The mirror refused to lie today.
For the first time since my return, its glass showed her.
Seren.
She wasn't a reflection. She was a second presence. A half-shadowed ghost blinking behind my eyes. She smiled like a wound made of poetry and salt.
"I am what you lost," she said.
"I am the part you gave away to survive."
She stood where my reflection should be longer hair, darker eyes, no warmth in her skin. Her smile was too quiet, too sad to be sane.
I laughed to keep the silence from cracking my mind.
"You're a dream."
"I'm your consequence."
The glass rippled.
I reached toward it toward her and something grabbed me from the inside.
Not a hand. A memory.
No a curse.
The air around me snapped like broken harp strings. My magic surged, wild and unfamiliar. The wind in the room twisted upward, braiding itself into runes older than the throne.
Korrin ran in just as I collapsed to my knees.
"Seraphina"
"Don't touch me!" I hissed, voice layered with two tones. One was mine. The other hers.
"She's not just a soul fragment," Korrin whispered as the warding runes glowed blood-red.
"She's an anchor. You are only stable because she exists."
That's when the realization struck me like prophecy.
Seren wasn't just my echo. She was my cage.
While she lives, I can contain my power.
But if she dies if I reclaim what was stolen—
I don't just become whole.
I become unstoppable.
But uncontainable.
That night, I summon a map of the empire.
There are thirteen temples that bind soul magic.
One of them is hiding her.
"Find Seren," I whisper to the flames.
"Bring her to me. Alive… or in pieces."
Because mercy?
Was never one of my virtues.