The Mirror burned cold against Aric's palms. Silver ripples raced across its surface, echoing the rhythm of the monster's song. The cavern trembled as the thing rose higher, water sliding off its spine like molten glass. Each scale shimmered with a different hue—blue, gold, violet—each a stolen chord humming in resonance.
Lyra braced herself on the ledge, threads spinning from her fingers in frantic loops. The song pressed against her skull, making her teeth ache. "Aric!" she shouted over the thrumming. "It's weaving a Path—if it catches us in it we're gone!"
Aric barely heard her. The Mirror's whispers had grown louder, unfolding into shapes and patterns behind his eyes. He saw not just sound but structure: threads of resonance coiling out from the beast like an enormous loom. If he could just find the anchor point, he could slip between the threads, hear the thing without being caught.
He closed his eyes and breathed out slowly, letting the world narrow to a single tone.
The beast's song shifted—three notes rising, two falling. A pattern of invitation. Beneath the sound, a thousand echoes of other voices: sailors, scavengers, Depthborn, all singing the same tune. Memories caught in a current.
Aric whispered, "Show me."
The Mirror flared.
Cold slammed into him. He was no longer on the ledge. He was deep below, suspended in black water lit by drifting shards of crystal. Around him the beast coiled, enormous and alien, yet somehow mournful. Its voice wasn't words but an impression: hunger, exile, longing for a forgotten sea.
You carry a fragment, the impression whispered. It calls to me.
Aric forced his thoughts into shape. What are you?
Chord without anchor, the voice sang. Memory without home. Feed me and be remade.
The image of teeth and water flooded his mind. He fought it down. I don't want to be remade. I want to understand.
A flicker of surprise rippled through the song. Few ask. Fewer survive.
Above, in the real cavern, Lyra saw Aric stiffen, silver light crawling up his arms. His eyes had gone blank. The beast's head tilted toward him, its crown of shards humming like a tuning fork. Waves slammed against the ledge, spraying her with freezing water. She hissed a curse and flung her threads outward. Blue filaments wrapped around a stalactite and wove into a shimmering barrier between Aric and the beast.
"Vale!" she shouted. "Come back before it swallows you whole!"
The beast lunged.
Lyra yanked on her threads. The barrier flared, intercepting the crown of crystal just before it struck. Sparks of resonance sprayed like shattered glass. Pain shot up her arms; she nearly bit her tongue. "Move, damn you!" she screamed at Aric.
Inside the Mirror's vision, Aric saw the lunge as a cascade of notes—aggression twisting the song. Instinct told him to run, but a deeper instinct whispered: Match the chord. He thrust his mind into the pattern, echoing the rising notes back at the beast through the Mirror.
For an instant, the two chords aligned.
The beast recoiled, its body shuddering. The water stilled. Lyra gasped, dropping to one knee as her threads slackened. The Mirror's light dimmed slightly.
Aric opened his eyes. Silver flickered in his pupils. "I have it," he whispered.
The beast hovered, its head lowered, song now a tremulous hum. It wasn't attacking—yet. It was waiting.
Lyra scrambled to her feet. "What did you do?"
"I listened," Aric said. His voice carried an undertone of the beast's resonance. "It's not just a monster. It's a—"
The beast's hum deepened, and the water around the ruins surged upward in a spiral. Crystal shards shook loose from the ceiling, raining down. The pattern Aric had glimpsed began to collapse, twisting into something jagged.
"It's losing control," he muttered. "Too many chords inside it."
"No," Lyra hissed, eyes wide. "It's testing you."
The Mirror pulsed violently, trying to draw more from the beast. Aric felt his own heartbeat sync with its rhythm, faster and faster, like standing on the edge of a current ready to sweep him away. If he took more, he could bind part of the beast's power—become something new. If he failed, he'd drown in its song, lost forever.
He looked at Lyra. "If I go under, cut the threads."
Her face tightened. "Don't you dare."
Aric drew a breath, pressed both palms to the Mirror, and pushed.
The world inverted.
He was no longer watching the beast. He was the beast, or a fragment of it. Endless pressure crushed his body—no, not a body, a lattice of chords wound around a hollow core. Centuries of hunger throbbed through him. He felt the Abyss beneath, the dark trench where he had been born, the moment he'd broken loose from some long-forgotten experiment. Memory upon memory, a tangle of stolen patterns, none his own.
Anchor, the beast whispered inside him. Give me an anchor.
Aric forced his mind to hold. I can't anchor you. But I can carry your song.
A flicker of recognition, almost gratitude. Then carry this.
Something poured into him—a single clear note, pure and sharp, slicing through the chaos. It burned down his arms into the Mirror. Pain seared his nerves; he bit back a cry. The cavern blurred. Silver fire crawled across his veins, leaving faint geometric scars that faded almost at once.
In the real world, the beast convulsed, its crown of shards collapsing inward. Its body shuddered like a collapsing bridge. Water thundered as it withdrew into the depths, its song fading into a whisper, then silence. Only ripples remained, spreading across the black surface.
Aric staggered, nearly dropping the Mirror. Lyra caught his shoulder. "Vale?"
He gasped, blinking. The silver in his pupils dimmed. "I'm here."
"What happened?" she demanded.
He looked down at the Mirror. Its surface had changed. A faint sigil glowed at its center—a stylized shard of crystal, humming softly.
"I took a chord," he said hoarsely. "A piece of it. Not all. Just enough."
Lyra stared at the sigil. "That's… impossible."
Aric closed the satchel slowly, hands shaking. "So they keep telling me."
He straightened, scanning the cavern. The water had gone still. The crystals above flickered like dying stars. Whatever the beast had been, it was gone for now.
Lyra's threads slackened and vanished. She exhaled hard. "We need to get out of here before something else comes."
Aric nodded, but his mind was already racing. He could feel the new note inside him, a sliver of alien resonance thrumming in his bones. It wasn't just power. It was a key, a way of reading patterns he'd never seen before. A step toward something larger.
He glanced at Lyra. "There's a maintenance shaft on the far side. We can climb up into the old rail tunnels. Hide there."
She gave him a look. "And after that?"
Aric's gaze went to the satchel. The Mirror's sigil pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat. "After that," he murmured, "we find out what this really is."
Lyra studied him for a moment, then shook her head with a crooked smile. "You're mad, Vale. But… if you keep pulling off stunts like that, you might actually make it."
He started along the ledge, boots splashing. "Madness built this city," he said quietly. "Might as well use it to climb out."
Above them, unseen, the Guild's searchlights swept the upper tunnels. Far below, in the dark trench, a faint echo of the beast's song drifted upward—a promise or a warning, impossible to tell.
Aric didn't look back.