Mirrors began to tremble.
Each surface flickered with scenes from forgotten timelines—Ruoqing stabbing herself before the altar, Murdoch lying in a pool of blood, Lysander with golden eyes kneeling before a black throne.
The reflections whispered like a chorus:"You chose this.""You were always meant to become her.""There is no escaping the mirror."
Murdoch drew his sword. It hissed with silver flames—flames meant to wound timeless beings.
"Stay behind me," he told Ruoqing.
But she stepped forward.
"No," she said quietly. "This is my mirror."
She turned to her other self, the one from the fractured world who had been quiet till now. "You know the ritual. Begin it. I'll hold him off."
The other Ruoqing nodded, beginning the chant. Her voice resonated through the chamber, summoning lines of ancient script to float midair.
Lysander laughed, the sound hollow and terrifying."You think you can lock me out? I am not just a man. I am what comes after death... and before time."
He raised his hand. The mirrors shattered.
Each fragment became a blade, spinning midair, raining toward them like a hurricane of glass.
Murdoch blocked several with his sword. Others cut into his side, arms, legs—thin lines of crimson staining the floor.
Ruoqing called out, "NOW!"
The second Ruoqing finished the incantation. The Shattered Contract ignited, casting the entire chamber in golden-white light. Glyphs spiraled outward, attempting to seal the timeline breach.
For a moment, Lysander stumbled.
But only for a moment.
Then, he stepped forward, walking through the contract flames unburned.
"Did you forget who created the original contract?"
Ruoqing's heart stopped.
"He was the original priest," her mirrored self gasped. "He... built this palace."
Lysander's smile deepened. "You thought the contract could bind me? I wrote it."
He raised a hand, and time slowed.
Ruoqing could see each drop of blood freeze in midair. Murdoch frozen mid-lunge. Her other self mid-chant, eyes wide in horror.
She was the only one who could still move.
Why? she thought.Then she heard the voice—not Lysander's, but older, deeper."Because you are the anchor. You are the original."
A mirror across the room showed her true self—not the bride, not the warrior, not the sacrifice. Just her, in a hospital room, fifteen years ago, a child bleeding out from a glass shard, praying for a miracle.
"You offered your soul to the dark in that moment. You became the mirror."
She finally understood.
She wasn't being possessed by another self.
She had been split.
She was the mirror.
—
Ruoqing screamed, a sound that shattered every remaining pane of glass in the chamber.
Time reasserted itself. The Shattered Contract pulsed with new energy, now tied to her.
Golden veins etched across her skin. Glyphs branded themselves into her arms. She was rewriting the contract in real-time, from within.
Lysander staggered back, visibly shaken.
"No," he said. "You can't—"
"I'm not your bride," she whispered. "And I'm not your priestess. I'm the error you made when you split time."
She held up the red pendant Murdoch had given her. With a surge of energy, she hurled it into the central mirror.
It exploded.
Light burst outward.
Lysander screamed, his body fragmenting into thousands of mirrored slivers.
The palace collapsed inward, the timelines shattering like dominoes falling in reverse.
—
Ruoqing awoke on the ground, the lake gone, the palace gone, the mirrored Ruoqing gone.
Only Murdoch remained, battered but alive.
She reached for him. He took her hand and pulled her close.
"Did we win?" she asked.
"No," he said quietly. "We survived. But that wasn't his final form."
She looked toward the horizon. The forest around them was no longer decaying—it was... still.
Too still.
And in the sky above, stars flickered into strange new patterns.
—
Far away, in a realm stitched from broken time and regret, Lysander stood once more.
His form was incomplete, pieces of him missing, but his eyes glowed brighter than ever.
Behind him, mirrors began to reassemble.
"She remembers now," he murmured. "Good."
He turned, stepping toward a massive, untouched mirror that reflected not Ruoqing—but a child version of her, in a hospital bed, whispering something in her sleep.
Lysander smiled.
"Our wedding will just be... delayed."