The mirror had shattered.
Not just the glass — but something beneath it. Something ancient. Something waiting.
Zyren stumbled back from the broken edge of the fountain, breathing hard. The cold air stung his throat, and the moonstone pendant against his chest pulsed with an unnatural heat. The world around him felt thinner, like stretched parchment ready to tear.
Lysia stood motionless, the shard still in her trembling hand. Her gaze locked on the empty space where the silver-eyed girl had stood moments before — not a ghost, not a dream, but something far more dangerous.
She was gone now. Dissolved like mist.
But the veil — the space between what was and what should be — had cracked.
"She wasn't a memory," Lysia whispered. "She was a warning."
Zyren's breath hitched. "Or a mirror."
"Of you?"
He didn't answer. The moonlight no longer felt like light. It felt like it was watching.
---
The reflection was gone.
But its echo remained—coiled in the silence, pulsing in the moonstone that now refused to cool.
Zyren and Lysia stood by the now-quiet fountain, breath still ragged, their shadows unnaturally long beneath the illusion lights. Neither moved for a long moment, as if the wrong motion might reopen whatever they had just sealed—or failed to.
Lysia broke the silence. "That wasn't just magic. That was something older."
Zyren nodded, swallowing hard. "Something watching through us."
He bent down and picked up the moonstone. It flickered—once—then went dark. Not dead. Dormant.
---
Back inside the Academy
The hallways had changed.
Not visually—no stone was out of place—but the atmosphere was wrong. Sounds carried too far. Candles flickered out for no reason. Reflections lingered a heartbeat too long in mirrors and polished floors.
Zyren noticed it first. In the glass case outside the library, where the Headmaster's portrait stood, the reflection no longer matched the frame.
In the image, the Headmaster was weeping.
---
In their dorm room, Alaric looked up from his alchemy notes as Zyren entered.
"You look like a shadow chewed you up and spat you back out."
Zyren shut the door. "Close. It pulled me in."
Alaric blinked, then stood. "You're not joking."
"I wish I was."
Lysia filled him in—every detail. The mirrored realm, the girl, the Mirrorbound, the attack. Alaric's face tightened with each word.
"I've read of entities like this—almost," he muttered. "There are old accounts in restricted texts—beings that dwell between realities. Fractures born from a soul divided."
He looked at Zyren. "If you broke the mirror and survived, you might've become the new seam."
Zyren shook his head. "She said I was the anchor. What does that make the mirror?"
Lysia sat beside him. "A prison. Or a gate. Maybe both."
---
The door slammed open.
Corwin pushed open the heavy door to their shared quarters in full battle posture — with a baguette gripped like a sword.
"Die, foul creature of bread!" he shouted, stabbing a loaf at a terrified squirrel on the windowsill.
Lysia blinked. "Do I even want to know?"
Corwin froze, then straightened, brushing crumbs from his tunic. "It got into my honey stash. This is war."
Zyren sighed, dropping into a chair. "We almost died."
Corwin tilted his head. "From bread?"
"No," Lysia said flatly. "From a sentient magical reflection of Zyren that tried to overwrite reality."
Corwin's eyes widened. "I leave you alone for one evening…"
---
An hour later, they found themselves seated across from Professor Veyren, whose desk was cluttered with enchanted skulls, ink pots, and a placard that read "Don't Explain Stupidity. Research It."
Headmaster Caldus was also present, arms folded, eyes sharp.
"You broke the Fountain of Silence," he said coolly.
Zyren raised a hand. "Technically, the mirror broke itself."
"You trespassed after curfew."
"Curfew is more of a—"
"—a law," he snapped. "Not a suggestion."
Veyren looked amused. "In their defense, they may have stumbled into something we thought buried. The Ninefold Concord's mirrorwork was… volatile at best."
He poured coffee into a chipped mug. It hissed.
Lysia crossed her arms. "You knew?"
"I suspected. But you have a knack for confirming worst-case scenarios."
Caldus glanced at Zyren. "If the Mirrorbound are real, the Academy must prepare. Quietly."
"And the Order?" Zyren asked.
Caldus's voice lowered. "If they learn what you saw… they'll come for you. All of you."
Corwin raised his hand. "I didn't see anything except a rabid squirrel. Do I still count?"
Zyren gave him a tired look. "You're my brother. You always count."
Corwin blinked, surprised. Then he grinned and offered a quiet, "Fine. But I'm charging for squirrel damage."
---
They returned to the Astrarium archives to find Darnel — the balding, reluctant head librarian — snoring in his chair, a half-eaten custard tart in one hand.
Alaric poked him gently. "We need a Concord anomaly record — mirror-related, identity fractures, anything tied to forbidden mirrorwork."
"Need permission," Darnel muttered without opening his eyes. "Also need a will, a map to the afterlife, and probably a shovel."
