The first lens shattered in Eldren's hands.
He stared at the fragments on the worktable like they'd personally betrayed him.
"…It curved," he muttered. "Perfectly. Symmetrically. Do you have any idea how annoying that is?"
I watched the light from the window bend as it passed through the broken glass, splitting into faint, useless distortions. Not magic. Not a spell. Just glass and geometry failing by a margin too small for most people to notice.
But Eldren noticed.
That was why I was here.
"You're forcing it," I said. "You're thinking like a mirror-maker."
He shot me a glare. "I am a mirror-maker."
"Exactly."
He scoffed, but he listened. He always dideventually.
The mirrors had stabilized the guild. My father's involvement had crushed the worst of the rumors, and the rest had withered into background noise. Eldren complained about being watched more closely now, but he complained about everything. Profits were up. Demand was still absurd. And more importantly, people were trying to understand how it worked.
That curiosity was the real danger.
Once people begin to understand a thing, they begin to copy it. Poorly at first. Then better. Then faster than you can keep up.
So we had to move first.
The lens wasn't meant to replace the mirror. Not yet. It was a deviation… small enough to be ignored, different enough to matter. A piece of shaped glass that did one simple thing: it brought the world closer.
Eldren hated how simple it was.
"No enchantment," he grumbled, adjusting a frame. "No inscriptions. Just curvature and polish. If this sells, I'll lose what little faith I have left in humanity."
"You already lost that," I replied.
He snorted. "Fair."
When we finally succeeded, it was almost anticlimactic.
A circle of glass. Clear. Thin. Set into a crude metal ring. Eldren lifted it toward the window and froze.
"…That roof tile," he said slowly. "It's closer."
"It isn't," I said. "You're just seeing it better."
He lowered the lens and looked at menot suspicious this time, but thoughtful.
"You know," he said, "this doesn't just change trade."
I waited.
"It changes who gets to notice things."
He wasn't wrong.
A guard who could see farther. A scholar who could read smaller script. A merchant who could inspect goods without touching them.
Power didn't always come from strength or magic.
Sometimes it came from clarity.
We didn't announce the lenses. We didn't sell them. Not yet. Eldren listed them as experimental glass tools, available only by request. Expensive. Inconvenient. Unimpressive at a glance.
Perfect.
That night, alone, I turned the lens toward myself.
My reflection warped slightly at the edges, unfamiliar but sharp. For a moment, I didn't recognize the boy staring back. Not because of how much I'd changedbut because of how much I hadn't.
I was still small. Still dependent. Still hidden behind other voices.
But the path was clearer now.
Mirrors had taught the world to look. Lenses would teach it to focus.
And soon enough, I would decide what deserved to be seen.
