Darkness stretched endlessly in all directions—if eyes could see at all in such a place. But this was no ordinary darkness. It was aware, as if Lizyra were being watched not by sight, but by the absence of it. Somehow, she could perceive the void—not by light, but by the weight of what wasn't there. It wasn't pitch or black or colorless. It was deeper than all of that. A vast, perfect nothing.53Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNShC7xeZdZ
There were no stars. No sun. No moons. No ceiling, no walls—only the ground beneath her feet. But even that betrayed expectation. She stood ankle-deep in eerily still water, shallow enough to almost forget it was there. Beneath it, a smooth stone surface lay cold and unyielding—not jagged like river rock or weather-worn like mountain slate, but chiseled with unnatural precision, like the forgotten floor of some drowned cathedral abandoned by the gods.
And in this infinite absence, the only thing that broke the void was the mirror.
Massive, monolithic, it loomed before Lizyra—its surface as black as the abyss around it, framed in thick, carved metal etched with ancient, unreadable sigils. No two glyphs were the same, spiraling around the frame in an unending script. Twin sconces were affixed to the sides, each holding an unlit torch. Cold, silent, waiting.
But the strangest thing—stranger even than the mirror's presence in this dreamless dark—was its reflection: or rather, the lack of one. The mirror did not show Lizyra. It did not show anything. Its surface was darker than the void itself. It swallowed thought, memory, and meaning whole.
She glanced down at herself. Gone was her wide-brimmed wizard’s hat, her black cloak and tunic. Instead, her body was wrapped loosely in white bandages from neck to toe, as if freshly mummified. They clung damply to her skin, soaked by the silent water. Her silver-lavender hair, normally cascading past her shoulders, was pulled tightly into a high ponytail.
There was blood—dark, dried streaks across her chest, still fresh enough to stain but not to drip. Her feet were bare, the bandages slowly wicking up the moisture around her ankles. Yet the wound on her back, where the shot had struck her between the shoulder blades, did not ache. There was no pain. Only silence. Only shadow.
Time felt frozen. Stagnant. The air hung cold and heavy, and Lizyra's breath curled faintly before her lips like mist on a Solis morning at Dawntide. Though she was wrapped tightly in cloth, she felt exposed—naked, not just in body, but in soul. Her connection to mana—to the Essence—felt severed. Frozen. Distant. She knew her magic required no wand, no staff, no medium; she had cast incantations by will alone before. But here… her words dissolved into hollow echoes, vanishing into the abyss. The air swallowed sound like a dead god’s tomb.
There were no nullifying runes etched in the stone beneath her. No anti-magic glyphs or counter-spell wards. Only the mirror.
Eighteen years of strange happenings had scarred and shaped Lizyra’s life—but this… this eclipsed all of them. And stranger still: it felt less like she had arrived in this place… and more like she had always been here. As if her soul had known this dark, drowned plane long before her mind ever caught up.
Clearing her throat, she said aloud, “Am I dead?”
Her voice rang out across the nothingness, echoing through the void as if she were speaking from within the grand halls of Valmosa’s Mages’ College.
Silence answered.
“Is this Laminara?” she called out again as if someone was there.
But this place bore no resemblance to the shimmering gardens of Elysion, nor the radiant spires of Aionia. Nor did it burn with the sulfur and brimstone of Infernalis or Perpetua. No divine hymns. No screaming damned. Just silence. Just cold.
Just her.
And yet, she felt no fear. Not yet. Instead, irritation prickled at her nerves.
“One does not simply fall asleep in their bed and wake in the mouth of a void for no reason,” she snapped, her words biting.
She turned, scanning the shadows for movement. A flicker. A shape. Anything.
There was nothing.
All she had was the mirror.
With magic choked from her lips and soul, Lizyra defaulted to instinct—her tomb-raider’s training. Ruins, temples, ancient machines: when magic failed, her hands did not. She stepped toward the towering glass and traced her fingers along its edges. The carved frame was cold, unyielding, and inscribed with ancient glyphs she didn’t recognize. Between the symbols, spaced evenly around the mirror’s frame, were ten shallow indentations—slots of varying size and shape, as if waiting to be filled.