Zyren sighed. "We're investigating a Concord anomaly. Potential reflection incursion. Veyren said it's urgent."
Darnel opened one eye. "Say that again but with less drama."
Corwin stepped forward, speaking solemnly. "Reality may be collapsing, and the fate of our minds rests in a document hidden under three centuries of dust and rodent teeth."
Darnel blinked. "Much better. Third vault, second shelf. Mind the wasps."
"…wasps?" Lysia said warily.
"Don't ask."
---
They found the scroll, half-eaten by time but still legible, etched in mirrorsteel ink. Its title shimmered.
ON THE SHADE OF SELF: A Concordant Catastrophe
Lysia read aloud:
Reflections may fracture. When memory is fed, identity splinters. The Mirrorbound seeks not to destroy the anchor, but to replace them.
Alaric looked at Zyren. "You're the anchor."
Corwin crossed his arms. "So, she's like… evil you?"
"No," Zyren said slowly. "She's possible me."
Lysia's brow furrowed. "Then she's not a threat."
"She is," Alaric said. "Because if she replaces him, it's not just about identity. The Order wins without lifting a blade."
—
Meanwhile, elsewhere...
Far below the Academy, in a chamber the students didn't know existed, Kael stood before a glyph-inscribed circle glowing faintly blue. A mirror fragment hovered above it, trembling.
His eyes narrowed.
"They opened it," he said.
A voice—one not quite human—slithered out of the shadows. "They broke it."
Kael smirked. "Then it begins."
He waved a hand, and the fragment floated toward him. As he touched it, black veins spidered across his palm. He didn't flinch.
"Send word to the Warden. The boy's piece is active."
The voice hissed approval.
—
As they emerged from the library, Mira appeared in the corridor, hair braided in silver and emerald ribbons.
"You left me out again," she said, mock-offended.
Alaric flushed. "It was sudden—"
"I live for sudden," she said, linking her arm with Lysia's. "And you need me."
Zyren chuckled. "We do. Welcome to the unraveling."
Mira grinned. "That's my specialty."
Zyren's pendant pulsed once more. All heads turned as the mirror mounted at the corridor's end shimmered — just briefly — and the silver-eyed girl stared back.
But this time, her expression was not blank.
It was smiling.
Then the glass went still.
—
Back in their room, Zyren laid out a parchment map of the continent. A symbol glowed in the southern woods — a broken mirror inked in silver.
"It's in the Wildlights," Zyren said softly. "She's still calling me there. The mirror, the dream… it's all pointing back to the same place."
Lysia nodded. "So the vision was right."
"It always felt like more than a dream," Zyren murmured. "Now I know it was a memory waiting to wake up."
Corwin unsheathed his fork. "But after breakfast."
Alaric smirked. "We may be doomed, but yes. Food first."
They laughed, tired and terrified and together.
Far away, in a half-buried temple under ivy and ash, a second mirror opened.
And this time, it did not reflect.
It watched.
—
Later that night
Zyren couldn't sleep. The pendant lay on his desk, wrapped in cloth, but he could feel it calling—like a song stuck between notes.
He left the dorm quietly, drawn not to the fountain but the Hall of Truths—where the oldest relics of the Academy's founding were kept under protective wards.
He wasn't alone.
Selene stood there, hooded, her fingers grazing a stone slab etched with ancient script.
"You felt it too," she said without turning.
Zyren stepped beside her. "You knew it would happen?"
"I hoped it wouldn't."
She turned then—and her eyes were shadowed with memory.
"That mirror is not the only one. It's part of a cycle—one that once tried to consume me. You're not the first to see her. But you might be the first to reach her."
Zyren frowned. "Why did she call herself my shadow?"
"Because she is," Selene said softly. "The Order once tried to create a tether between prophecy and power. A duplicate drawn from memory and soul."
Zyren's pulse quickened. "They tried to make copies of people?"
They called them Veil Echoes. Your mother resisted it. But you—" she looked at him, pain behind her gaze, "you were born already carrying the breach."
Zyren's heart pounded. "So I'm the anchor because they made me one."
"No," Selene said. "You're the anchor because you survived it."
---
Back in the gardens, long after midnight, Zyren stood at the fountain once more. This time, he didn't look into the water.
He looked at the sky.
The stars shimmered wrong—constellations twisted slightly, as if trying to align with something else.
Lysia approached, holding a scroll she'd stolen from the Sanctum Archives.
"There's a name," she said. "For the Mirrorbound."
Zyren glanced at her.
"They're called the Silvershade. A failed creation of the Concord—beings that mirror, twist, and eventually consume their source."
She hesitated. "If they're awake now, they won't stop. Not until the anchor is broken."
Zyren looked back at the stars. "Then we find the other mirrors. And we break them."
She nodded. "Together."
And far, far away—deep beneath forgotten stone—something stirred behind another mirror. Watching.
Waiting.
---
**End of Chapter Eighteen**