Page 128 of The Curse of Golden Blood
The kind of beauty that started wars.
I reached toward the mirror, needing to touch this impossible version of myself.
The glass rippled.
I jerked my hand back, heart hammering. The surface moved like disturbed water, waves spreading outward from where my fingers had almost made contact.
This wasn't glass. It never had been.
The ripples intensified, and something spoke from within the liquid silver.
Entru naa luin edwen. Gurth uin glamhoth.
Enter or face the doom. Death to the enemies.
The old tongue, older than the courts, older than the wars that carved the realms apart. My blood recognized it even as my mind recoiled.
"What are you?" I whispered, backing away.
The surface stilled to perfect mirror again, but the voice came clearer now. Multiple voices, harmonizing in threat.
Step through, daughter of light. Or watch your precious ones burn.
Images flickered across the surface like reflections from another world. Pelbie, screaming as golden flames consumed her skin. Narietta, wings torn and bleeding, falling from impossible heights.
Zydar.
His name echoed from the mirror like a death knell, and I saw him pinned beneath crushing stone, storm magic flickering out like dying embers.
Sunfire erupted from my hands before conscious thought could stop it. My eyes burned with star-bright fury, power crackling between my fingers in lethal arcs of liquid gold. The room filled with heat that could melt steel.
"Who are you?" I snarled at the thing masquerading as my reflection.
We are what calls to power, what answers when destinies converge.The voices multiplied, became legion.We are the crossroads where choices define eternity.
"What do you want?"
You know what we want. What we have always wanted.The mirror-thing wearing my face smiled with teeth that heldtoo many edges.Step through, Miralyte Tavora. Claim what was promised. Save what you love.
"And if I refuse?"
The images shifted. Pelbie's flesh melting from her bones. Narietta's scream cut short by a blade across her throat. Zydar's eyes going dark as life left them.
Then you learn the price of cowardice.
My power flared higher, but doubt crept in like poison. These visions, were they prophecy or threat? Could this thing actually harm the people I cared about, or was it feeding on my fears?
Time grows short, daughter of the sun. Choose quickly.
My feet carried me forward before logic could intervene. The mirror's surface beckoned like dark water, promising answers and threatening annihilation in equal measure.
That's it. Come to us. Come home.
Power still crackled around my fingers, but my hand reached for the liquid silver. Whatever this was, wherever it led, I couldn't let them die for my hesitation.
The surface felt like ice against my fingertips.
Like falling.
