Part I – The Mirror Temple
820 Words
The chamber was silent. Too silent.
As Keal and Nyra stepped through the shimmering threshold, the world behind them closed like a curtain of breath. The Mirror Temple did not accept half-measures. It swallowed all or none.
The others followed: Seraphina, flame smoldering just beneath her skin; Zaire, blades sheathed but heart alight; Aeryn and Ava, scanning for threats with soldier instincts honed to a razor’s edge; Lima, distant and wary; the Rift scholars and the exile-mage, shadows trailing behind them.
They had entered the temple of all versions.
The air shimmered, pulsing in and out like the lungs of a sleeping god. The walls were not walls but reflections of their thoughts, their regrets, their choices left unchosen. Light did not shine here—it bled.
At the temple’s heart, the Mirror stood.
It was not glass. Not truly. It was a pool of consciousness stretched upright, rippling like silver heat. It showed not the present, but the infinite possibles of each soul that dared approach.
Keal stepped forward first.
A version of him stepped from the surface—regal, untouched by war, soft-eyed and smiling. A father who never lifted a sword. A king who ruled from peace.
And behind him, another Keal. This one burned. Cloaked in dragonbone and soaked in blood, with thousands of corpses piled behind him.
"They both made sense once," Keal whispered. "But I chose something harder."
He walked past them.
The Mirror rippled again.
Nyra stepped forward.
Her mirror self was quiet at first. A version of her as a priestess of peace, untouched by the Fold, smiling among children. Then another—a tyrant in Rift-etched armor, her gaze cold and absolute. Others followed: a Nyra who had died young, one who had betrayed them all, one who had become nothing but a voice inside someone else's head.
"Is this what I become?" Nyra whispered.
"No," Zaire said behind her. "This is what you could become."
"And if I already have?"
"Then we fight it together."
She reached out, touched the mirror.
It turned black.
For a moment, they all vanished.
Each member found themselves alone.
Seraphina stood in a field of ash. Aldric wept at her feet. "If you'd just stayed," he begged. "The fire wouldn't have eaten me."
"I am the fire," she said. "And I burn for those who cannot."
She turned away, her armor cracking with grief. Behind her, a version of herself rose from the scorched ground, hollow-eyed and empty. The fire in that Seraphina had died long ago.
Seraphina walked forward, not looking back.
Zaire faced a mirror that spoke.
"You made the deal, once. You just can't remember."
"Then I’ll make a new one."
"With who?"
"With myself."
The reflection showed a thousand Zaires, each corrupted by something different: greed, desperation, ambition. The voices began to drown him, each one whispering: You were supposed to be the weapon.
Zaire roared, drew his blade, and slashed through the image. The echoes fell silent.
Lima saw herself forgotten.
Not hated. Not exiled. Just absent. A world that continued without her. A history where she was never born.
"Maybe I was never meant to be central."
"Or maybe you're the spine," her reflection answered, "and you’ve let others take the face."
Her mirror self was dignified, radiant, a queen in her own right. Lima stared for a long time, then turned away—not in shame, but in choice. She would write her own legacy.
Aeryn and Ava found each other in combat—their reflections locked in eternal battle, one choosing mercy, the other vengeance.
They traded blows, words, tears. Every wound reflected a memory: the moment Aeryn let someone go, the moment Ava killed without hesitation.
"You always hesitate," Ava spat.
"And you never do. That’s the danger."
In the end, they touched hands.
"There is no winning version," Aeryn whispered.
"Just the one where we walk forward."
The dueling reflections vanished.
The Rift scholars saw timelines where their research unmade reality. The exile-mage faced a tribunal of all the lives he ruined.
And then—the chamber remade itself.
They were together again.
The Mirror now showed only one thing: a version of the world after this choice.
A version with ten empty graves.
"It thinks we die here," Keal said.
"Or that we must," whispered Nyra.
She stepped to the Mirror. It pulsed, resisting.
"You don’t choose for me," she growled. "I do."
She pulled from her satchel the shard Verion had left—a piece of memory-stone encoded with his version of survival.
She plunged it into the Mirror.
It screamed.
The temple cracked. The Mirror exploded into molten light, rewriting the walls with living glyphs. Reflections twisted, then dissolved.
The temple began to collapse.
"RUN!" Keal shouted.
They raced through shifting corridors, the floor giving way to memory, the ceiling falling in silence.
Outside, the breach shimmered.
And something changed.
- Writer
