“I remember.”He lifted his hand.“And I remember what it can do.”
Light struck downward from the Forest Lords, slamming into him.Dark power surged upward from the Book.They collided inside his chest.For an instant he was everything, light, shadow, fury, faith, then the study detonated into brilliance.
The explosion hurled the door inward, heat and wind clawing the air.Shadows shattered.The mirror above the mantel rippled like liquid.The pain in his head vanished, replaced by a single, driving certainty.
He couldfeelCassie across the link, now faint, echoing, unreachable.
Trik turned toward the mirror.Its surface trembled, reflecting too many faces at once, all of them his.The world throbbed around him, begging for a command.
Cush grabbed his arm.“Trik—wait?—”
But there was no waiting left.
“Iwarnedyou,” he said, voice metallic with power as he glanced at the shadows floating from the book.“You will not keep her from me.”He turned back to the reflective surface of the mirror, it flared, ripples deepening until there was no reflection of the room.
Myrin’s shout barely pierced the roar behind him, warning, pleading, and Trik spared it no space.In his current head space all he could hear was fear disguised as wisdom.Later, he might feel differently, but that was then, this was now.“If darkness is the only road left,” he murmured, “then let it watch how love walks it.”He stepped through.
Cush’s curse chased him, followed a heartbeat later by the rush of his presence.
The mirror sealed behind them with a violent snap.
Silence fell, cracked, shimmering.The air tasted of lightning and regret, and the faint echo of the Forest Lords’ voice lingered in his skull, mournful and proud all at once.
He has chosen the harder road.Let mercy find him before the dark does.
* * *
Cold.That was the first thing Rezer recognized as the mirror spat them out–cold that wasn’t merely absence of warmth, but the presence of something ancient.Something awake.
He hit the moss-covered earth on one knee, palm pressed into the ground as if he could hold the world still by sheer will.The air here vibrated with layered power, old, wild, remembering every lie and promise whispered beneath its boughs.Every breath he drew scraped down his throat like shards of light and shadow colliding.
Beside him, Lisa’s steady presence cut through the weight of it all.Her breath came fast, but controlled.Her stance was wary, grounded, human and for that exact reason, she centered him more than she could ever know.
He lifted his gaze.
The Chamber of Light and Dark stood waiting, a hulking stone door carved into earth’s bones, glowing at its edges like a wound that refused to close.Bands of shadow and brilliance pulsed across its surface in rhythm with some unseen heartbeat.
Rezer straightened, the movement controlled, deliberate.His magic stirred, instinct meeting memory.The closer he and Lisa stepped, the more the Chamber’s pulse began to sync to his own.
“Rezer?”Lisa’s voice carried quietly across the hush.“Are you all right?”
He couldn’t answer yet.The air was too dense with recognition.The realm itself pressed closer, curling around him like smoke.Every particle seemed to whisper his name, but not out of reverence.Out of ownership.
The ground trembled once and the veil broke.
Sound crashed over him.
The clash of swords.Screams.Prayers shouted into storms.The echo of a thousand dying voices weaving together until they became one long scream of history.
Light seared his vision, and the Elfin realm vanished.
He was kneeling on the battlefield again, the one he didn’t know he remembered, trapped inside memory so vivid it might as well be the present.The world split between brilliance and blackness.Magic churned the sky into a canvas of bleeding colors.
And there they stood.
Reed and Zire.
One shadow, one light.Warriors turned symbols, symbols turned executioners of their own legacies.He watched them the way one watches a memory replayed too slowly, knowing both the outcome and the pain it would bring.They stared across the field, brothers, enemies, equals, and saw the ruin their people had become.