Jewels, perhaps? Keys? Bone?
She didn’t know. But whatever this mirror was—it wasn’t finished.
Finding nothing of immediate interest on the mirror’s face, Lizyra circled around it—pausing when her eyes fell upon the reverse side.
It was double-sided.
Where the front had been forged from darkened mithril, the back gleamed in resplendent gold. The same strange glyphs and sigils circled its frame, but none repeated from the front. Here too were empty sockets, waiting for pieces long since stolen or never born. Yet this side of the mirror reflected not shadow, but blinding brilliance—an impossible glare, as though the light from the sun were crashing upon it, casting her own image into unreadable silhouette.
She couldn’t see through it. Not to the other side. Not to herself.
Intrigued, she stepped back around to the original face of the mirror and—without overthinking—began walking. Straight ahead. Past the mirror. Forward.
Her bare footsteps whispered against wet stone as she pressed deeper into the nothingness. The mirror behind her shrank in the distance—until she noticed something was wrong.
It was in front of her again.
Despite her steps, she stood once more before the mirror, now closer than ever. The air had grown colder, more still. The damp cloth wrapped around her legs had soaked through to her waist, the chill leeching warmth from her bones as the water continued its slow crawl up her spine.
The mirror remained fixed on a slightly raised dais of seamless stone, an altar unto itself embedded into the flooded floor. It had not moved.
She had simply never left.
Lizyra frowned. If this was the work of a Mare, a Nighthag, or one of those lecherous dream-crawling Incubi, there was nothing to be done until the creature revealed itself. She considered the possibility she might be dead. If so, perhaps this was her sentence. Not flame, not torment—just reflection.
A fitting punishment, she mused.
Maybe it was for always ignoring the rules. For brushing off instructions like “Fall back,” or “No flying,” or “Don’t let your damn dragon scout alone.”
She smirked bitterly, whispering, “A dragon was born to fly… keeping him penned up in that wagon stunted his wings and his hunger.”
It had seemed logical at the time. Then Nox had been captured.
Whatever this place was, whatever force had brought her here—she doubted she could fight it, not yet. But there was one thing that never failed her when the world refused to make sense.
Meditation.
“When in doubt, think it out.” That was what Theo always said, as if it were the answer to everything. And maybe, sometimes, it was.
With a sigh, Lizyra unceremoniously flopped onto the stone near the mirror. A splash echoed as the shallow water leapt to kiss the glass. She tugged at the damp bandages around her feet, peeling them away and letting the rags fall into the water.
“Can’t get comfy with those on,” she muttered with a squawk, voice trailing into the empty dark.
Reclining, she pressed the soles of her feet against the mirror, resting one leg over the other. Arms folded behind her head, she let herself breathe.
The water was not warm, but not yet cold enough to sting. Her breath still misted into the gloom, rising like pale smoke above her lips. The wet crept down her back, across the nape of her neck… but she didn’t flinch.
She simply laid there, still as a drowned statue, waiting for the darkness to blink first.
It wasn’t her ideal vision of comfort, but Lizyra had grown up sleeping in worse places.
Since childhood, she’d camped in the shattered bones of temples, atop the ribs of dead wyvernous mountains, and beneath the ruinous eaves of half-buried fortresses. She’d spent more nights under crumbled roofs than beneath proper ones. Featherbeds and hearthfires were things you read about in books, not luxuries one expected to actually enjoy. The idea of sleeping on a mattress with a spring core and layered comforter for more than a night or two at a roadside inn? That was a fantasy given her work.
Still half reclined in her awkward pose, Lizyra began to slow her breathing into a sluggish, rhythmic crawl. In the silence, she didn’t speak aloud, but her mind whispered incantations—passages from spellbooks, half-remembered sigils from weathered grimoires. She traced them mentally, the glyphs coiling and spinning behind her closed eyes.
