The night before the storm broke, the monastery was silent.
Not the calm of a temple at rest… but the kind of silence that comes from a truth holding its breath. Sol felt it the moment she walked down the left corridor of the Hall of Still Echoes… the corridor she hadn't explored previously.
She held a small lantern. Its flame trembled with every step.
The corridor was lined with shallow pools carved into the stone. They weren't filled with water, not exactly. What pooled inside them was thinner, lighter… reflections without substance. Memory without weight.
As she passed the first basin, her reflection didn't rise to greet her.
Someone else's did.
A woman with white hair loose, robes rippling as if underwater. Her eyes were soft, sorrowful. Sol froze.
"…You're not me."
The reflection held her gaze as if studying her soul. Then, with a slow movement, it lifted a hand… and beckoned.
Sol's breath caught. "You want me to follow…?"
The reflection nodded, once.. then dissolved into ripples.
Sol tightened her grip on the lantern. She glanced back toward the main hall, waiting to hear Ji Ming's footsteps or Ya Zhen's voice. But the monastery swallowed all sound.
She stepped deeper inside.
The basins on either side of her flickered with scenes as she walked:
— Ji Ming standing alone under snow, blood on his knuckles.
— Ya Zhen staring into a mirror with tears she refused to wipe.
— The First Twin Hearts clasping hands before a collapsing sky.
— Sol herself kneeling before a throne she didn't recognize.
She touched none of them. Memories were delicate things. Touching could make them believe they belonged to her.
Halfway down the corridor, the woman from the first reflection appeared again, not in a pool, but in the far wall, as though her presence had been absorbed into the stone itself.
This time her features sharpened. Her robes shimmered like lotus petals soaked in moonlight. Her smile was… familiar.
Sol whispered, "…Who are you?"
The reflection's lips parted.
No sound.
Only the faint vibration along Sol's skin, like the echo of a heartbeat she didn't remember having.
Then the reflection raised its hand, palm outward.
Sol slowly mirrored it.
Their palms touched, reflection to flesh, separated only by surface.
The stone around them pulsed with soft light.
A vision flooded through Sol's mind:
A vast lake with no ripples.
A woman kneeling at its center, crying.
Her tears hitting the water and turning into lotus blossoms.
Each blossom splitting into two… then shattering.
Glass rain.
Silver blood.
A scream swallowed by the sky.
The vision snapped.
Sol stumbled backward, lantern rattling.
The corridor dimmed. The reflection faded to a thin outline… then to nothing.
Her pulse hammered in her ears.
"That wasn't memory," she whispered, voice trembling. "That was prophecy."
"No," a voice said quietly behind her. "It was warning."
Sol spun. Ji Ming stood at the corridor's mouth, shadow tall against the lantern light. His expression was unreadable, but his eyes searched her face with worry.
"You left the hall," he said. "Ya Zhen thought she heard something."
Sol swallowed hard. "I saw… someone. A woman. She knew me."
Ji Ming stepped closer, gaze sharp. "Describe her."
"White hair… robes like petals… eyes like—"
Sol stopped. Her throat tightened.
"—like she was waiting for someone."
Ji Ming's breath stilled.
He lowered his gaze for a moment. When he lifted it again, there was something guarded there.
"That description," he said quietly, "matches an old Lotus legend. One the Empire erased."
Sol frowned. "Who?"
He hesitated. "…The Lotus Ancestress. The one who first taught the world to reflect."
Her lantern flickered violently, the flame bending toward him as if pulled by resonance.
Sol whispered, "…That can't be right."
"Perhaps," Ji Ming said. "Or perhaps some legends remember better than we do."
He looked past her, toward the basins still glowing faintly with half-formed reflections.
"Sol… whatever you saw, tell me."
She wished she could.
But the vision's scream still echoed inside her chest, raw and glass-thin.
"I… don't understand it yet."
Ji Ming nodded once, not in acceptance, but in promise.
"Then we'll understand it together."
The words were simple. Spoken softly. But they anchored the corridor around her, easing something that had been pulling tight inside her ribcage.
Sol exhaled slowly. "We should go back."
"Yes."
They turned toward the main hall.
But before they stepped out, Sol glanced over her shoulder one last time.
The corridor was empty.
But in the largest basin, the one nearest the back wall… her reflection didn't look like her.
It looked like the white-haired woman… eyes gentle, smile knowing… as if saying:
Remember me when the Mirror breathes.
Sol blinked, and the reflection returned to normal.
Ji Ming noticed her pause. "Sol?"
"It's nothing," she said softly.
It wasn't.
But some truths were easier to face when the world wasn't listening so closely.
They walked back toward the main chamber together. Behind them, the reflection shimmered once… then dissolved gently, like a thought returning to sleep.