"Every reflection holds a version of yourself you could've been."
---
The mirror shard pulsed faintly in Zayne's gloved hand—cold at first, then warm, then shifting with a heartbeat that wasn't his. Like a trapped memory begging to be touched. The chamber around him—the one Velka called "the room that remembers"—was silent now, but not dead.
It breathed in echoes.
Zayne knelt in the center of the cracked summoning circle, fragments of silver runes surrounding him like fractured constellations. Velka leaned against a wall nearby, bow loosely slung across her back, her violet eyes never blinking.
"You're sure this won't kill you?" she asked.
"No," Zayne replied plainly. "But that's half the fun."
"Genius and insanity," Velka muttered. "Thin line."
Zayne closed his eyes. He didn't chant. He didn't need to. His mind was a storm of layered thoughts, ordered chaos refined through years of unorthodox learning. His mother had always said: "If you have to say the spell aloud, you haven't mastered it."
So he reached within. Focused. Called the shard's memory.
And the world shifted.
---
There was no sound. No time. Just movement.
Zayne's soul—or consciousness—floated through a corridor of mist, with a thousand mirrors lining either side. Each one showed something different. A different him. A different path.
A version where his sister lived. One where he burned the house. One where he never existed.
This is the "What If."
The mirror didn't just show the past—it showed potential.
Eventually, the mist cleared. One mirror called to him.
Not his own reflection—but his mother's.
---
She was chained to a monolith in a cold, colorless chamber. Blood streaked her lips. Her black hair was matted with sweat, but her gaze… it was furious. Alive. Unbroken.
Zayne stepped forward.
"Mother…"
She couldn't hear him. But he listened.
Footsteps echoed behind her. A figure emerged—tall, graceful, and cloaked in white robes trimmed with gold and obsidian. They moved like they floated, voice hidden beneath a shimmering hood.
"You could've run, Liora."
"And let your filth touch my son?" she spat.
The figure didn't flinch.
"He's coming. You know that, don't you?"
"Let him. He'll bury you."
The mirror fractured—webs of light cracking across the vision.
Zayne clutched his chest as pain lanced through his ribs.
The final image before the mirror broke:
A silver serpent on the figure's collar, fangs devouring its own tail.
Then darkness.
---
Zayne awoke with a gasp, cold sweat dripping down his jaw.
Velka knelt beside him, steadying his body.
"You were out for twenty minutes," she said. "I almost knocked you out of it."
He sat upright slowly.
"She's alive," he said.
Velka's jaw clenched. "Are you sure?"
He nodded. "And being held by someone with a serpent sigil. Ouro Covenant."
Her face paled.
"The old ones?" she whispered. "No one's heard that name since—"
"Since they disappeared, right?" Zayne cut in. "They're back. Or they never left."
Velka sat back on her heels, visibly shaken.
Zayne stood. His movements were slow at first, but his voice steady.
"I know where they're taking her next."
---
Hours later, they sat around a crackling campfire just beyond Gravemarch's gate. Velka roasted a piece of dried root meat while Zayne pored over a half-burned map they found in the fortress crypt. A series of underground tunnels linked distant ruins across the continent—some leading toward the Obsidian Marshlands, others spiraling beneath old kingdoms.
One tunnel was labeled "EA-13." Echo Archive.
"I think that's where they're going," Zayne murmured.
Velka raised an eyebrow. "What's an Echo Archive?"
Zayne looked up. "A magical depository. Not of books… but memories. Sealed within crystal and preserved by bloodline. My mother might've stored things there."
"Things like what?"
He hesitated.
"Truths. About me. About her. About whoever the hell the Ouro Covenant really is."
---
Later that night, Zayne stared up at the stars, mind churning. The reflection had shown him a piece of the past. But more disturbingly, it had offered glimpses of who he might become.
In one mirror, he'd worn a crown of flame. In another, he was blind, leading armies of ash. And in one… he stood beside the woman who tortured his mother.
Willingly.
Velka joined him near the camp's edge, silent for a while. Then she asked, "What was your mother to them? She didn't seem like a random victim."
Zayne let out a breath.
"She wasn't. Before she had us, she was known as 'The Veilkeeper.' A rogue spellwright who could bypass magical restrictions and erase people from existence. Not just kill—remove. She ran from that life when she met my father. Buried it all."
Velka whistled softly.
"So they're not hunting her. They're retrieving her."
He nodded. "And I think… I think I was a backup plan."
She turned to him. "You?"
He looked at his hand, still faintly glowing from the mirror.
"I wasn't born normal. My mother said she 'tamed' the fire in me. I thought she meant magic. But now…"
"Now you think you're a weapon."
He met her eyes.
"No. I think I'm a curse."
---
Zayne didn't sleep that night.
Instead, he wrote in his mother's journal—the only possession he saved from the ashes of their home. The pages still smelled faintly of rosemary and spell ink. He added notes, drawings, connections.
A name kept surfacing.
Aeris Valen.
The Ouro Covenant's suspected founder.
A rogue magister exiled three centuries ago for experimenting on the concept of "fate entanglement"—the ability to manipulate future outcomes by bending recorded memories of others.
Zayne didn't know why that name mattered.
But he would find out.