Just before she felt herself drift off, it came.
A sound—deep and thunderous—rang out like a temple bell during an execution. It boomed not into her ears, but through her bones. The vibration traveled up her bare legs from the mirror she had rested them against. Her eyes snapped open just in time to witness both torches erupt into brilliant, balefire blue—deep and luminous, their flames crackling like ominous whispers.
And in that eerie, dancing light… she saw it.
The mirror’s reflection was no longer empty. Something perched at the top, just out of full focus, watching her.
She blinked. It vanished.
When she sat upright, rubbing her eyes and squinting into the new glow, she realized—it was no longer just a reflection.
It was real.
Now perched atop the mirror’s gilded frame was a creature massive enough to dwarf it—its wings tucked, but its presence unmistakable. Its feathers were deep earthen brown, streaked with trails of snowy white, as if it had flown through the breath of a blizzard. Its talons, long and cruel, gripped the edge of the mirror’s arch like a predator about to strike. Its eyes burned—not gold, not orange, but neon yellow, impossibly bright, as though it had swallowed the stars of another realm and kept them smoldering inside its skull.
It twisted its head unnaturally, rotating one way, then the other—an elegant contortion that should have been grotesque, but was not.
A beak of polished silver sat beneath its radiant eyes—sharp, silent, ancient.
It was a Great Horned Owl, larger than any Lizyra had seen, even in myth sketched across textbooks. The kind of creature whose gaze broke silence, not just in voice but in thought.
Blue embers from the torchlight drifted downward, sizzling out in the shallow water. The flames continued to burn in defiance of physics, their crackling rhythm strangely musical.
The owl shifted, raising itself fully upright atop the mirror. Its wings unfurled to their full span—wider than the mirror, wider than reason—and folded again with divine finality.
Then, it spoke.
Its voice was deep, fluid, and slow—like the current of a forest river. It spoke not in anger, but in patient displeasure:
“Why are your feet upon my mirror, Umbra Draconum?”
Its head dipped low, far too close, eyes locking with hers like twin suns through the fog.
“I do not come to your dwelling and press my talons to your sacred things.”
Lizyra’s breath caught in her throat. Her feet still rested where she had placed them, dangling up against the mirror. She swallowed hard, sweat prickling across her temple. Slowly—very slowly—she withdrew her feet, placing them beneath the mirror on the stone, never breaking the owl’s gaze.
It continued, with a voice still smooth as polished stone and just as cold:
“Manners, it seems, are no longer taught to humes these days.”
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Sitting fully upright now, unsure if her movements even mattered in this place, Lizyra asked flatly, “Am I dead?”
The owl let out a low, resonant chuckle before answering, “We are all dead—and alive. We flow through the Essence eternally.”
A frown curved across Lizyra’s lips. Again, she asked, “Am I dreaming?”
The owl tilted its head sideways in a slow, unnatural arc and replied, “We were all once dreams of the gods.”
Growing more irritated than intimidated, Lizyra snapped, “I don’t care for riddles. Or metaphors. Or whatever game you think this is. If you’re going to kill me, or rape me, or whatever the fuck this is, just do it already.”
She threw herself back down onto the cold ground, slapping her feet back up against the mirror in open defiance. “I’ve fought worse things than some big, spooky-arse owl and his fancy broken mirror. And if you’re some kind of Mare, Nighthag, or Succubus, I’m sure Isaac and the others are already working on a way to gut you.”
The owl was still.
For a long moment, it did not speak. Its luminous yellow eyes narrowed—not in malice, but in something else. Amusement, perhaps. Or patience thinning to a razor’s edge. Lizyra’s body may have seemed relaxed, but the creature could hear her heartbeat hammering in her chest. She was bluffing. Her breath came in shallow, forced puffs.
Then, with a sudden flick of its wing, a howling gale burst across the mirror. The sheer force of it lifted Lizyra from the floor and slammed her upright onto her feet, directly in front of the mirror in one swift, fluid motion.
