyra yelled.
"Something is inside him!" And then Lena noticed it: the sigils engraved into Sahran's neck, shimmering faintly.
Possession.
No, corruption.
Not by The Hollow.
By the Echoed Ones. The Keepers warned them. The fragments did not die. They migrated. They waited. And now they had returned home.
The ground shivered. Figures emerged from the clearing's shattered reflections—mirror images of individuals Lena scarcely recognised.
An older version of herself. A younger version of Damien.
A warped Lyra, her eyes devoid of empathy.
"We need to get out of here," Damien hissed.
"We're surrounded."
However, the Hollow did not enable escape. It never has.
"No," Lena muttered.
"We face them. "We've finished this." Shadow-Lena laughed.
"Oh, you sound so courageous now. Did stabbing your shadow boost your courage? Or have you simply forgotten the terror that drove you to run in the first place?" Lena's jaw stiffened. "I remember everything. And I still chose to stand. Then she began singing.
It was not a lullaby. It was the melody of severance, the one she had heard deep within. The one the Key had used to separate reality from delusion.
The mirrored figures screamed.
Their bodies flashed and were unsteady. The song reached into them and pulled on their cords. They burst one by one, turning into stardust.
Shadow-Lena shrieked as her shape flickered. But she clung to the girl, eating from her power.
"Lena! "The knife!" Lyra called. Lena reached inside her chest. The sword of truth shimmered in her palm. However, as she lifted it, the Key gazed at her. Her eyes were no longer wild. Just exhausted. "If you kill her," the girl continued, "you kill me."
Lena froze.
"No. "That cannot be true."
"We're intertwined now. She ate from me. I anchored her.
"The knife does not discriminate." Damien gritted his teeth.
"There has to be another way."
"There is," Shadow-Lena muttered. "Allow me to finish what you couldn't. "Let me burn the world clean."
A new tear pierced the sky. This one did not lead to a memory. It led elsewhere. Something enormous moved through it. A metropolis that is drifting in bits.
Buildings are held together with webbed light. And in the centre, a throne made of bones and mirrors. Shadow-Lena turned towards it.
"That's the Mirror Realm. The True Home of the Echoed Ones. If I make it, I will become more than you could possibly think."
Lena took a step forward. "Then I'll stop you."
"Will you kill the girl to do it?" she enquired.
"Will you murder a child just to prove you're strong?" Lena shook.
The sword trembled in her grasp. The girl stepped forward and reached out.
"You do not have to. I am able to keep her under control. But I need your voice. "Your will." "You're just a child," Lena said quietly.
"I'm the Key. But I'm also you. Shadow-Lena lunged.
Everything blurred.
Lena dropped the knife. And embraced the girl. Light erupted at the point of contact. Not blinding. Clarifying. Lena saw every aspect of herself: flawed, hopeful, indignant, and damaged. The shadow wailed as it was wrenched away from the girl, its form unravelling. But it did not die.
It shot up, fleeing into the breach.
The girl collapsed.
And Lena noticed her own shadow, now resting... within herself. A portion of her. This had always been the case.
Damien raced to her side. "Lena! "Are you OK?"
"I didn't kill her," she explained.
But she's inside me now.
Watching.
Waiting.
I decided to carry her. "Do not destroy her." Lyra helped the girl get to her feet.
"And the breach?" The city in the sky trembled. The throne pulsated. Something within it began to open its eyes.
Not a god.
Not a Hollow.
A king.
Made up of all the fragments they left behind. And he talked in a voice that sounded like them all.
"So you have come home."
- Writer
