The ceiling of the room was too high to be real—a do of living darkness, stitched with stars that pulsed like trapped hearts. The walls breathed. Literally. They were covered with organic tapestries that whispered in extinct languages, each thread exuding the sickly scent of dead flowers and freshly spilled blood.
In the center of the room, floating on an altar of liquid obsidian, Eleonor reigned.
Her throne was made of enchanted gold, but it still seed small before her. Her skin was white as the pale moon that had forgotten how to shine. Her eyes? Two slowly rotating galaxies, too deep to be fathod.
She watched the three children kneeling before her with a sidelong glance.
"Those brats..." she thought, with a slight taste of jealousy curling on her tongue. "All sighing for Kael... my grandson. And now they kneel as if I were a goddess. Pathetic. I hate it when they treat like a goddess."
But she said nothing. She remained motionless, imperious. The queen the world saw—and feared.
Before her, kneeling on the icy floor engraved with ancient runes, were Irelia, Alia, and Sylphie—the girls who had crossed the line between courage and desperation.
Irelia, the most level-headed, kept her eyes fixed on the queen’s feet. Her voice was firm, but her hands trembled.
"We beg your blessing, Your Majesty. Advance our bodies in ti. As you did with Kael."
A thick silence fell.
’So silly... They think they know what they’re asking for. So dramatic... so sweet... so annoying,’ thought Eleonor. Outwardly, nothing changed. But the room responded for her.
The floor grew colder. The shadows on the walls began to laugh—a low sound, vibrating like the strings of an out-of-tune violin. The tapestries stirred, murmuring among themselves like midwives about to announce a painful birth.
Sylphie, the calst among them, raised her face. Her golden eyes sparkled in the flickering light of the hall, and although they were teary, the tears remained trapped, as if the desire to cry was less than the desire to resist.
"We are not asking for power," she said, her voice soft but clear. "We are asking for preparation. What is coming... will crush us if we are not ready."
Eleonor watched her in silence, with the expression of soone listening to an insect trying to formulate philosophy. A distant gleam crossed her galactic eyes, but she did not respond.
Alia, on the other hand, could no longer remain silent.
She sat on her heels, her fingers clenched against her thighs as if trying to hold sothing inside. She watched Eleonor with a cutting tension, reading details in the Queen’s gaze that perhaps no one else saw. There was sothing there. It wasn’t just contempt. It was... discomfort? Restrained anger?
"She doesn’t like this. She doesn’t want to admit she was wrong," Alia thought, her heart racing.
She knew she could die for saying what she was about to say.
But she said it anyway.
"You ruined everything."
Her voice cut through the air like a poorly sharpened blade. Sylphie blinked. Irelia turned to her, eyes wide.
Alia continued, anger embedded in every word.
"He was eleven until the other day. Now he’s over twenty. You forced this. You forced it on him. He didn’t even have a choice. And now you want us to stay here? Watching? While he grows further and further away from us?"
The room seed to hold its breath. The tapestries ceased their whispering. Even the shadows stood still, as if watching sothing sacred and dangerous unfold.
"Clean up the ss you made," Alia whispered, her fists clenched, her eyes unblinking. "Or take us with you."
The silence that followed was not empty. It was an absolute vacuum, filled only by the tense breathing of the three girls and the damp sound of the altar pulsing.
Eleonor tilted her head slightly.
What appeared on her face was no surprise.
Eleonor smiled.
Not like a queen satisfied with loyal subjects. Not like a proud grandmother.
Her smile was that of an entity who had just heard the exact lody she expected from a child lost in the forest.
She raised a finger.
Imdiately, the altar stopped pulsing. The tapestries on the walls began to unravel into shreds of dark light, as if lting silently. The ceiling disappeared, revealing a sky that did not belong to that world—an inverted ocean of dead stars and naless moons.
The three girls instinctively cowered. But Eleonor did not move.
"You want to fix what I did to Kael," she said, and now her voice ca directly from her throat, low and clear, without magical echoes. "You want to chase after him, with adult bodies, won’s skin, and bones already shaped by ti. You want the leap. But you don’t know what you burn when you jump."
She stood up. Too tall. Too thin. Too perfect.
"You’re too annoying. Do you think I did this to ruin your plan? Stop being idiots, he chose that. Besides, didn’t he tell you? He would die if he continued like this." She spoke bluntly, just saying what had to be said, and that was it. "Do you think I do things because I want to?"
"N-no, but-" Amalia was about to respond, but she began to descend the steps of air that appeared before the throne, each step reverberating like beats on a war drum.
"Everything has a price or a motivation. The ti I gave him gave him the chance to be with you in the future. But what price are you prepared to pay?"
She didn’t expect an imdiate answer. What was coming now was not to be explained — it was to be felt.
With a snap of her fingers, the floor beneath the girls fragnted into three perfect circles, each surrounded by runes that glowed in distinct hues: deep blue for Irelia, opaque gold for Sylphie, and pulsing red for Alia.
"Three paths," said Eleonor. "Three reflections. Three versions of loss."