“You misunderstand why you are here, Umbra Draconum.” The owl's voice now held a tone more ancient than stone. It stretched its head high, impossibly far, then retracted it again like a serpent coiling. “Gaze into the mirror. Tell me what you see.”
Still feigning nonchalance, Lizyra huffed, “I already did. Twice, actually. First time it looked like a fogged-up window. Second time? Pretty sure I saw you skulking around in there.”
The owl’s voice grew colder. “You test my patience, Umbra Draconum.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You keep calling me that. That’s not my name.” She shifted her weight to one foot, crossing her arms. “You are the strangest night terror I’ve ever had.”
For a moment, everything froze. Then the torches flashed—a harsh, crimson flare that drowned the room in blood-colored light.
With a deep, echoing fury, the owl intoned: “What... do you see... in the mirror?”
The flames receded again into calm blue.
Grumbling under her breath, Lizyra muttered, “Alright, alright, as you command, oh feathered tyrant of my subconscious…”
She stepped forward, her breath fogging against the cold surface as her eyes met it—and stopped.
It was no longer empty.
Within the mirror, colors churned like oil paint on water, swirling and spiraling with chaotic grace. The hues danced in impossible motion—acrylic blues, venom greens, bruised purples—all coalescing into something… half-formed.
As she watched, shapes began to bloom inside the pool of swirling color. Abstract features—sharp lines, softened shadows—a face, she realized. Just barely.
Still blurred. Still drowned beneath a storm of unnatural color. But it was forming. And it was watching her.
With a touch of uncertainty lacing her voice, Lizyra murmured, “I’m not really sure what I’m looking at. It... it looks like a face, but there’s no real detail. Too many intrusive colors swirling around to make anything out.”
Her gaze lingered.
Then, the sharp clang of steel striking stone rang out at her feet, echoing through the nothingness like a warning bell.
Startled, she tore her eyes from the mirror and looked down.
A scythe lay there—black and red dragonsteel, its blade long and wickedly curved like the crescent grin of a demon. The weapon pulsed with quiet menace in the torchlight. Its handle, forged from dark glossy dragonwood, was etched with intricate crimson inlays that danced along the shaft like blood trails in silver veins. Near the base of the blade, two arcanix slots—currently empty—rested on either side of a metallic bracer where the blade met the haft. Lizyra recognized the fittings immediately; she’d handled enough arcane weapons to know how deadly such a scythe could be when empowered.
Raising an eyebrow, she bent to pick it up and muttered, “Well that’s an odd thing for a feather-brain to just leave lying around.”
As her fingers brushed the shaft—A second blade came screaming down from above.
She instinctively flinched, lurching backward just in time. The blade sliced through the air where her head had been moments before.
Adrenaline flared. Lizyra rolled backwards, snatching the first scythe as she tumbled off the raised stone and into the shallow water, landing hard on her hands and rear with a splash that sent ripples across the floor.
Blinking in disbelief, she snapped, “What the fuck, Mr. Owl!?”
But the owl was no longer atop the mirror.
Another figure crouched there now—balanced perfectly on the mirror’s crown like a vulture waiting to strike.
Shrouded in a nearly black, earth-toned cloak and tunic, the figure’s hood obscured their face. Strands of silver hair spilled from beneath the hood, brushing just past their jaw. What Lizyra could see, illuminated in the eerie sapphire glow of the torchlight, was a cruel and familiar grin—one that sent a cold thrill down her spine.
Black leather boots clung tightly to their pale calves, vanishing beneath the dark hem of the tunic. Matching gloves reached up past the elbows. The figure's cloak billowed out behind them, its edges coiling like smoke over the mirror’s curved back. In one hand, effortlessly held aloft, they wielded a nearly identical scythe—except theirs wasn’t inert.
Brilliant arcanix gems pulsed within its socketed frame. Their enchantments flickered with blood-hued light across the scythes body.
Too slender to be lifting such a monstrous weapon with ease.
