The basement smelled like dust, solder, and old glue — the ghosts of projects long since abandoned. Exposed pipes ran across the low ceiling, dripping slowly into stained buckets. A single fluorescent light flickered overhead like it had forgotten how to stay alive.
Ethan stood facing a cracked mirror mounted on the far wall. Its surface was warped, the glass bloomed slightly at the corners, and a long scratch ran through the middle like a scar across its face.
"Here?" he asked.
Halvorsen nodded, flipping open a leather-bound notebook.
"Old photography lab. No cameras left, but the frame's still true. Stable enough for something... experimental."
Ethan adjusted his stance. The sigil in his left eye pulsed once — faint, silver-blue.
"What do I do?"
"Don't force it. Just remember what you did instinctively in the tower. You're not casting a spell — you're stepping into something that already wants to open."
Ethan stared into the glass.
He focused.
The mirror didn't ripple, or glow, or scream. It simply shifted — the depth inside it folding like a page turning inward. His reflection became a silhouette. Then a trail of mirrored veins blinked to life across the glass, leading backward — toward the hallway entrance.
That's where I was ten seconds ago.
Without thinking, he stepped forward — and blinked.
The air bent. A flash of heat moved through his ribs like static. For half a heartbeat, he felt his body fragment and re-form, the way glass trembles before it breaks.
When he opened his eyes, he was standing by the hallway door, facing the mirror from the other side.
"You did it," Halvorsen said behind him, scribbling. "That was a short-range echo displacement."
"That's what it's called?"
"It is now."
Ethan exhaled slowly.
He felt fine.
No pain. No dizziness.
Just...
Stillness.
Like the emotional static that always clung to him — the low hum of worry, regret, guilt — had been turned off. Not silenced. Just... numbed.
He rubbed his chest. The spot over his heart felt cold.
"What do you feel?" Halvorsen asked.
"Quiet," Ethan said.
The word sounded wrong. Not untrue, just... distant. Like someone else had spoken it.
He ran the jump twice more over the next thirty minutes.
Each time, the displacement became smoother. Quicker.
Each time, the stillness spread wider.
By the third jump, he could still recall Mia's laugh, his mom's garden, the sensation of looking out at the tower in Noctareal — but none of it felt urgent. None of it felt close.
It was like walking through a memory museum behind glass. He could name everything. But the warmth of it all had been replaced with echo.
"That's enough," Halvorsen said finally.
Ethan nodded. No argument.
Not because he agreed.
But because he couldn't summon the feeling to care.
.......................................
The library was warm and still, afternoon light slanting through its tall windows and pooling across the parquet floors like melted gold. Dust drifted through the air in slow spirals, and in the quiet, even the sound of turning pages felt too loud.
Ethan sat at their usual corner table, surrounded by open books and notes he hadn't touched in twenty minutes. Across from him, Mia tapped her pen against the edge of her notebook, watching him over the rim of her glasses.
He was still staring at the same paragraph he'd been reading since she arrived.
"You know," she said, tilting her head slightly, "usually when someone says we're meeting to study, I assume it includes some light reading. Maybe some eye contact."
Ethan blinked and looked up.
"Sorry," he said, voice soft.
She arched an eyebrow.
"That's twice now. You were weird at the café. Now this? Either you're secretly battling an existential crisis or you've been body-snatched."
He managed a small smile. "Maybe both."
"Ah. So not denying the crisis part."
She leaned forward, folding her arms on the table. Her voice lost its teasing edge.
"Seriously, Ethan. Are you okay?"
He looked at her for a moment — really looked. The way her fingers fidgeted with the edge of her sleeve when she was worried. The way she tilted her head slightly when she was trying not to push too hard. The softness in her voice that came from years of knowing exactly when he needed her to ask, and when he didn't.
He recognized it all.
But he couldn't feel it.
Not the way he used to.
"I'm fine," he said eventually. "Just tired."
"No. Tired is you with coffee. Tired is snarky and dramatic. This..."
She trailed off, narrowing her eyes.
"This feels like watching a rerun. Like you're here, but not really."
He exhaled through his nose, closing the book in front of him. The thud echoed louder than it should have.
"Mia, do you remember last fall?" he asked suddenly. "That week before midterms?"
She blinked, caught off guard.
"You mean when you tried to convince me that watching old horror movies counted as revision?"
"You spilled tea on your notes."
"You're the one who knocked it over."
He nodded.
"And you made me walk all the way to that 24-hour café to print a new copy."
"You bribed me with stale cookies and regret."
She smiled, but it faded when she saw he wasn't smiling with her.
"Why are you bringing that up?"
Ethan hesitated.
"Because I remember the facts. What we did. What we said. But I can't remember... what it felt like."
She was silent for a moment.
"You mean emotionally?"
