Mist rolled across the courtyard like smoke from a dying fire.
Elara pressed her palm to the cold windowpane, watching as the Council's envoys disappeared into the violet fog. Their silver-and-crimson cloaks rippled faintly, their formation precise, not a search party. A procession. A ritual.
Her mark burned in response.
Whatever had come through the mirror, they weren't trying to contain it.
They were welcoming it.
She rose quickly, shoving her cloak over her shoulders. Her boots barely made a sound as she crossed the dormitory floor. Lyra stirred in the other bed, mumbling in her sleep, but didn't wake. For a fleeting moment, Elara hesitated, wanting to tell her friend everything before the world unraveled again, but the pulse of violet beneath her skin reminded her: it was already starting.
There was no time for explanations.
Not anymore.
****
The air outside was colder than it should've been.
Fog clung to the cobblestones in thick ribbons. The torches along the paths burned with pale, unnatural light, more blue than flame. The hum beneath the ground was louder here, threading through the stone like the pulse of something buried too deep.
Elara pulled her hood low and followed the envoys' trail toward the Library Tower.
Every instinct screamed at her to turn back.
But she couldn't. Not when Lucien's words still echoed in her mind.
I don't want to be your second chance.
She didn't want him to be, either.
But fate had already chosen its script, and she could feel the ink of it bleeding through her skin.
****
When she reached the tower, the doors were already open.
The same runes that had sealed them before now glowed steadily, their light sickly and violet, like veins of bruised glass. The air inside shimmered with distortion, heatless, soundless, alive.
Elara stepped over the threshold.
The scent of old paper and rain lingered, but beneath it, something new had taken root, the metallic tang of power. The air thrummed against her lungs.
She could hear the Council's voices somewhere below.
"…containment is not the goal."
"…it chose them. Both."
"…then it begins again."
Her heart froze. Both.
She edged closer to the spiral stairs, keeping to the shadows, until she reached the upper railing overlooking the central archive hall.
Below, six Council envoys stood in a circle. Between them, suspended above the altar, hung a mass of fractured glass, the remnants of Dalen's mirror. But it was no longer inert.
It was breathing.
Each shard rose and fell like a living lung, threads of violet light weaving between them. The air rippled outward in waves of distortion, bending the candlelight.
Elara's mark flared, and she gasped, clutching her wrist.
The nearest envoy turned sharply, but before he could speak, the air behind them darkened.
Lucien stepped from the shadows.
****
He looked… wrong.
His presence filled the room like gravity. The silver of his eyes was rimmed now with faint violet; the air around him shimmered, warped, as if reality itself was reluctant to touch him.
The envoys froze.
"Lucien Ashfall," one said coldly. "You were not summoned."
"No," he said softly, his voice almost human again. "But something was."
The air crackled.
The shards of the mirror vibrated, answering him.
Elara's breath hitched. The resonance, the same thread that had bound them, pulsed violently, weaving between her and Lucien across the distance.
The mirror responded.
The shards spun faster, rising higher, forming a shifting ring of violet light. The envoys began to chant, binding spells, control sigils, but the power wasn't theirs anymore.
Lucien lifted his hand. The mark on his palm blazed white-hot. "You can't contain what you don't understand."
One envoy stepped forward, his voice trembling. "You are the Vessel—"
Lucien's gaze cut through him. "Then maybe it's time the Vessel answered."
The mirror exploded.
A soundless burst of light filled the room. Glass rained down like starlight. Elara threw up a shield instinctively, the impact shuddering through her bones. When the air cleared, half the Council envoys were on their knees, the others, gone.
Lucien stood in the center of the chaos, unmoving.
At his feet, the shards began to fuse, shaping themselves into a figure.
Elara's heart stopped.
It was a person.
Or the echo of one.
The form was translucent, fluid, shifting, sometimes a woman, sometimes a child, sometimes nothing human at all. The only constant was the face. Familiar. Frightening.
Her own.
Elara staggered back. The echo tilted its head, studying her with a kind of aching recognition.
Lucien's voice was rough, almost broken. "It's not just a mirror. It's a memory."
The figure reached out, her hand touching the air, the movement mirrored perfectly by Elara herself, as though the reflection were pulling her toward it.
And when their fingers nearly met, the voice that came wasn't spoken aloud but thundered through both their minds:
"Time remembers what you tried to erase."
The ground trembled. The tower's wards screamed.
Elara gasped, jerking back, but too late.
The mirror-self smiled, her smile, and whispered,
"The Veil breathes through you."
Then the light consumed everything.
****
When Elara opened her eyes, the library was gone.
She was standing in the courtyard again, except the sky above wasn't dawn or night. It was both. Stars flickered through the clouds like dying embers. The air hummed with impossible quiet.
And beside her stood Lucien, his expression hollow, the violet light now burning freely through his veins.
"Elara," he said softly, the word a tremor. "I think we're no longer in our world."
She turned toward the spires in the distance, but they weren't the Academy's anymore. They were ruins.
And on the wind, faint but growing, came the same whisper that had haunted her since the mirror shattered:
"The Veil remembers you."