Too familiar to ignore.
Lizyra’s eyes narrowed.
The figure didn’t move.
The mirror continued to swirl—colors spiraling like oil on water, still clawing together to form a face half-buried in the fog of unreal hue.
From her knees to her neck, Lizyra was still wrapped in damp, clinging bandages—barefoot, breath visible, and bathed in spectral torchlight. The only thing she had to her name now was the scythe resting in her grip—a grim gift from a dream, or perhaps a weapon forged by madness itself. She didn’t know if she was dead, dreaming, or tangled in some horrific hallucination, but whatever this place was… it felt more real than anything she’d ever known. More vivid than pain. More lucid than memory.
The cold stone beneath her hands and thighs pulsed with an unnatural chill, as if it too were breathing in the darkness with her. She pushed a damp strand of silver-lavender hair behind her ear, shifting her grip on the scythe, and said with a glib tone that didn’t match the thudding in her chest:
“That wasn’t very nice. You almost carved my face off, you asshole. And where the hells is Mr. Owl? We were having a moment, feathered and cryptic as it was.”
Grunting, she rose shakily to her feet. Water dripped from her knees as she stood.53Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRxKxyjAYwe
“You kinda interrupted something.”
The cloaked figure didn’t respond. They stood motionless atop the mirror’s rim, still grinning beneath the veil of their hood. The grin—a sliver of malice glowing in the torchlight—was wide enough to split a god’s silence.
Lizyra adjusted her grip again, shifting the scythe’s awkward weight between her hands. It wasn’t designed for her. The balance was wrong, the heft uneven, like trying to fight with a bronze tombstone on a stick. The last time she felt this clumsy wielding something, she’d tried swinging Isaac’s overcompensating two-handed bastard sword—and that time, at least she’d had wind magic to help her cheat. Not now.
No magic. Just her. Just the blade.
Without warning, the assailant dropped from the top of the mirror like a bird of prey. A single swipe of their glowing scythe sliced through the air where her chest had been a heartbeat earlier. Lizyra stumbled back—more luck than skill—her heel slipping on the wet stone. She crashed into the shallow water but kept both hands on the scythe, dragging it as she rolled.
Spinning on instinct, she contorted her body mid-fall and dragged the heavy blade in an upward arc, sweeping it low toward her attacker’s feet with all the strength she had.
The cloaked figure vaulted over the counterattack with insulting ease—still smirking—but they hadn’t expected her next move.
Lizyra, now flat on her back, twisted her grip and shoved the shaft upward, catching the assailant mid-air with the flat of the weapon. The blow wasn’t precise, but it was brutal. The figure was launched off course, sent sprawling into the black water beyond, their own scythe clattering from their grip as they tumbled into the dark.
Breath ragged, Lizyra pushed herself up to her knees, water sluicing from her bandages.
She gasped, then barked out:53Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMwXIjfY0FU
“How’d you like that one, bitch?”
The scythe hung from her hands like a corpse on a gallows, and every motion sent a spike of fire through her back and shoulders. She was learning its weight, bit by bit, but wielding it still felt like dragging a corpse through a swamp.
This was no dream.
Her chest burned with exhaustion. The cold air carved into her skin, clinging to the wet bandages that bound her. And despite the surreal nature of her enemy, despite the impossible setting and the mystery of the mirror, she still felt the shame of her exposure—wrapped in barely-there cloth, while her opponent stood fully clothed and cloaked in menace.
Even in death or dreams, modesty had claws.
Behind them, the torchlight had grown wild—no longer flickering with idle flame, but roaring with purpose. The endless darkness began to recoil, pushed back just far enough to reveal four slender plinths—each one rising silently from the black stone, like bones emerging from a burial rite. They formed a perfect square around the mirror, each one positioned at a corner of an invisible perimeter.
Atop each plinth, embedded in their worn crowns, were glowing arcanix stones—each different, each pulsing with a whisper of embodied essence.
