The glowing script spreads, weaving between the three sections like threads forming a tapestry.
They all turn to me.
I close my eyes, forcing myself to remember. “Astrid’s mother. In the garden, when she warned my mother to run.” My throat closes. “She said…” I have to push the words out. “‘Hope survives when we choose to carry it.’”
The final section of wall blazes to life. Every fragment lifts from the walls, swirling through the air around us. The letters rearrange themselves mid-flight, combining and connecting until complete sentences form.
They settle into new positions, no longer separated by dialect or House:
What you carry together is lighter than what you carry alone.
The walls begin to dissolve.
Not crumbling or shattering – just fading, like mist burning off in sunlight. Beyond them, I can see the corridor continuing deeper into the maze.
That’s when we hear it.
The sound of combat. Steel on steel, shouts of anger and pain.
Zevran's team.
We run toward the sound, following twisting passages as the noise grows louder. Shouts of anger and pain, the sharp crack of shattering glass. When we emerge onto a balcony overlooking a circular arena, I stop so fast Lord Castor nearly collides with me.
Below us, Zevran’s team fights desperately against figures made of mirror shards. The creatures move like humanoid glass, reforming even as weapons cut through them. Each blade that strikes them sends cascades of crystalline fragments scattering before they pull themselves back together.
Zevran fights with desperate skill, his greatsword crackling with blue energy as it carves through one creature. The force field around the blade flares bright where it meets the mirror construct, but the thing just reforms. Lady Tavia darts between enemies with her staff, its ends glowing with contained power. Commander Kaelix’s energy gauntlets spark and flash as they punch through mirror flesh that simply flows back together. Isolde dodges with graceful ease, twin daggers trailing light as she focuses on evasion rather than offence.
“What are these things?” Lord Castor growls beside me.
But I’m watching the way the mirror figures move. The way they strike. Every attack mirrors something: rage, fear, desperation. They’re not random. They’re responding to emotion.
One of the creatures breaks away from the fight below and launches itself toward our balcony. It scales the mirrored wall, shards spraying as it lunges over the edge.
I step forward, my sword still sheathed at my side. The energy cell in the hilt hums faintly, waiting to be activated.
“Lady Cyra!” Lord Evander shouts.
The creature halts inches from me, head tilted. Its mirrored surface flickers, my reflection steady while the others behind me writhe with tension and fear.
I take a chance on what my intuition is telling me.
I take a slow breath, forcing my racing heart to calm. The creature’s surface ripples, grows still. When I lower my empty hands to my sides, it doesn’t attack.
“They’re mimicking us,” I say, understanding flooding through me. “Every strike they make mirrors the emotions we feed them.”
The mirror figure wavers, then dissolves into harmless shards that tinkle across the stone floor.
Maybe this intuition I’ve had my entire life has been amplified by the visions in the Neptune pool … I used to think I simply had good instincts.
But maybe … it’s inheritance. My connection to the Moon.
“Lord Castor, Lord Evander – control your emotions, not just your weapons,” I call out. “Lady Nerida, help them find calm.”
Below, more creatures are forming from the walls themselves. Lord Castor meets one head-on with his war hammer, its head surrounded by a crackling red force field. But this time he’s controlled, powerful strikes without rage behind them. The creature fights back, but weaker. When Lord Evander follows the pattern, his compact mace glowing with contained energy as it finds weak points with efficiency instead of panic, his opponent fractures easier.
Lady Nerida begins to hum – low and rhythmic – and water seems to shimmer in the air around us. The temperature drops. My team’s breathing slows.
But Zevran’s team is still fighting blindly, feeding the maze with every desperate strike.
