The man with her face tilted his head.
No, not a man—something wearing her memory like a mask. Its skin cracked when it smiled, porcelain flaking off like ash. Behind the cracks, darkness pulsed like a second heartbeat. The voice was hers. The posture, hers. But the presence?
Utterly alien.
They stood inside the Index, a room that was not a room but a fragment of creation, buried beneath the mirror realm like a root system that fed the forest of forgotten stories. Above them, there was no ceiling—just spinning tomes orbiting a cold sun. The silence pressed like a vice. The air smelled of old parchment and something else:
Burned hope.
The false-Aurora circled her like a cat with all the time in the world.
"Do you remember the fire?" it purred. "The tower burning? The way you smiled when the prince didn't come?"
Aurora's lips parted. "That wasn't me."
"Oh, it was," the thing said. "You just outgrew me. Left me behind in the dream. But the Glass Realm doesn't forget."
It turned to the book on the pedestal—the one written in her own hand—and opened it to a page drenched in ink so dark it bled. Words shimmered: violent, elegant, raw.
Once, there was a sleeping girl who never wanted to wake up. Because in dreams, she ruled.
Aurora flinched. "I didn't write that."
The thing's smile widened. "But you wanted to."
She stepped back. The Index pulsed. Books fluttered open across the endless shelves. Wind howled—except there was no wind. Just pages screaming. Words peeling off the paper like dead skin.
"You came here to find the truth," said the thing that wore her face. "So I'll show you what truth looks like."
It raised a hand.
The pages ignited.
Around them, the room fractured like glass under pressure. Memories bled through the walls. In one, Aurora saw herself as a little girl, asleep in a crib surrounded by thorned vines. In another, she was holding a spindle, smiling—not innocent, but curious.
A third memory froze her.
It was her. At fifteen. Alone in a mirror room.
And she was whispering the curse herself.
"Sleep until the world forgets me."
"That's not real," she whispered.
"No," the porcelain-mask echoed. "That's memory."
It stepped forward. "You cast the curse. No witch. No godmother. Just a girl tired of waiting to be saved. A girl who wanted control."
Aurora shook her head. "I was a child."
"Children can be cruel," it whispered. "Children with power even more so."
The Index rumbled. A chain descended from the dark, clanking with the weight of judgment. From it hung a mirror—not glass, but living silver—and in it, Aurora saw every version of herself.
The hopeful. The frightened. The furious. The girl who smiled when the world burned.
Each version stepped forward and touched the mirror.
It cracked.
"You must choose," said the reflection with the porcelain grin.
"Choose what?"
"Which version of you will rise."
Suddenly, the chains began to pull the mirror downward—into the earth. Into the buried chapter. The only way to save it was to step inside.
But if she entered… would she come out the same?
From above, a cry echoed.
"Aurora!"
Lysander.
He had found her.
But as he descended the shattered spiral of thought and page and scream, something wrapped around his ankle—a vine of ink, pulling, pulling him backward into one of the open books.
"Lysander!" she screamed.
The mirror glowed. Her reflection reached out, mouth stitched shut.
Choose.
She ran.
Not away.
Forward.
Into the mirror.
The world inverted.
Sound returned like thunder underwater. The silence broke, and in its place came voices—hundreds of them—all saying her name in different tones. Some soft. Some cruel. Some pleading.
She stood in a white field.
No horizon. No sky. Just blankness.
And in the center, a door.
Wooden. Familiar.
The spindle door.
From the other side came music.
And breathing.
And—
"You came back," said a voice.
A boy stepped forward.
The dream prince.
Not Lysander. Not real. But real enough.
"You never finished our story," he whispered.
She looked down.
In her hand was a quill.
"I didn't know how it ended," she whispered.
"Then write it now," he said.
The field around them cracked.
The ground lifted, reformed into a castle. The same tower where she'd once slept. But the bed was gone. In its place: a table.
One page. One chance.
She stepped forward.
Wrote three words.
I choose now.
The porcelain-faced version of herself screamed and shattered behind her.
The mirror exploded.
Aurora collapsed—
And woke up in Lysander's arms.
Blood on her lips. Ink on her fingertips.
"What did you see?" he asked, voice shaking.
She looked up at the sky. It was morning in the Glass Realm for the first time in centuries.
"I remembered who I am," she whispered.
He helped her to her feet.
"And who is that?"
Aurora smiled.
"A story still being written."