SFX: CLANG! — The gate slammed shut behind him, sealing the silence with the finality of a coffin lid.
Shade stood on the first crystal step, an obsidian shard clenched tight in his fist.
The staircase spiraled upward through the tower's hollow heart—each tread a pane of star-flecked glass, thin as a breath.
Beneath his boots, galaxies drifted—slow, indifferent, ancient.
The air tasted of ozone and old blood.
First Spiral: The Choir of Echoes
The walls weren't glass—they were liquid night, rippling as he passed.
Every reflection showed a different Shade:
the child who dropped the sword,
the boy who cried in the granary,
the seventeen-year-old who never won a single bout.
Then, the mirrors began to speak.
"You'll fail."
"Turn back."
"You're nothing."
Their voices layered, harmonizing into a dirge of doubt.
Each step upward, the mirrors pressed closer, until the spiral narrowed into a throat of black glass.
Shade's breath fogged the surface.
His reflection fogged back—but the eyes were wrong. Too wide. Too hungry.
SFX: Crackle... hiss...
He forced himself onward. The shard in his hand grew warm—then hot.
When the mirrors were a handspan from his face, he lashed out.
SFX: SHRRR-AAAASH! —
The obsidian blade struck a reflection—his own, age twenty-five, scarred and triumphant.
The mirror exploded into a thousand screaming shards. They sliced his cheeks, but the pain was brief.
Where blood fell, the crystal steps drank it, glowing faintly before dimming.
The spiral widened. The mirrors receded, revealing a landing of pale stone.
At its center stood a pedestal.
Upon it rested a mask of polished bone, carved in the likeness of a stag's skull.
Empty sockets stared up at him.
Shade hesitated. The map beneath his ribs pulsed—urging.
He lifted the mask. It was lighter than air, yet the inside was lined with tiny mirrors—each reflecting a different moment of his life.
The mask whispered—not in words, but in feeling:
Wear me, and never again doubt your face.
He almost did.
But then he remembered Lady Maria's warning:
"Everything here wants something."
Instead, he smashed the mask against the pedestal.
SFX: CRACK! — Bone splintered; mirrors bled silver dust.
The landing trembled.
A wall slid aside, revealing a narrow archway exhaling cold, sweet wind.
Shade stepped through—
—and fell.
He didn't fall far.
**SFX: Thud. **
He landed softly, knees bent, on a bed of blue moss.
The tower was gone.
Around him rose the Glasswood.
The Glasswood
Trees of living crystal stretched fifty feet high. Their trunks were transparent, their branches chiming like wind-bells.
Inside each trunk floated memories—not his, but someone else's.
A woman laughing at a festival.
A child chasing fireflies.
A soldier dying, letter clutched to his chest.
Each chime released a faint scent: bread baking, gunpowder, lilac.
The moss path wound between the trees. Shade followed, shard raised.
The air thickened with diamond dust pollen.
His cuts had already closed, leaving faint silver scars that shimmered in the glow.
SFX: Step... step...
Footsteps echoed—not his own.
From behind a crystal trunk, a figure emerged—made entirely of reflections.
It wore his face, his clothes, but the eyes were Glasswood blue.
It smiled—his smile—and spoke with his voice, only gentler.
"You're tired. Let me carry the weight."
It extended a hand. In its palm lay the bone mask, whole again.
"No more shame. No more failure. Just rest."
Shade's fingers twitched toward it.
SFX: Crack. — The moss beneath his foot split, revealing a pit of starless dark.
The reflection's smile faltered.
Shade lunged, driving the obsidian shard into its chest.
SFX: SHATTER! — Glass exploded outward, raining chiming fragments.
Where each piece struck the ground, a white flower bloomed—and died.
The reflection dissolved into a sigh that smelled faintly of lilac.
The path cleared. The trees parted, revealing a moonlit glade.
At its center stood a single tree—smaller than the rest, trunk opaque.
Inside floated a memory of Shade—age seven, standing in the training yard, sword raised for the first time.
The memory-child looked straight at him and smiled.
The tree split open with a sound like breaking ice.
From the hollow stepped a girl—no older than ten, her skin dusted with starlight, eyes the same dark brown as his own.
She wore a tunic of shadow-silk and carried a lantern made from a single firefly.
"You're bleeding starlight," she said softly. "The Wood likes that. It'll try to keep you."
Shade glanced down. The silver scars glowed faintly.
"Who are you?" he asked.
"Echo," she said. "Every realm has one. I guide those who break the mirrors."
She offered him the lantern.
"Take this. The next spiral is dark."
He hesitated.
"What's the price?"
Echo tilted her head.
"A memory you don't need."
Shade thought of the granary, the tears, the weight of uselessness. He nodded.
She touched his temple.
SFX: Fwoosh...
A memory slipped away—his mother's trembling lips, the night she kissed his forehead.
The loss ached, but it was clean—like lancing a wound.
In return, the firefly's glow flared brighter, bathing the forest in warm gold.
"The Glasswood remembers everything," Echo whispered. "But it only keeps what you give willingly. Walk the path. Don't look back."
She stepped aside.
Beyond her, the moss ended at a wall of living crystal, its surface rippling like water.
A faint outline glowed in the shape of a door.
Shade lifted the lantern.
Its light touched the crystal—
SFX: Hooom...
—and the door dissolved into mist.
Through it, he glimpsed the next spiral:
a staircase descending into absolute dark, each step a slab of starless night.
He looked back once.
Echo was already fading, her outline dissolving into the trees.
The Glasswood chimed a farewell—soft, final.
Shade tightened his grip on the lantern and the obsidian shard.
The second spiral waited below.