He nods slowly, but I can see him struggling with it. Wanting to believe but not quite daring to.
“You’re not the only one who feels that way,” I add, even softer.
We walk in comfortable silence after that, the path winding deeper into sections of the sanctuary I’ve never explored. Ancient oak trees with trunks wide enough to hide behind. Stone markers half-buried in ivy. The sense of old magic sleeping in the very soil.
“You’re looking for something,” Seth observes after we’ve been walking for ten minutes. “Not just walking off frustration.”
I glance at him, surprised by his perceptiveness. “What makes you say that?”
“The way you keep scanning. Like you’re following a trail only you can see.” He pauses, considering. “If I were hiding something, I’d probably leave a marker where no one would notice.”
“And where would that be?”
Seth stops walking, head tilted like he’s listening to something. When he looks at me, there’s an odd intensity in his eyes. “Somewhere that looks forgotten but isn’t. Somewhere that feels empty but holds memory.”
The words hit something in my chest. Recognition. Like he’s just voiced what my visions have been trying to tell me.
I close my eyes, letting the whisper-pull strengthen. When I open them, Seth is watching me with curious attention but no judgment.
“This way,” I say, turning left toward what looks like a dead end in the trees.
But as we push through the undergrowth, it opens into a clearing I know wasn’t here yesterday. Or maybe it was, and we just weren’t ready to find it.
In the center stands the ruins of what might have been a small temple. Crumbling stone walls barely waist-high, covered in moss and threading vines. But carved into every visible surface are symbols—spirals and curves that hurt to look at directly, like they’re moving just outside the edge of vision.
And scattered among the ruins, catching light that shouldn’t exist in the shadow of the trees, are pieces of broken mirror.
“Well,” Seth says quietly. “That’s not ominous at all.”
I step closer, drawn by the same instinct that led us here. When I kneel beside one of the larger mirror shards, I can see why.
The reflection it shows isn’t quite right. Not distorted, but… layered. Like there’s something else behind the surface, watching.
“Theo.” Seth’s voice carries a warning. “Maybe don’t—”
But I’m already reaching out, fingertips brushing the edge of the mirror shard.
It ripples.
Not violently like when Bree’s power surges, but gently. Like recognition. Like greeting an old friend.
For just a moment, I see it—the chamber as it used to be. Whole mirrors lining intact walls. Figures standing before their reflections, hands pressed to glass, choices being made that shaped the magical world.
And then, layered beneath that vision like an echo: Seth again. Standing in this very clearing, but changed. Older. Marked by choices not yet made. Behind him, the shadow of the man with the shifting face. Before him, Bree’s hand outstretched, offering forgiveness he doesn’t think he deserves.
Both futures. Both real. Both waiting for him to choose.
Then the vision fades, but something else begins.
The ground beneath us starts to shift.
Not violently—more like breathing. Like the earth itself is exhaling after holding its breath for centuries. Seth stumbles backward as stones roll away from beneath our feet, and I scramble up from where I’m kneeling.
“Theo, what did you—”
But his words are cut off as the center of the ruined temple sinks inward, revealing what was hidden beneath. Stone steps, worn smooth by age, spiraling down into darkness. The mirror shards scattered across the ruins begin to catch light that doesn’t exist, reflecting something that isn’t there.
The air that drifts up from below smells ancient—not stale, but old in the way that sacred places feel old. Like incense and time and choices that echo through centuries. But underneath it, something else. Something that tastes like copper and hunger, like the space between breaths when you’re not sure if you’ll be allowed another.
