They lined the walls as they always had, tall and curved and impossibly deep, their surfaces silvered not to reflect but to reveal. Candlelight bloomed unbidden, illuminating the room in a glow that felt less like warmth and more like witness.
My reflection stared back at me from a dozen angles—older than I felt, younger than I felt, steadier than I feared, carrying more than I ever intended.
But the reflections shifted.
The first mirror showed me as I remembered myself at twenty, standing on the edge of my life, wondering about Alex. Another showed my mother, younger still, her face knotted with fear and resolve as she turned away from magic she loved too much to risk.
The third mirror darkened, and there she was.
The Priestess stood tall and radiant, with her presence filling the glass as if it were a doorway rather than a surface. Her eyes,my eyes, I realized with a sick twist, burned with conviction and something colder. I had to remind myself this wasn’t the Priestess. This was what the Academy wanted me to see, wanted me to feel.
You wear the burden poorly, child.
My breath caught. “You don’t get to judge me.”
She smiled, slow and patient.You misunderstand. Judgment requires distance. This is inheritance.
The mirrors shifted again, images cascading now of Stonewick fractured by broken Wards, Shadowick bleeding into the edges of the world, and the Hollows flaring bright against the dark like a beacon that shouldn’t exist.
Orcs stomped across the horizon.
Celeste stood at the center of it all, her magic bright and unshaped, her expression fierce and frightened and so achingly familiar it made my chest ache.
My knees went weak even though I knew it wasn’t her.
“No,” I whispered. “You don’t get to show me her.”
The Priestess’s voice softened, just slightly.I show you what you refuse to see.
The mirrors flared, and suddenly I understood in a terrible rush of clarity.
This wasn’t about conquest.
It wasn’t about Stonewick alone.
It was about succession and bloodlines, awakening whether they were wanted or not. And the power that refused to skip generations and a legacy that didn’t end simply because someone chose to walk away.
You think you can shield her, the Priestess murmured.You think love will blunt the blade.
My hands curled into fists. “I will protect her.”
Of course you will, she replied.
The mirrors dimmed, the images dissolved back into silver calm, leaving me shaking in the center of the room, my heart pounding, my magic humming painfully beneath my skin.
The doors creaked open behind me, and the Academy exhaled.
The whispers were gone, but the truth they’d left behind weighed heavier than any sound. Even though I knew it wasn’t my grandmother speaking to me, it felt more real than I could imagine.
I stood there for a long moment, gathering myself, knowing with bone-deep certainty that nothing had changed, yet everything had because now I understood.
This wasn’t about finding the right book in the library or reading the correct historical volume or hearing a legend that might never come to be.
The Priestess wasn’t trying to reach me.
She was reminding me of where I came from, where my mom came from, and she wanted me to remember the cost of forgetting.
And it all felt so…real.
