Chapter 193: Mirrors debt
I didn’t sleep that night.
Not really.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw his face—Lucian Drelmont’s original reflection, flickering in the shard like a memory I wasn’t supposed to carry. Not angry. Not hateful. Just... tired. As if disappointed I’d woken up at all.
By morning, I had a headache, a dozen failed rune sketches, and a strong suspicion that something was leaking through the mirrors across campus.
I wasn’t wrong.
When I entered the classroom, the air was off.
It wasn’t the students. They straightened, smirking or sighing in their usual half-cocked rhythms. Mira raised an eyebrow. Julien offered a lazy salute. Felix looked like he’d slept in a ditch. Cassandra, as always, sat poised with that eerie silence that was becoming less of a quirk and more of a warning.
No, the room felt wrong.
Specifically—the mirrors.
We had two in the back wall, mostly used for practical rune demonstrations. Today, their surfaces were still. Too still. Like water that refused to ripple. Like eyes that refused to blink.
I walked over, slowly.