Page 55 of A Taste of Silver
The chamber shuddered. Every mirror began to hum in perfect harmony, and somewhere in the darkness between reflections, something crimson and ancient began to scream.
The real battle was just beginning.
The scream from the darkness between reflections grew louder, transforming into something that wasn't quite sound, more like the sensation of glass grinding against bone. My palms burned where they touched the mirror, the ghost-melody flowing through me like molten silver.
"You dare?" The Crimson One's voice emerged from the cracks, rich and terrible as aged wine mixed with blood. "You, a half-trained child playing with forces beyond comprehension?"
The darkness coalesced into a shape that hurt to perceive directly. Not quite human, not quite serpent, but something that had been both once and was neither now. Crimson light leaked from wounds that might have been eyes, might have been mouths, might have been portals to somewhere else entirely.
"I'm not playing." My voice came out steadier than I felt. The ghost-melody strengthened, and I let it guide my words. "I'm remembering what you made everyone forget. What mirrors truly are."
Vaen's reflection solidified slightly, his form gaining substance as the true harmony pushed back against the corruption. "Aurea, don't engage with it directly. The Crimson One feeds on attention, on acknowledgment?—"
"Like all parasites," Silvyr finished. His multiple reflections moved in unison, creating a defensive pattern around my image in the mirrors. "It can't create, only corrupt what already exists."
The Crimson One laughed, and several mirrors cracked from the sound alone. "Such wisdom from creatures barely moresubstantial than smoke. Tell me, serpent prince, how does it feel to watch your precious Mirrorwalker through glass you can never truly cross? To be so close and forever apart?"
Silvyr's form flickered with rage, constellation eyes blazing brighter. The temperature dropped another degree, frost spreading across the mirror surfaces in spirals that looked almost like script.
"At least I didn't murder the one I claimed to love," Silvyr's voice carried venom sharper than fangs.
The darkness pulsed, and suddenly the Crimson One's attention focused entirely on me. The weight of that gaze was suffocating, pressing against my mind like fingers trying to pry open a locked door.
"But you're considering it, aren't you?" The Crimson One's voice dropped to an intimate whisper that seemed to come from inside my own thoughts. "The binding your brother speaks of, you know what it really means. Unity sounds beautiful until you understand it means one of you ceases to exist. Either you become him, or he becomes you. There is no both."
My hands trembled against the mirror. The ghost-melody wavered.
"That's not—" I started, but the Crimson One pressed on.
"Your mother knew. Why do you think she never completed her own binding? She saw what it would cost. Everything that made her herself would be dissolved into her bonded entity. Or worse, watching him dissolve into her, carrying his death forever in her transformed soul."
The crystal chamber resonated with the truth in those words. Even the Awakening Chord seemed to hesitate, its harmony growing uncertain.
Vaen's reflection moved closer, his face etched with pain. "It's not that simple?—"
"Isn't it?" The Crimson One's form shifted, becoming more solid, more present. "You traded your mortality to prevent their binding, knowing what it would create. Not unity. Consumption. One soul devouring another in the name of love."
My knees buckled. The silver marks on my arms flared with painful intensity, and I could feel Silvyr's distress through our connection like acid in my veins.
"Aurea." Silvyr's voice broke on my name. "Don't listen?—"
"To truth?" The Crimson One laughed again. "How very like a prisoner to fear the keys to his own cage."
The darkness surged forward, and I felt it testing the boundaries of my mind, looking for cracks in my defenses. It found them in my doubt, my exhaustion, my desperate wish for simple answers in a world built on complex lies.
But then Nira's hand touched my shoulder, solid and warm and undeniably real.
"My lady," she said quietly, "your mother used to say that truth without context is just another form of lying."
The simple wisdom in those words cut through the Crimson One's influence like sunlight through fog. I straightened, drawing strength from Nira's presence, from Vaen's conflicted protectiveness, from Silvyr's desperate faith in our bond.
"You're right," I said to the Crimson One, my voice growing stronger. "The binding would change us both. Transform us into something new."
The darkness pulsed with satisfaction.
"But you're also lying." I pressed my palms harder against the mirror, letting the ghost-melody flow through me again. "Because you didn't just murder your Mirrorwalker, you murdered her in the middle of a binding ritual. You corrupted the transformation, tried to take without giving, possess without surrendering. That's why you're neither human nor mirror-entity now. You're the abortion of a union that requires perfect trust."
The Crimson One's scream of rage shattered three mirrors simultaneously. Glass fell like rain, each shard reflecting a different moment of rage and hunger and endless, gnawing emptiness.
