He woke up choking on ash.
Elias Varn coughed violently, the taste of soot thick in his mouth. His eyes opened to a sky the color of bruised flesh, purple clouds, unmoving, rotted across the heavens. He sat up, wheezing, knees grinding into cracked earth that shimmered faintly with heat but gave off no warmth. Around him stretched a dead plain of black soil and shattered glass, as though the ground itself had once reflected something and been broken for it.
A single mirror stood upright in the soil. Not planted balanced, perfectly still, unmoving even as the air stirred.
He stared at it.
The surface was dirty, streaked with gray residue, yet his reflection was clear. Too clear. The man staring back was not breathing as hard. His lips moved slightly slower than Elias's own.
Elias reached for his gun, a reflex.
It wasn't there.
Neither was his badge, his phone, or his watch. Just his coat, scorched around the sleeves, and a strange pendant made of black string and a cracked mirror shard tied to his neck.
He hadn't put it there.
The mirror rippled.
He staggered back. Just a trick. Has to be.
"You followed the echo," said a voice his voice, but wrong. Warped. Stretched like a shadow at sunset.
The reflection smiled. Elias did not.
Then, like melting wax, the mirror sagged into the soil, folding into itself with a sound like dry paper burning. Gone.
Elias stood in silence.
This wasn't a dream. He had those often, usually about Liam. No, this was something worse. The air felt real. So real that he could taste the iron in it.
And the silence wasn't empty. It was listening.
He walked.
Hours? Minutes? There was no sun, no time, just a crimson haze thickening on the horizon. He passed bones buried half in the ground. Not human too long. He saw statues of weeping figures holding empty bowls, their eyes carved out. One was clutching a note.
"Don't eat what speaks."
That was all it said.
Eventually, he reached something resembling civilization: a half-collapsed structure of stone and rusted metal. A temple, maybe. Or a prison. Inside were signs of a fight, blood on the walls, burned marks forming a circle of ash on the ground. Salt. Ritual residue.
And in the center, a mirror.
This one wasn't clean. Its frame was cracked. Shattered glass crisscrossed the floor. But unlike the one before it showed nothing at all.
No reflection. No room. Just blackness.
But something behind the glass was breathing.
Elias stepped closer.
His voice, hoarse, broken, escaped before he could stop it:
"Liam?"
The mirror cracked.
White-tier Echo DetectedPhase 1: Haunting Initiated
END OF CHAPTER 1