The wind over the Sanctum's towers was biting, laced with the cold breath of secrets.
Elara stood at the edge of the Sky Altar, where the ancient mirrorstones were carved into a half-circle facing the eternal sky. Beneath her feet, the night shimmered. She couldn't feel it yet, but something inside her was changing. Stretching. Remembering.
The message burned in her mind:
"Come to Teralyn. Alone. Or I burn what's left of her."
Rhys had begged her not to go. The Council had warned her she was chasing ghosts. But Elara had made her decision the moment Talren said her name.
She wasn't just chasing Lyra's memory anymore. She was becoming it.
...
Deep beneath the Sanctum
A hidden door groaned open in the mirror archives. Dust burst from its hinges like spores from a dying tree. Inside, the chamber was cold; colder than any place she had ever been.
Here, the Mirror Cloak had been made.
She saw it before she stepped inside. A single mannequin stood in the center, draped in the skeletal remains of the original cloak. Torn, burned, and still pulsing with residual power.
It shimmered with a liquid sheen, like starlight trapped in cloth. But its edges… they bled shadow. Not darkness. Shadow. The absence of soul. The void between reflections.
As she approached, a whisper brushed past her ear.
"Don't wear it."
The voice was not hers.
Or Lyra's.
It came from the cloak itself.
Elara froze. Her breath fogged before her, though the room was still. She raised her hand, hesitating.
There were books stacked beside the stand; blueprints, mirror inscriptions, diagrams of how the cloak was bound to its wearer.
One scroll caught her eye, titled in blood-ink:
Design of the Cloak of Null: Mirror of the Unbound.
She unrolled it slowly.
The first page made her skin crawl.
"Shadowless are those whose souls belong to no realm. The Mirror Cloak must be woven not of thread, but of essence. A reflection severed from light, stitched with blood memory, and sealed with forgotten names."
Further down:
"The wearer must sacrifice their echo in the Mirror Realm. From that moment on, they will cast no shadow. No mirror will reflect them. No gods will follow."
And finally:
"The cloak does not obey. It remembers. Every soul it touches stains it. Every betrayal feeds it."
Elara's fingers trembled as she reached out and brushed the fabric.
Images exploded behind her eyes.
Talren screaming as the cloak fused to his spine. Mirrorblood boiling from his veins. His reflection breaking like glass across every surface. He begged the cloak to obey.
But it didn't.
It possessed him.
And now, Elara saw it Lyra, too, had worn it. Just once. Just long enough to see what lay beyond the mirror.
That was when she sealed it away.
And that was when Talren stole it back.
...
Elara staggered back, breath ragged.
Then, movement. Behind her.
She spun.
The cloak was no longer on the stand.
It hovered in the air, suspended, the folds writhing like tendrils in water.
"You seek him."
The voice again. Louder now. Cold. Ancient. Hungrier.
"You carry her. You are both."
Elara's heart pounded so hard she thought it would burst. "What are you?"
"I am the space between truth and memory. The breath before a lie. I am what remains when even gods forget their reflections."
"I am the Cloak."
The air collapsed in a vortex. Dust exploded outward.
And then, it launched.
Elara screamed and raised both arms, but the cloak slammed into her, wrapping around her shoulders like a predator claiming prey.
It burned. Her skin seared. Her back arched with agony.
Visions. Endless visions.
Lyra standing atop a field of corpses, wearing the cloak and weeping as she incinerated an entire village to stop the spreading "mirror plague." A god's eye cracking in the sky. Talren kneeling in a field of obsidian, whispering her name again and again with blood dripping from his hands.
"I am not him," Elara gasped. "I am not her"
"You are both," the cloak rasped. "And more."
Rhys burst into the chamber, eyes wide. "ELARA!"
But it was too late.
The cloak melted into her body like a second skin. The mirror scrolls around the room burst into flame, unreadable forever. Her reflection in the broken glass warped—her eyes now silver and bottomless, like still water above a void.
Then… her shadow vanished.
....
Outside the Sanctum, the moon began to crack.
The first sign.
In Teralyn, Talren knelt before a spiraling altar carved of mirrored bone.
He looked up, smiling.
"She's accepted it," he said to no one. "Now the real game begins."