The frost hadn't melted, but the fire burned anyway.
Blue flames danced in Lyrin's palm as she crouched near the edge of the glade. They gave off no heat, only light—and even that shimmered oddly, like the world was hesitant to acknowledge them. She didn't blink. Didn't speak. Just watched the fire shift, thinking about the mirror. And the girl. And the choice Zyren had almost made.
Behind her, the others slept in shallow fits. Mira curled with her blades close. Lysia muttered in restless dreams. Alaric hadn't slept at all, posted watch with his back to the tree shaped like an hourglass.
Zyren stirred.
The nightmare hit fast.
He was back in the basin—not standing, but falling. The silver-eyed girl reached for him, her hand just out of reach. Her mouth moved. Soundless again.
Then her face split—a fracture down the center. Light poured through.
Zyren screamed.
His eyes snapped open to firelight and Lyrin's face.
"You were calling her," she said softly.
"I... I saw her again," he breathed. "But she was breaking apart."
"She's not gone," Lyrin said. "I don't think she ever really was."
Her blue flames flickered—once, then stilled.
Zyren sat up slowly. "I need to find the next mirror. Before Kael does."
From the shadows, Lysia's voice—quiet, but firm.
"Then we'd better hurry."
---
They moved by moonlight, silent and swift. The Wildlights thinned the deeper they went, opening into fields of bonegrass and hollowstone. Every few minutes, one of the party would glance back.
The Veil wasn't just behind them anymore.
It was around them.
Lysia confirmed it first. Her hand hovered above the rune-compass, watching its needle spin.
"We're not on any known leyline," she said. "The Veil's rewritten the map."
"We're being herded," Mira said. "Kael wants us to follow a path. Question is, why?"
"Because he knows Zyren won't stop," Alaric muttered. "Because he knows we'll follow the girl."
Lyrin said nothing. But her eyes glowed faintly with blue fire.
---
The terrain changed. Trees with no leaves but bark inscribed with runes loomed on either side. It was like walking through a library of forgotten magic.
Leona paused to read a phrase etched into one trunk. Her voice barely rose above the wind.
"This is a chronoglyph. Ancient. It says, 'Beware the mirror that forgets itself.'"
Zyren frowned. "What does that mean?"
"It might refer to Seryth," Lysia murmured. "Or to what happens when the Veil reflects too long."
They pressed on, through brambles that pulled at memory rather than skin. Mira flinched at a vision of her younger self, sobbing before a broken tower. Alaric heard his father's voice, taunting him.
But Lyrin's fire burned clear. And Zyren kept his gaze ahead.
---
They reached the edge of a broken tower just before dawn. Cracked pillars jutted from the ground like ribs. Black vines slithered across the stone, pulsing faintly.
Zyren felt something shift in his chest.
"This place..." he whispered. "It remembers her."
Leona dropped to one knee, brushing dust from the runes carved into the floor. "This is an old sanctum. Pre-Rift. It wasn't meant to hold reflections. It created them."
Corwin frowned. "An Echo Forge?"
Leona nodded. "And this one's still charged."
Lysia looked at Zyren. "She may have been born here. Or what's left of her, at least."
Blue fire flared in Lyrin's hands. "So how do we reach her?"
Zyren stepped into the circle. The stone hummed.
"We call her name," he said.
---
The name came unbidden, drawn from the mirror-space.
"Seryth."
The runes lit.
A wall of flame surged from the stones—not Lyrin's blue, but pure Veil-fire, silver and violet.
From within, a voice.
"Zyren."
She stepped from the fire. The same silver-eyed girl—but clearer now. Sharper. Her form no longer flickered.
But she looked afraid.
"Kael found another basin," she said. "He's using it to tear me apart again. This forge is my only anchor."
Zyren reached for her.
Their hands touched. This time, no barrier.
But shadows stirred at the edges of the ruin.
Kael's voice, low and poisonous: "You still don't understand, do you?"
He stepped from behind a pillar. Dozens of Echoes followed.
"Seryth isn't whole. She's a wound. And you're the blade that made her."
---
The fight was faster than the one in the Hollow.
More desperate.
Lyrin was first into motion, blue fire bursting from her in a wave. Echoes screamed as the flame caught them—not burning flesh, but burning memory.
Mira moved like a storm. Alaric met his Echo again, this one with a broken blade and empty eyes.
Zyren stood in the center of the forge, protecting Seryth. Every time an Echo drew near, she repelled them with a flash of mirror-light.
But Kael moved through the chaos untouched. Glyphs spinning. Shadows cloaking him. He raised his hand, and a tether of dark magic lashed toward Seryth.
Lyrin intercepted it.
The two magics clashed—blue flame and voidlight.
It tore open the sky.
The battlefield warped. Time bent. Trees shook as if caught in a storm from another era.
Alaric shouted through the distortion. "He's ripping the fabric!"
Leona anchored a stabilizing glyph. Mira leapt from shadow to shadow, severing connections Kael formed with the Veil.
But for every Echo they cut down, more arrived.
Corwin tossed a time-pulse grenade. It froze half a dozen Echoes in a ripple of slowed perception.
Zyren pulled Seryth behind a fallen column. "Hold on," he whispered. "I'll end this."
Kael roared. "You can't unmake what you've abandoned!"
---
Zyren screamed Lyrin's name.
She fell to one knee, fire sputtering as the shadow tether grazed her shoulder. Her breath came in gasps. Her skin shone with Veilburn.
Seryth cried out, reaching toward both of them.
The forge cracked beneath their feet.
Leona cast a shield. Mira dragged Alaric back from the edge. Lysia shouted a glyph into the air that slowed the collapse.
Zyren grabbed Lyrin's hand.
Her eyes fluttered. "Still here," she whispered.
Kael was gone.
So were the Echoes.
Seryth knelt in the center of the circle.
Whole.
Alive.
Zyren helped her stand. "We have to leave. The Order won't let this stand."
Lysia scanned the horizon. "Then we move. Now."
---
They vanished into the veil-choked wilds before the sun could rise.
Zyren didn't look back.
Lyrin walked beside him, her flames dim but steady.
Seryth followed quietly, the echo of a girl who might yet become more.
Far behind, the Echo Forge still glowed.
Waiting.
Preparing.
In its core, forgotten glyphs spun slowly, aligning with constellations unseen for centuries.
Kael watched from afar, lips curled in something between fury and fascination.
"This isn't over," he murmured. "It hasn't even begun."
---
**End of Chapter Twenty-Four**