“Bastien.”
Delphine’s voice. Quiet but clear, cutting through Gideon’s sermon and the roar of magic building in his ears like tinnitus.
He forced his eyes to focus. She was looking at him across the altar. Not at the mirrors. Not at Gideon’s evidence. At him.
“I need to speak now,” she said. “Can you hold it?”
He nodded, not trusting his voice. He just pressed harder against the glyphs, pulling on reserves he didn’t know he had, muscles in his forearms cramping from the sustained effort. If she was ready to respond, he would maintain the frequency. Even if it burned out his ability to work magic for the next decade.
Delphine picked up the broken circle mirror from the altar. Held it in both hands, fingers wrapped around the frame. Her reflection appeared sharp and clear in the glass. The network recognized the tool, Charlotte’s counter-broadcast mechanism activating in response to her touch.
“I’m watching this,” she said, speaking into the mirror, her voice suddenly amplifying through every reflective surface that Gideon had hijacked. “I’m seeing every moment you’ve edited. Every interaction framed to look like manipulation. And I need to say something.”
Gideon’s sermon paused. The mirrors still showed his curated evidence playing on loop, but his voice went quiet. Waiting. Probably confident that what she’d seen would confirm his entire philosophy.
“I see the editing,” Delphine continued, her voice steady despite the tremor in her hands. “I see how you’ve taken real moments and stripped away context. Made care look like control. Made patience look like calculation. And here’s what you’re missing—I was there. I remember these conversations. Iremember choosing to have coffee. Choosing to investigate the network. Choosing to come down here tonight.”
The broken circle mirror began to glow. Not purple like Gideon’s corruption. Not gold or silver like their individual frequencies. White light—clear, pure—spreading through the network’s channels like bleach through stained fabric, fighting the infection.
“You’re trying to make me doubt my own experience,” Delphine said. “Telling me that what felt like connection was actually compulsion. That what felt like choice was actually manipulation. But I don’t accept that. Not because I’m naive. Not because I’m blinded by a bond. But because I know the difference between being controlled and being cared for. I’ve experienced both. They don’t feel the same.”
Bastien felt the network shift under his hands. Charlotte’s design responding to Delphine’s freely spoken truth. The white light from the mirror spreading through the glass veins, not by force but by resonance. Truth amplifying truth the way a tuning fork vibrated in sympathy with matching pitch. Honest choice creating its own frequency that the network recognized and amplified.
“You want me to see manipulation,” Delphine continued, her voice gaining volume and certainty. “But what I see is someone who’s been terrified of repeating past mistakes. Someone who’s been so careful to preserve my agency that he’s second-guessed every decision. That’s not control. That’s the opposite of control. That’s someone who cares enough to be afraid of hurting me.”
The purple light fractured. Bastien watched it happen through the glass veins—Gideon’s corruption breaking apart like ice under pressure. The network couldn’t maintain false resonance against freely given testimony. Charlotte had designed it to amplify honest choice, not enforced compliance. Delphine’s words carried more power than all of Gideon’scarefully edited evidence because they came from actual experience, actual feeling, actual decision-making.
“And yes,” she said, “I’m choosing to honor this bond. Not because it forces me to. Not because I don’t see the risks. But because I was given connection to someone who loves me across centuries, and I’m choosing to see where it goes inthislife. That’s my choice. Made freely. With full awareness. In front of the entire city.”
The white light overwhelmed the purple completely. Bastien watched through vision that swam with exhaustion as Charlotte’s original design reasserted itself. The safeguards that had been bypassed snapped back into place with almost audible clicks. The network stabilized around the combined frequency of his celestial resonance and Delphine’s mortal anchor and the truth-reflecting property of the broken circle mirror.
The water drained. Not suddenly—no dramatic whoosh—but steadily, the level dropping inch by inch as the magical pressure released through Charlotte’s carefully designed drainage channels. Bastien’s arms stopped trembling. The celestial glyphs cooled under his palms, metal returning to normal temperature. He could breathe without feeling like his lungs were full of static electricity.
The mirrors throughout the chamber—throughout the city—stopped showing Gideon’s edited evidence. Just reflections now. Normal, honest reflections showing exactly what stood in front of the glass. The sermon lattice collapsed as Charlotte’s design rejected the corruption like a body rejecting infection.
Gideon’s face appeared one final time. Not kind anymore. Not professorial. Just tired. Resigned.
“You’ve proven nothing,” he said, “except that people believe what they want to believe. Even shown the evidence, you choose certainty over truth.”
Delphine looked directly at his image in the nearest mirror. “I chose understanding over your interpretation. There’s a difference.”
The light faded completely. The broadcast ended. The network settled into stable rhythm—gold and silver and white light pulsing through Charlotte’s channels the way she’d designed them to work. Preservation without compulsion. Connection without control. Choice honored even in the presence of a bond that transcended lifetimes.
Bastien lifted his hands from the altar. His palms were red where the glyphs had burned, actual burns, first-degree, the kind that would blister by morning. But not serious. Manageable. He’d held the anchor. Maintained the frequency long enough for Delphine to speak her truth.
She set the broken circle mirror down carefully on the altar, her movements precise despite the tremor still visible in her fingers. Her face was still pale, but her eyes were clear. Focused. Certain.
“Did it work?” she asked quietly.
Bastien looked at the tunnel mirrors. They showed both of them now. His reflection had returned—not absent, not erased, but present. Visible. The network recognized him as part of the system, integrated properly this time. Not forced or emergency integration but accepted. Acknowledged. The way Charlotte had intended.
“It worked,” he said. His voice came out rougher than expected, his throat raw from breathing charged air for forty-five minutes. “Gideon’s corruption is gone. The sermon lattice collapsed. Charlotte’s design is functioning the way she built it to.”
Delphine nodded slowly. Then her knees buckled.
Bastien moved without thinking, crossing around the altar to catch her before she hit the water. She wasn’t unconscious—just exhausted, the kind of bone-deep weariness that came from channeling magic you weren’t trained to handle. Her weight against him was real, solid, warm despite the pallor of her skin.
“I’m okay,” she said, but didn’t pull away from his support. “Just . . . that was a lot.”