Lizyra hadn’t noticed them before. But now, with her opponent staggering back to their feet, she wasn’t about to waste the opportunity.
Without hesitation, she sprinted toward the nearest plinth, her bare feet slapping through shallow water, her scythe dragging behind her like a cursed anchor. She didn’t dare look back—not when she could hear the wet footfalls of her doppelganger gaining ground, boots slapping the stone with relentless hunger.
She passed the plinth and snatched the arcanix from its socket with a swift flick of her free hand, not breaking stride as she vanished deeper into the darkness beyond the mirror’s reach. The gem’s glow trembled in her palm—a swirling spiral of black and violet, like a galaxy condensed into a drop of dying starlight.
Lizyra grimaced.
“Damn it,” she gasped between breaths. “It’s almost burned out.”
It was gravity-based—she could feel the pull in her bones. The arcanix was weak, but with her own mana pool severed, it might be her only chance. Whether this was the dream of a monster or a prison crafted by her own soul, she couldn’t count on anyone else. Not Isaac. Not the owl. Not the gods.
She was alone here.
The sound of footfalls behind her quickened—closer. Closer.
With no time left and no strength to waste, Lizyra pivoted sharply, hurling her weight into the scythe. She swung it overhead and slammed it down—blade-first into the stone. The weapon sank into the ground with an unexpected ease, biting into the floor like it had always belonged there.
With trembling fingers, Lizyra shoved the arcanix into one of the vacant slots near the weapon’s base.
“Flectere gravitas!” she shouted.
The scythe pulsed with light—a haunting, otherworldly violet glow that seemed to bend the air around it. The moment the words left her lips, the blade trembled in her hands, suddenly weightless. She yanked it free from the stone like it was made of paper.
Just in time.
Her doppelganger struck—a whisper through the dark, blade screaming toward her spine.
Lizyra twisted and caught the strike with her newly empowered scythe, the two blades shrieking as they scraped together in a brilliant shower of sparks and arcane light. The force of the clash blew water into the air around them in a misty halo.
The assailant’s hood flew back.
Lizyra’s breath caught.
She was staring into her own face.
Same red eyes. Same silver lanvander-esque hair. Same expression—except twisted with something Lizyra had never seen in herself. A grin carved from malice. A mockery of her soul.
The doppelganger jerked her blade back, dropped to a knee, and swung low with a sweeping, elegant motion. Lizyra leapt, legs burning, barely clearing the edge of the blade as it screamed beneath her feet.
And then—
“Aquam igni,” the doppelganger whispered with eerie calm.
The water that had splashed away from her blade mid-swing erupted—not with a crash, but with a bloom. Fire and molten mist shot outward like a dragon’s breath. The torchlight warped. Steam and flame wrapped the two of them in a burning halo.
A dream had no right to burn like this.
And yet Lizyra felt it. On her skin. In her lungs.53Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUxCKZODA93
This wasn't magic for show. This was war.
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Lizyra crashed into the stone, the landing jarring enough to rattle her bones. She barely had time to register the pain before realizing her bandages were hissing and curling, set alight by the molten mist. Steam rose off her skin as the cloth burned away, leaving raw, scorched flesh exposed to the air.
Under her breasts and across her abdomen, a searing pain thundered through her core—so sharp it nearly turned her vision white.
Before she could rise, a hand—hot and merciless—wrapped around the nape of her neck.
SLAM.
Her face struck the stone.
SLAM.
Again. Harder. Her skull rang like a cathedral bell, echoing across the void.
SLAM. SLAM.
Blood pooled from her brow, and her vision blurred to a crimson haze as her doppelganger—grinning like a lunatic—obsessively slammed her head into the floor with frenzied force.
Her mind screamed. Her body twitched.
Through the blur, she caught a glimmer—the scythe. Her enemy’s weapon, just within reach. Its arcanix crystals burned bright in the reflection of the water, their hues flickering in warped halos.
With no time to think and no strength for anything else, Lizyra stretched out a trembling hand, gripped the shaft of her foe’s weapon, and whispered with what little breath she had:
“Explodere...”
