The sun was just beginning to bleed into the sugarcane horizon when Lucien Jourdain dragged a man into the clearing by the collarbone.
The rebel, barefoot, bleeding, half-mad with defiance, had the letter R burned into his chest. R for Rebelle, carved with a branding iron so precisely it had formed into a shape Elias recognized: one of the symbols from the mirror. One of the cipher glyphs.
Lucien dropped the man at the base of the whipping post, his coat flaring as he turned toward the gathering workers.
"Let this be a sermon," he said coolly, his voice soft but sharpened like a razor. "Every generation tries to test the natural order. It never ends well."
Elias stood behind the others, trembling. The branded man's face was swollen, but something in his eyes glowed with stubborn purpose. Jean-Noël's friend? A scout from the underground routes?
Lucien pulled a curved blade from his belt, ceremonial, gold-hilted, absurd for the setting.
"Papa," Lucien called without turning. "Your presence would be… spiritually fortifying."
Elias stepped forward, swallowing bile. "As you wish, Monsieur Jourdain."
He moved slowly, hoping to think fast. As he approached the rebel, the man, his lips cracked with blood, muttered in Kreyòl: "Woch la se je nou. Gade l byen."
The stone is our eye. Watch it well.
Lucien raised the blade. "I've always admired the way silence arrives. Like nightfall."
"Wait," Elias said, placing a hand on Lucien's arm. "He's already dying. Let him speak. For your soul's sake."
Lucien studied Elias with narrowed eyes, then slowly lowered the blade.
"Fine. Let the priest pretend to be merciful."
Elias crouched beside the rebel and whispered, "What did you mean? The stone?"
The man coughed blood. "It sees. It drinks memory. Under the ash house. Follow the rats."
Then his body went limp. Not dead, yet, but the light had left him.
Lucien snorted. "A pity. They never last."
Elias stood, shaking. "You will answer for this."
Lucien's eyes flared. "And what would you know of justice, Papa? You've been different lately. Hesitations. Questions. You act like a man wearing another man's skin."
That sentence hit too close. Elias said nothing.
Lucien leaned in. "We all wear masks. Yours is slipping."
As Lucien turned away, Marise appeared from the crowd like smoke, clutching a clay vessel, chanting low. "Papa," she said, loud enough for Lucien to hear, "must I bless you again? You're cracked like an egg."
Elias nodded slowly, catching her rhythm.
She performed a swift blessing, smoke curling from the vessel, obscuring their faces just enough.
Inside the cloud, Marise whispered, "Your time here narrows. The gate groans. Be ready."
Elias's hands trembled. He wanted to ask her what gate. What stone. But the wind shifted and the scent of iron and rot returned.
Lucien, distant again, ordered the guards to dispose of the rebel's body.
Elias turned away.
But that night, under cover of darkness, he followed the trail of rats beneath the plantation's ash house.
There, behind a crumbling wall, he found the rebel's message etched in soot:
"Cipher speaks in wounds. Trust only those who do not seek to be remembered."
And below that, faintly:
"L"
The next cipher letter.
The mirror had not just followed him.
It was watching everything.