Chapter 153: Brother’s Shadow, Brother’s Knife
The mirror stood where no mirror should—half-buried in the marrow dust of the Cradle of Severed Reflections, surrounded by skeletal lanterns made of fingerbones and crimson thread.
It called to Rin Xie.
He did not know how he had found it, only that his steps had drawn him here, guided by something that reeked of familiarity and rot. The mirror was tall and blackened, framed in a twisted alloy of soulsteel and silent gold, its surface unnaturally still. Not reflective. Not opaque. Just waiting.
Waiting to be seen.
Waiting to be remembered.
The Vale of Wounded Promises whispered around him. Cold wind curled like forgotten breath. The bones of extinct spirit-beasts formed the jagged landscape, and each step Rin took crunched on the remains of things that should not have died. The sky here was starless, endless—like a great gaping maw.
But it was the mirror that consumed him.
"This place is wrong," muttered Ny'xuan from his sheath. The dagger's voice was subdued, as if even he feared memory's domain. "What you find in there may kill more than your body."
Rin did not respond. He approached the mirror and stared.
And the mirror stared back.
The surface rippled, and then—it began.