One of the red arcanix embedded in the scythe detonated.
A thunderous blast of fire and pressure threw her across the endless chamber like a ragdoll. She hit the stone hard, skidding to a halt as her own scythe spun through the air, splashing down in the water beside her.
Across from her, the doppelganger slammed into the floor with a sickening crunch, their body smoldering, twitching, and half-naked. Their cloak and tunic had burned away entirely, leaving only boots, gloves, and pale, charred skin partially covered in strange talismans—paper-thin, etched in black sigils, clinging to their flesh like leeches.
But their smile… that horrific, delighted grin… remained intact.
The hollow socket where the arcanix had detonated glowed faintly, sparking silghtly in molten ember. And with a scraping hiss, the doppelganger dragged their scythe toward Lizyra like a predator closing in on a dying meal.
She tried to move. Tried to lift herself.
Her body refused.
Her chest burned. Her limbs trembled. Blood seeped into her eyes, staining her vision a deep crimson. She clawed toward her fallen weapon, moaning through gritted teeth, every breath like fire in her lungs. Her fingers found the scythe, but it may as well have been forged from stone—too heavy to lift now that she was far to weak to embrace the weapons enchantment.
She collapsed over it, barely conscious, barely alive.
And still, the doppelganger approached, silent, patient.
Behind her, the torchlight blazed like wrath incarnate, drowning the room in shadow and surreal blue light. Lizyra could see little of the face above her, only the outline of her death—scythe raised high, ready to strike.
She clenched her fist.
To the doppleganger surprise, Lizyra’s gravity arcanix—was now clentched in her hand instead of embedded in her scythe.
“Gravitas ligare!” she shouted.
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The doppelganger dropped like a meteor, face-first into the stone, arms pinned by an unseen force. They screamed, writhing in shock.
“Gravitas ligare!” Lizyra cried again, her voice trembling with fury.
The weight doubled. The scream turned to a choking gasp.
“Gravitas ligare!”
Bones groaned and twisted beneath the doppleganger’s flesh. Something snapped—loud and wet—beneath the crushing magic’s embrace.
With the last of her strength and the gem splintering in her hand, Lizyra screamed one final time:
“GRAVITAS LIGARE!”
The arcanix shattered, bursting into shards of glass and fading light.
And her doppelganger—her tormentor, her reflection, her nightmare—exploded. Not in flame, but in a sickening bloom of pink mist, shattered bones, and twisted viscera that splashed across the stone like spilled paint. What remained of her was an unrecognizable mush of puss, bone, and flesh.
Lizyra collapsed over her scythe, gasping, blind, burned, and barely breathing.
But still alive.
Lizyra lurched forward, vomiting blood and bile onto the stone floor.
Her body shook violently as she coughed, her breath shallow and raw. What remained of her doppelgänger—chunks of meat, viscera, and bone—began to twist and evaporate into tendrils of black and violet miasma, vanishing into the darkness like a soul exorcised from flesh. Both scythes disintegrated with the last of the smoke, leaving only a single object behind:
A brilliant emerald, glowing faintly and wrapped in an intricately wrought gold housing—like a jewel plucked from the diadem of a god.
It tumbled from the mirror’s surface as the glass dulled back into lifeless grey sheen. The once-furious blue flames of the sconces dimmed, flickering softly, as the darkness slowly crept in again, retreating toward the edges of the stone platform like a tide pulled back into an eternal sea.
Lizyra, still on her hands and knees, spat blood onto the shallow water and stone and let out a hoarse, broken laugh.
“Is that it? Hah… Are you not entertained? Satisfied, whatever the fuck you are?”
A voice answered from above—not cruel, not mocking, but familiar, otherworldly.
“Impressive,” the great horned owl said. “Unable to wield your own magic, you stole it from the arcanix. That was... unexpected, Umbra Draconum.”