He nodded.
"It's like the part of me that cared about it is on mute."
Mia leaned back, her arms folding tighter across her chest.
"Ethan," she said, slowly, "this isn't just stress. This is... scary."
"I know."
"Have you talked to anyone? I mean—really talked?"
He hesitated.
"Professor Halvorsen's been helping. Sort of. I've just... been figuring things out."
"About what?"
He looked down at the table, the grain of the wood blurring under the sunlight.
"Mirrors. Reflections. The way they... change."
Mia didn't laugh.
She didn't scoff.
She didn't even flinch.
She just nodded once.
"That's the first honest thing you've said all day."
He looked up, startled.
"You believe me?"
"I don't know what I believe," she said. "But I know you. And if you say something's wrong... I'm not going to pretend it isn't."
He stared at her.
He felt nothing.
But something inside him remembered what it would've felt like.
That was enough—for now.
"Thank you," he said.
"You're not getting out of snacks just because you're having a reality crisis."
He let out a breath that might've been a laugh.
Almost.
..........................................
The apartment was quiet again.
Not peaceful—just muted, as if the air had thickened and the walls were listening.
Ethan sat on the floor beside his desk, the glow of the desk lamp casting sharp angles across the room. The mirrorleaf map lay unrolled in front of him, its translucent surface shimmering faintly as the light touched it. The red-marked cathedral he'd seen before now pulsed in a slow, rhythmic beat—like a second heartbeat in the room.
He didn't touch it.
Not yet.
The sigil in his eye responded anyway—just a slight pulse, a shimmer across his vision like static.
He leaned in.
The map shifted.
Not physically. Not with ink or movement. But the geometry warped slightly, and a new mark appeared: a small ripple near the edge of town, close to an abandoned art gallery he'd walked past dozens of times as a kid.
It flickered once.
Then held steady.
Two gates?
He reached toward the map.
His fingertips hovered an inch above it.
And then the lines began to trace themselves backward—forming a winding mirrored path between the gallery and the cathedral, passing through alleyways, underground infrastructure, even an old glassworks building long since shut down.
The path stopped directly beneath his apartment.
He jerked his hand back.
The lines stayed.
But the shimmer slowed.
It's mapping my route.
Not where he had gone—but where he would go.
He backed away from the map and stood, breath shallow.
From the window, moonlight spilled onto the floor, catching the edge of the map and throwing reflections onto the ceiling in a dozen ghostlike shapes.
And in the glass of the window...
His reflection was gone.
It wasn't an illusion.
There was no second Ethan staring back.
Just the room. The lamp. The map.
No trace of him.
He moved. Nothing mirrored him.
The glass had stopped reflecting.
He approached it slowly, heart pounding, fingers curling at his sides.
When he stood directly before the window, his breath fogged the glass—
—and only then did the reflection snap back into place.
He blinked. It blinked.
He exhaled.
But the moment he turned away—
—the reflection smiled.
And did not.
......................................
Somewhere far from Greyford, somewhere deeper than sleep, the mirrors whispered.
In the stillness of Noctareal, where light refracted without source and silence had weight, Nyros stood in a chamber made entirely of curved glass. The walls bent in slow spirals, distorting every reflection into something not quite human.
The air here held no sound—only echoes of thoughts never spoken.
Nyros raised his hand.
Before him, a circular slab of black mirror floated like a pool of obsidian caught in suspension. On its surface, Greyford unfolded—not as it was, but as it might be.
Veins of mirrored lines pulsed between rooftops, alleys, and forgotten buildings. Two points shimmered: one over the cathedral. The other over the art gallery.
He studied both without expression.
"So," he murmured, voice calm and distant, "the map has chosen."
Behind him, a robed figure stirred—one of his emissaries, wrapped in cracked prismcloth and silver thread. Its face was blank glass, expressionless, reflecting only Nyros's back.
"Shall we act?" the figure asked.
Nyros didn't answer right away.
Instead, he extended one finger, gently tracing the glowing line between the cathedral and the gallery. As his finger moved, the line bent and shimmered—then snapped back into place, defiant.
"He sees the path," Nyros said. "But he doesn't see what it connects."
He turned to the emissary.
"No. We don't act. We watch."
The emissary tilted its head.
"He is growing stronger."
"Yes," Nyros agreed. "And more... muted."
He turned back to the mirror. Ethan's silhouette flickered in the window of his apartment, indistinct—but visible. The map pulsed beneath him.
"He's begun to walk the route," Nyros whispered. "And with each step, he becomes more distant from himself."
He lowered his hand.
"That's how the glass wins. Not with force. But with silence."
The mirror dimmed.
Only Nyros's reflection remained — flawless, composed.
But it, too, flickered for half a second — just enough to show the faintest hairline fracture across the surface of his smile.