Kaelen's boots echoed through the cold corridors of the Archive's lower vaults. The air was thick with memory not his own, but something alien. Every wall seemed to breathe, inhaling and exhaling grief. His chest ached, not only from wounds but from the force of the world's sorrow trapped within him.
Ahead, a single mirror stood. Tall, leaning, framed in iron-black vines that writhed like live creatures. This mirror was unfamiliar he had never seen it. Yet it beckoned, humming as if it carried its own heartbeat.
THE MIRRORGOD AWAKENS
Kaelen approached cautiously, fingers itching toward the surface. He could taste the fear on the glass. He forced himself to inspect its frame etched runes lipped in silver: not his creation, but something half-remembered. Something he'd inherited from a myth he never forged.
A soft sound like a sigh. He blinked. The shadow beside him was not his.
IT CAME OUT
Not with claws or malice, but with a slide, a shift an echo in the ashes of his creation.
There it stood: a figure so like him it burned, but everything about it was wrong. Eyes black-pit deep, skin impossibly still, and glyphs on its chest throbbed with red light: the Flame of What Should Have Been… twisted.
"You're not him."
But it looked like him. It moved like him.
"I am not...you."
Its voice was a razor: smooth and cold.
"I am what you denied."
Kaelen's voice cracked. "Who… what are you?"
The figure smiled something not human.
"I am the *Flame That Must Never Be."
The air shattered around them, runes flaring on the sconces lining the vault. One by one, the sconces cracked, releasing motes of black blood that dripped on the floor.
Kaelen raised his rune-blade of living flame. The figure laughed a sound like breaking glass.
"You speak of grief as fuel. But I speak of grief as poison."
Kaelen lunged. The creature met him but instead of steel on steel, there was no impact, only flashes of memories with Auren: laughter, pain, brotherhood. Then it curved away, stepping through him like smoke.
Kaelen staggered.
"You must banish me from your myth," the creature whispered, voice echoing in the chamber. "Because I am what you refuse to admit."
Kaelen stumbled toward the wall, glyphs catching his eye:
MIRRORGODHOLLOW VEINCOUNTER-MYTH
These weren't words they were warnings. A flicker in the walls something seething behind the surface.
"The Sanctum called it heresy," the figure said. "But that was you chanting old lies…"
It stepped back, vanishing into fractured reflections. Kaelen lunged at the nearest mirror and it sank into darkness like quicksand.
Cold rain of ash pattered through broken glass as the Master appeared in the vault entrance.
He didn't speak, only stood, arms still. Kaelen slumped to his knees, exhaustion and fear pooling in him.
Master (quietly): "I watched your myth fracture."
He knelt. "This… this mirror-thing is born of nothing but your denied grief. The Wyrd rebukes you for refusing to accept that grief… but it also rewards you for choosing a truth."
Kaelen looked up, expression haunted. "He… he said my grief is poison."
The Master nodded, voice low: "Because there are truths too sharp to carry. That creature… it isn't evil. It is balance. If you called yourself The Flame of What Should Have Been, then it is your shadow the part of you that refused to burn brightly, that let resentment make a home inside your soul."
Kaelen clenched his fists. Pain throbbed in his chest.
Master: "It is not something you destroy. It is something you must acknowledge. It must be given a voice or else it will echo louder than your myth."
The Master sank to one knee, so close Kaelen could smell memory. He spoke words too low to mask:
"There is not just the Wyrd. There is also its underside the Hollow Vein. Where memories that are denied feed on themselves and mutate. Where truths that are refused become shadows that twist myth."
He traced the fallen mirror with a trembling finger.
"Mirror-glyphs are born from contradictions. They require contradiction to live. You denied part of your own myth your love turned into poison. So it gave rise to this."
Kaelen's breath hitched. "So… how do I heal this?"
The Master paused.
"You must carve a living name into it. Not to destroy it, but to integrate it. You must speak something like:
"'I hold you. And let you become part of me. And still I stand.'"
He brushed his hand across Kaelen's glyph. Blue-hot it was. His face reddened.
"You are no longer creating myths alone. You've started drawing others into yours."
Kaelen closed his eyes. "So… I have befriend the thing that terrifies me?"
The Master nodded. "I taught you to wield grief. Now you must learn to embrace grief."
The vault quieted. Mirrors darkened. Only Kaelen and the Master stood, hearts in the hush.
Kaelen drew a shaky breath. He closed his eyes, feeling the presence of the hushed creature that had vanished.
There. On the edge of his mind.
He spoke, voice steadying:
"I see you. I fear you. But I hold you."
The vault pulsed.
A mirror near the broken one cracked. From within, the creature emerged again, fragile now watched, uncertain.
Kaelen extended his hand.
"Come."
The creature stepped forward, reaching out smoking red glyphs wrapping around its limbs.
But then it paused. Its face twisted new than before not in ugliness, but in longing.
Mirror-Thing: "Then I won't be just the poison."
Its red-light eyes met his.
"I will become your answer."
With that, it receded into the mirror. It now stared back at Kaelen not mocking, but faintly hopeful.
Kaelen collapsed to his knees. The Vault trembled. Black dust spun through the air like dancers at a dirge.
The Master whispered: "You carried him. You did not banish him. You offered integration. That is what the Wyrd does not teach easily."
Kaelen looked at the empty mirror frame. There a red-hot glyph branded into the glass:"I remain within the flame."
In that moment, they both heard it:
A low rumbling from beneath the arches of the Archive. Not a creature, but a pulse. A presence stirring.
Something told Kaelen: it wasn't inside the Archive. It was growing… outside.