“What is this place?” My words echo faintly, multiplying before fading.
“An immersion chamber. Built for Neptune delegates during olderConclaves.” She gestures to the water with a hand. “It amplifies intuition and reveals internal fractures. You’ll need both clarity and honesty in the Mirror. This team won’t survive without them.”
She steps back into the pool. The water reaches her ankles and pulses outward in a single slow ripple, the bioluminescent patterns responding to her movement. She turns her back to me and moves deeper, her sea-green hair darkening as water soaks into it. She stops when the water reaches her waist, her teal robes floating around her like seafoam.
“I want you to join me, Lady Cyra.”
I hesitate at the edge of the pool. The water looks inviting and threatening at once, its surface too perfect, too still. She doesn’t coax or reassure. She simply waits, the water steady around her, the bioluminescence pulsing in slow rhythm beneath her feet.
After a moment, I wade in. The tiles under my feet are smooth, almost slippery. The water is warm but not comforting. It wraps around me like a steady hand, guiding but firm. The bioluminescent patterns swirl away from my steps, then reform behind me, tracking my path through the pool. When I reach her, she tilts her head slightly. Her eyes catch the dim light, their ocean colours deepening to almost black in the shadows.
“Sink below,” she says.
“Lady Nerida, I’m not sure I can hold my breath long.”
“You won’t need to. The chamber induces a deprivation state. Your body stays at the surface. Your mind goes where it must.”
I swallow hard. “And where is that?”
“Where you hide the things you don’t want to lead with.”
I take a breath and slowly lower myself, letting the water rise over my shoulders. The warmth seeps into my muscles, loosening tension I didn’t realize I was carrying. Lady Nerida places two fingers at my temple. Her touch is cool despite the warm water, sending a shiver down my spine.
“When you’re ready,” she says. “Let your head fall back.”
I lower myself further. The water closes over half my head with a soft rush of sound as I lay horizontal in the pool. I close my eyes as darkness fills my vision, complete and absolute. The sounds of theouter chamber vanish under the water, replaced by my own heartbeat, slow and distant like a drum echoing. The water supports me completely, removing all sense of up or down, left or right.
My body floats without effort. A voice threads through the dark, quiet but unmistakable.
“Good. Let the mind open.” Lady Nerida whispers in my mind.
Shapes bloom behind my closed eyelids. Not quite images, not quite memories. Light flickers like reflections on water, fragmenting and reforming. Then the light fractures into multiple paths, each one pulling in a different direction.
Three figures stand in the dark.
Lord Castor, formed from sharp motion and force. He moves even when standing still, energy coiled and ready to explode.
Lord Evander, outlined in measured lines and steady points. Geometry made flesh, logic given form.
Lady Nerida herself, shifting with the rhythm of unseen tides. Her edges blur and reshape with each breath.
The maze flickers behind them, its walls breathing like a creature with lungs. The corridors pulse and contract, expanding and collapsing in rhythm with my heartbeat.
“You fear leading them.” Lady Nerida’s voice echoes through my mind, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. “Not because you doubt their strength. Because you doubt the shape of yours.”
The water cradles me as images rise faster now, surfacing from depths I didn’t know existed. Lady Nerida’s voice cuts through again. “Look.”
A vision starts to form.
A faceless man stands in the centre of the mirror labyrinth, tall and radiant, the Sun sigil burning across his chest like a star given flesh. His hand lifts and pain flashes through every part of the vision, sharp and sudden. People scream. Light consumes them. He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t show mercy.
I try to move, but my feet are rooted to ground that doesn’t exist.
The light swallows everything.
“Good. Follow it.”
A new image forms. This one is smaller, more personal. A glimpseof my hands pressed against Zevran’s chest, healing him in the shadows of the medical chamber. I can feel it even here, even in this vision – the rush of power leaving my body, the relief of release, the euphoric high that follows. My breath stutters with the memory.
