The mirror shattered—not with a grand explosion, but a soft shink, like the final thread of a loom snapping. The glass folded inward, not outward, as if the world behind it was inhaling. The Dreamgate pulsed once. Then silence.
Then screaming.
Not from the girls.
Not human.
The voice from beyond wasn't a voice at all. It was an author's pen scratching too fast. A choir of half-written lines and deleted endings howling for attention. It was desperate, manic, furious. It didn't want to be read—it wanted to write. And Verena had just denied it that right.
"I see you," it roared. "I see you all, you glitches, you backspaced corpses—"
"No one's reading your drivel," Sera spat, swinging her blade into the growing rift where the mirror had been. The blade phased through the void but sparked at the edge—like it hit something real.
"It's adapting," Clarina murmured. "It's trying to instantiate itself."
