The Mirror and the Flame
1295 Words
Zaire didn’t sleep that night.
He stood at the edge of a long-forgotten ravine carved by one of the Etherworld’s earliest tremors, where the land still cracked open in slow, agonized breaths. Above, stars blinked in unnatural patterns. Time bent here—he could feel it in his bones. He could feel Verion here.
He opened the second vision crystal he’d stolen from the old conduit.
This one didn’t show a person.
It showed a place.
A tower of obsidian wrapped in vines of flickering red light. A structure not built by human hands, nor held by normal physics. It pulsed with the same rhythm as his own heartbeat.
The voice from his dreams whispered again:
“You’ve already been here. You’ve already chosen. The memory was not taken—it was given.”
Zaire stumbled back, fist clenched.
“Who are you?” he shouted into the ravine.
Only the echo replied.
Back at the stronghold, Nyra tossed and turned in her chamber.
The image of Verion in the archive refused to leave her thoughts.
Not the warning. Not the danger. The tone.
He hadn’t sounded like a villain. He’d sounded like a man breaking apart under the weight of seeing too far ahead.
There was a knock.
Aeryn entered, barefoot, wearing the same expression Nyra felt on her own face: sleep-deprived, alert, haunted.
“You feel it too,” Aeryn said simply.
Nyra nodded. “Something woke up in that vault. Or maybe we did.”
“I’ve been running simulations,” Aeryn said. “The voice Verion warned about—if it manipulates memory, it doesn’t need to kill us to win. It just needs to shift who we think we are.”
Nyra looked up. “Like Zaire.”
“Like all of us,” Aeryn said quietly. “What if Seraphina’s Plan B… wasn’t to stop it. What if it was to forget it?”
In the war chamber, Seraphina stood alone, rereading the journal page that had led her to the truth she never wanted to admit.
Verion hadn’t betrayed them.
He’d saved them. In the only way he could—by giving up his identity to seal away the real threat. The cost was steep: his memories, his legacy, his family’s trust.
She looked up at the mural on the chamber wall—her younger self, sword raised, painted in triumph. But now it looked arrogant. Naïve.
“He gave you a warning,” said a quiet voice.
Lima stepped into the chamber, arms folded. “And you buried it.”
Seraphina didn’t flinch. “Would you have done differently?”
“I don’t know,” Lima admitted. “But I wouldn’t have lied to my children.”
“I wasn’t protecting them from the truth,” Seraphina said. “I was protecting the truth from them. Because if they remember who Verion really was…”
She trailed off.
“…then maybe they remember the rest,” Lima finished grimly.
They both turned as Ava entered, expression pale.
“Zaire’s gone,” she said.
Zaire climbed the ruined spire of the Tower Between, the one in his vision. The real thing stood in the western edge of the forgotten woodlands—shielded by wards that only answered to ancient blood or borrowed memory.
He bled both.
As he reached the summit, he stepped into a hall that defied space. Its walls reflected possibility, not stone. One mirror showed him with wings. Another: with horns. Another still—wearing Seraphina’s crown.
And at the center, a single throne.
Verion sat upon it.
Except he was younger. Older. Changing every second.
“I’m not really here,” Verion said.
Zaire stared. “Then where are you?”
Verion smiled with something like pity.
“Where you put me.”
The mirrors pulsed. One cracked. Another shattered.
“You didn’t come here to remember me,” Verion said. “You came to remember yourself.”
At the stronghold, Nyra collapsed in the middle of the training court.
She’d been sparring with Keal. And losing. Over and over.
“You’re distracted,” he said.
“No,” she growled. “I’m terrified.”
Keal lowered his sword. “Good. You should be.”
Nyra blinked, shocked. “What?”
He placed the blade back on the rack. “Terror means you know what’s at stake. I’d be more worried if you weren’t shaking.”
She stared at him.
Keal sighed. “Verion wasn’t my enemy. He was my mentor. And your dreams? They’re not nonsense. They’re inheritance.”
Aeryn entered the court, holding a translucent scroll.
“I decrypted Verion’s last sequence,” she said. “It wasn’t just about the voice. It was about who the voice chooses to listen to.”
Keal took the scroll and scanned it.
A list of names. Not all familiar. But one stood out.
Nyra.
Her name appeared again and again—in different time loops, different outcomes.
Every single collapse started with her choice.
Zaire stood before the memory throne, fists clenched.
Verion had stopped speaking. The mirrors spoke now.
“You don’t want the truth,” one whispered.
“You already made your choice,” said another.
“You betrayed them before,” said a third.
Zaire dropped to his knees. “What did I do?”
Verion reached forward—not touching him, but offering a shard of glass. Inside it: Nyra, Aeryn, Keal, Seraphina, all staring at him in fear.
“You showed them the future,” Verion said. “And they couldn’t accept it. So you let me take the blame.”
Zaire recoiled. “That’s not true.”
Verion didn’t answer.
The throne shattered.
Zaire screamed.
Seraphina assembled the full family that night.
The war table was lit by etherlight. The old crystal now hovered above it, displaying fractured timelines and decision trees, all leading to ruin.
“Verion saw something inside the Etherworld,” she began. “A presence that doesn’t just exist—it reaches.”
“It chooses avatars,” Aeryn said.
“It feeds on unresolved choice,” Keal added.
“And we’ve all made choices we don’t fully remember,” Lima whispered.
Zaire entered then, silent, pale, his tunic scorched.
Everyone turned.
“You went to the Tower,” Seraphina said.
He nodded.
“What did you find?” Ava asked.
Zaire looked at Nyra.
“You,” he said.
“You always thought you were the one watching. But you’ve been watched your whole life.”
Nyra’s voice was barely a whisper. “What does that mean?”
Zaire held up a shard of the mirror.
“It means your next decision changes everything.”
Later that night, alone again, Nyra stood on the ramparts. Wind ripped at her hair, salt in the air.
She stared into the horizon. Into the unknowable.
Behind her, Aeryn approached, quiet as ever.
“We’re not ready,” Nyra said.
“We never are,” Aeryn replied. “That’s what makes it real.”
“Zaire’s hiding something,” Nyra said. “Maybe we all are.”
“You saw what Verion warned us about,” Aeryn said. “The voice. The collapse of choice. It’s not just theory anymore.”
“No,” Nyra whispered. “It’s here.”
Below, the ocean flickered—just once. As though something ancient had blinked.
Far away, in a pocket realm known only as the Echo Fold, something opened its eyes.
It remembered Verion.
It remembered Zaire.
And most of all—it remembered Nyra.
It didn’t need to hunt her.
Because it had already found her.
And the next chapter of her story… had already been written.
In its hand.
- Writer
