I take the flask with shaking hands. The water helps, even though it doesn’t touch the real problem.
“You chose the honest path,” Lord Evander says. “Not power. Not conquest. Despite the addiction pulling at you, despite everything you have inherited.” He pauses. “That is what matters most.”
Lady Nerida hums softly, and the temperature around us drops a few degrees. The coolness eases some of the nausea. “The daughter is not the father,” she says. “The moon’s light is borrowed from the sun, but it shines differently.”
I want to believe them. Want to trust that I’m different.
“We should keep moving,” Lord Evander says.
He’s right. We can’t undo the past. All we can do is move forward.
Lord Castor hauls me to my feet with one hand, steadying me when I sway. He picks up my sword and presses it back into my grip. “You lead. We follow. The addiction doesn’t change that.”
I take a breath and turn toward the corridor ahead. The mirrors have gone quiet now, as if the maze has said what it needed to say. We walk in silence for several minutes, until the corridor widens into a circular chamber.
The walls here are covered in carved script – ancient, flowing letters in different dialects that shift and blur when I try to focus on them directly. They hurt to look at, like staring into too-bright light.
“What is this?” Lord Castor’s voice is rough.
Lord Evander steps closer to the nearest section, his brown eyes scanning the text. “Old Tongue … Saturn’s dialect.” He traces the letters with one finger. “But it is incomplete. The sentence ends mid-word.”
Lady Nerida moves to another section of wall, her eyes reflecting the faint glow of the script. “Here too – Neptune’s script, but fragmented. Like pieces torn from different pages.”
My stomach drops. The mirrors didn’t just show us our histories to break us.
They left us something.
“The memories,” I say quietly. “Each victim said something before they died … like they left us a message.” I stare at the words, at the pattern forming across the walls. Each fragment belongs to someone’s memory…
But they’re separate. Isolated.
Just like they’ve all been carrying these memories – alone.
“I think we have to say their messages all together,” I whisper.
Lord Castor’s expression hardens. “You want us to stand here and recite our dead parents’ words like some kind of?—”
“Like some kind of acknowledgment that their deaths meant something,” Lady Nerida interrupts softly. “That what they believed in survived them.”
“It’s asking us to trust each other with the weight of it,” I say. “To stop carrying it separately.”
Lord Castor stares at me. His eyes shift – not softening exactly, but cracking. Letting something through.
“Fine.” His voice is harsh. “But if this is some manipulation?—”
“Then we face it together,” Lord Evander finishes.
We stand in a rough circle, facing each other rather than the walls. The glowing script pulses around us.
Lord Castor’s hands clench at his sides. “My father. When Solric told him to drink the poison, he said...” His voice cracks. “He said, ‘Authority must be earned, not taken.’”
The script on the Jupiter portion of the wall begins to glow. Faint at first, then brighter. The letters rearrange themselves, flowing across the mirrors like water finding its path.
Lord Evander stares at the shifting text. “My parents.” He stops. Swallows. “They were archivists. They documented everything, even when it was dangerous. My father said…” He closes his eyes. “‘History preserved defies history rewritten.’”
More script illuminates. The fragments connect, forming coherent phrases in modern language.
Lady Nerida’s voice is barely audible. “My mother. Before the water rose.” Her eyes shimmer. “‘Silence protects the powerful, not the people.’”
