The door closed behind Mira without a sound.
Her eyes blinked against the sudden glare—too bright after the candlelit chamber. The air here was warr, heavier, tinged with a strange tallic sweetness.
She stood in a narrow corridor lined with mirrors, each cracked and dust-fogged. The flickering light ca from sconces along the walls, but their flas weren't fire—they writhed, twisting like strands of hair in water.
Her reflection stared back at her, but… not exactly. In each mirror, her face shifted—older, younger, bloodied, pale, smiling, screaming. In one pane, she saw herself with black veins crawling up her neck. In another, her eyes were milk-white like the creature's.
The tether pulsed again, pulling her forward. She moved past mirror after mirror, resisting the urge to smash them.
A voice rose behind the glass.
"Mira…"
It was Elena's voice—soft, trembling.
She stopped. In the nearest mirror, Elena appeared, pressing her palms to the inside of the glass.
"They're lying to you," Elena said, eyes glistening. "He's already dead. Leave this place before it takes you too."
Mira's hand lifted, instinctively reaching for her, but the reflection warped. Elena's face rotted away in an instant, lips peeling back to reveal blackened teeth. Her voice dropped to a rasp:
"Bridge. Open the way."
The glass rippled like water, and a pale hand shot out.
Mira jerked back, stumbling against the opposite wall. The mirror's surface smoothed, the reflection returning to the cracked, dusty glass.
The tether yanked again, stronger, pulling her toward the corridor's end. There, an archway led into a vast, dod chamber lit by that sa unnatural fla. In the center stood a stone basin filled with dark liquid—thicker than water, slling faintly of copper.
She approached slowly, the pull intensifying. Inside the basin, shapes moved—faces, hands, half-ford bodies pressing upward against the surface, as if drowning but unable to break free.
One face rose higher than the others. It was Elena's brother.
"Mira… help …" he whispered, voice muffled as if from underwater.
Her heart thudded painfully. "I tried—"
The liquid surged upward, splashing over the rim. The basin's contents twisted, coiling into a towering figure—skinless, eyes glowing faintly from deep sockets. Its voice was a chorus of hundreds:
"You are the bridge. The door is not yet open. Drink."
The tether was fire in her veins now, commanding her forward. Her knees bent without her consent. She dipped her hands into the dark liquid. It burned like ice, and when she lifted it to her mouth, her reflection in the surface wasn't hers anymore—it was the eyeless figure from the grave-pillar vision.
Sowhere far away, a door slamd shut.
Mira drank.
The taste was earth, tal, and sothing alive. The tether exploded into blinding light, and the mirrors behind her shattered all at once, unleashing a chorus of screams.
When the light faded, she was no longer in the chamber.
She was outside—under a blood-red sky—surrounded by the dead who were already looking at her as if they knew her na.
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