Behind each girl, a mirror ford. They did not rise from the floor, nor did they fall from the ceiling—they sprouted from the air itself, like bubbles of reality about to burst. Their fras were made of bones woven with strands of hair and roots of sothing writhing. Inside each mirror, there was only fog—but it moved as if sothing inside was about to wake up.
"Co in. And you will see. You will see what it ans to grow up without living. What it ans to skip ti. What it ans... to give up childhood."
Irelia was the first to stand up.
Not out of courage, but out of responsibility. She had always been the one to take on the burden without thinking. Her knees creaked, her breathing was shallow, but she turned to the Queen with determination.
"I’ll go in."
The blue mirror opened like a glass flower. A sharp cold escaped from its edges. Irelia entered without hesitation. And disappeared.
Sylphie followed.
She didn’t look at the others. She didn’t say anything. She just closed her eyes, as if surrendering to an inevitable fate. The golden mirror opened silently. No gust, no sound. Like the acceptance of a forgotten dream. She crossed the mist.
Alia hesitated.
Not out of fear.
But out of hatred.
She looked at Eleonor with her jaw clenched. She wanted to spit out one more accusation. She wanted that woman to feel sothing. But she knew it was useless.
"You’re not invincible," she muttered. "Even if you pretend to be."
And she entered the red mirror.
The mirror closed behind her with a sound like flesh being sewn together.
Eleonor, alone in the chamber now, returned to her throne. The ceiling returned to its place, the tapestries began to whisper again, and the altar pulsed once more.
But the mirrors remained.
And within them, ti began to warp.
Irelia would wake up on a battlefield, in the body of a twenty-two-year-old woman, her armor still slling of the blood of monsters she didn’t rember killing.
Sylphie would wake up in a hall of infinite mirrors, each reflection showing a version of her who had chosen another path—the artist, the sorceress, the fugitive, the dead woman.
And Alia would open her eyes in a stone cell, alone, with her own older reflection sitting across from her. He smiles. And she already knows she will hate him.
Ti began to take its toll. And childhood, once lost, can never be recovered.
Eleonor sighed.
A heavy sound, dragging like wind in an ancient cetery. Her shoulders relaxed slightly as she sat back down on the throne — not as queen, but as a woman. Exhausted. Old. Saturated with truths that no one else carries.
She ran a long, black fingernail over the arm of the throne. "Happy?" she asked aloud, even though she knew that, for what was to co, her voice was rely an aesthetic detail.
The wall to her left rippled.
As if it were made of thick water. And then, from it, erged the silhouette of a woman shrouded in mist, her crimson hair flying in the wind. Her eyes shone like embers about to be extinguished.
Elion.
She was dressed like an on. Thin, elegant, severe. She held a black chalice in her hands, swirling the wine without drinking it. The spell of concealnt that hid her had been broken like a handkerchief thrown to the wind.
"Not completely," Elion replied, her voice like a mourning violin. "But satisfied enough for now."
The hall fell silent once more.
Eleonor remained there, alone before the sealed mirrors, the three girls already imrsed in their own futures—or illusions of them.
She sighed. Long. Deep. Ancient.
"Happy?" she said, addressing no one in particular.
But the atmosphere changed. A subtle spell dissolved in the air, like a veil being gently pulled away. A corner of the room, hitherto invisible even to the keenest senses, glowed like light reflected in oil. From within it, as if erging from a whisper held back for centuries, appeared Elion.
Tall. Cruelly beautiful. Dressed in fabrics that seed to be made of still wind. Her hair, silver with dark blue nuances, fell over her shoulders like a cascade of moonlight. She did not walk—she glided, with a grace that irritated mortals and disturbed immortals.
Her eyes, golden like a reversed eclipse, rested on the still-flickering mirrors.
"I like my son," Elion said, without explicit emotion in her voice, as if comnting on the weather at a funeral. "But I cannot hold him on a pedestal. Nor exclude those who want to protect him."
She paused, watching Eleonor with a half-smile that was almost affectionate, almost mocking.
"But I must admit... pretending all this, making them kneel, playing with their fear and love like marked cards..." She tilted her head. "It was a delightful idea."
Eleonor did not move. She just ran a finger distractedly over her own fingernails.
"Did you really need to hide your presence? So theatrical, Elion."
"And did you need to talk to them like that?" Elion retorted, smiling as if savoring a forbidden wine. "So... maternal."
Eleonor laughed dryly. Just once.
"You’re confusing patience with pity."
"No. I’m saying you liked it. Having three children in love with your grandson begging before your altar. As if Kael were a king, and you, the goddess on the throne." She blinked. "Do you think I didn’t see the sparkle in your eyes?"
The shadow of a smile crossed Eleonor’s face, but it didn’t last.
"I just want him alive."
"And them too."
"Maybe. I haven’t grown fond of them. But... they’re interesting." Eleonor narrowed her eyes. "And you? Are you going to keep playing the detached mother while you watch your son carry a burden that was yours?"
Elion’s smile faded. A short, bitter silence settled in.
Then she replied, quietly:
"He’s not a child anymore. I carried the burden while he still needed shade. Now... he is the thunder." Her gaze turned to the mirrors. "And they... need to learn to dance in the storm."
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