Lizyra’s limbs trembled as she forced herself upright. Her head swayed like a dying flame in a storm. She blinked blood from her eyes and turned her gaze upward—there the owl sat, perched once more atop the now-dim mirror, its head cocked completely upside down.
“Not good enough for what comes next,” the owl continued, its luminous yellow eyes boring into her.
Breathing heavily, Lizyra growled through her cracked lips, “That’s not my name. My name is Lizyra.”
The owl didn’t flinch. It simply rotated its head back to an upright angle in one unnerving, seamless motion.
Still panting, she added with a bitter chuckle, “And you? Got a name, featherhead? I’m guessing you cooked up that twisted version of me, so I figure it’s only polite we exchange names.”
She gestured limply, like she was motioning a servant to speak.
The owl sat in silence, blinking once… then twice. Finally, it spoke with the weight of a millennia behind its voice.
“In all my existence, no creature—man, beast, or god—has ever spoken to me so irreverently.”
With a single beat of its wings, a miniature cyclone whipped up beneath Lizyra, spinning her upright and carrying her to stand directly in front of the mirror. The emerald now sat at her feet.
“I haven’t spoken my name in over ten thousand years,” the owl said softly. “And I doubt you could even pronounce it if I remembered how to say it in a tongue your kind could bear.”
Still bleeding, still steaming in the cold air, Lizyra narrowed her eyes. “After what you just put me through? You could at least try.”
A moment passed. Then the owl opened its beak—
—and sang.
No words. No syllables. Just a cascade of impossible sounds—screeches, thunderclaps, whispers, weeping, glass breaking beneath the ocean, a heartbeat echoing through the stars. The noise was pain and memory, language and war, a song that split Lizyra’s mind open and folded it in on itself.
She dropped to her knees, twitching violently. Her muscles convulsed, her spine arched. Her ears almost bleeding.
And then… stillness.
“Wow!” the owl chirped, stretching its wings. “That felt amazing. I’d forgotten how good my name sounds.”
Eyes rolling in her head, Lizyra coughed, “Yeah... I'm not gonna be able to say that.”
The owl hooted with laughter. “Of course not! Only another ancient or divine beast could recite the true name of something so... beautifully profound.”
Still groggy and shaking, Lizyra reached down and picked up the emerald.
“So what am I supposed to—”
She blinked.
The world had changed.
The mirror, the darkness, the owl—gone.
She was no longer standing in the flooded void but now in a warmly lit chamber, surrounded by paneled wood and oil-lit torches. The air was thick with the scent of spices and simmering meat. Her half-naked body, bloodied and bruised, was steaming as it adjusted to the warmth. Every breath hurt. Her skin was still scorched. Blood trickled steadily down her leg and from her temple, pooling on the carpet below her.
Her vision, hazy and red, slowly focused on the emerald now clutched in her palm. Its gentle glow reflected off the walls around her.
The room was too perfect. Too real. A high-class inn, maybe? Trinkets decorated shelves. A plush bed sat nearby, neatly made. A familiar comfort pressed around her.
Then—creeeeeak.53Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTWRm8UZCGF
A door opened.
A familiar voice.
“You’re finally awake!”
Lizyra turned, slowly, as her legs buckled. Her head throbbed. Blood ran freely down her face.
Osira.
Lizyra's eyes widened in recognition. “Oh… hey.”53Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ93aVAYB9Yc
Her grin was dazed and bloody, full of cracked teeth and madness. She looked like she’d been dragged through every circle of Infernalis.
Osira stood frozen, horror washing over her face.
“What the fuck happened to you?” she stammered, rushing forward. “I came in earlier to check up on you ‘cause you’ve been out for, like, a week. You were gone! I thought you went to piss or something, not fall off an airship!”53Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXWQoM8CWH2
Still grinning like a lunatic, Lizyra raised the emerald in her palm.
“Found this fancy lil’ thang,” she slurred as she choked on the blood pooling in her mouth.
She then crumpled sideways onto the bed, the emerald still clutched in her bloody hand as her eyes closed with a smile stitched across her face.
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