Time is a cruel author.
It does not write in ink, but in blood—revising its chapters with every heartbeat, erasing names, twisting memories, until what remains is not the truth, but the story we needed to survive.
And tonight, Lin Ruoqing remembered everything.
She floated in the abyss of sleep—not dark, not cold. Just empty.
But then came the chime.
One... Two... Three...
A bell. Slow, deliberate, echoing across endless space. Each toll pulled her further away from consciousness, deeper into a dreamscape she no longer controlled.
And there, amidst the void, stood a girl.
Small. Fragile. Barefoot, her nightdress soaked at the hem with rainwater. She clutched a snow globe in one hand and a fragment of glass in the other. Her fingers bled.
Ruoqing's breath caught.She knew this place.
It was the hospital corridor, fifteen years ago. The night she nearly died. The night her mother screamed her name as orderlies pulled her gurney down the hallway. The night lightning struck the mirror outside her room—and something whispered to her in the dark.
And now, she saw it all again.
But differently.
The younger Ruoqing sat in her hospital bed, alone, staring out the window. Her father hadn't come. Her mother was asleep in the chair, worn thin from crying. Doctors murmured something about "unexplained bleeding" and "glass embedded too close to the artery."
The mirror on the far wall—shattered during the storm—was covered with a sheet.
But the girl could still hear it.
Whispers.
Like rain tapping on the inside of her skull.
"Do you want to live?"
She nodded.
"What would you give for another chance?"
Her hand, bandaged and trembling, reached toward the sheet.
A cold wind blew through the room.
And then, the sheet lifted.
And in the mirror... stood a boy.
Eyes red as coals. Skin pale as snow. Dressed in a white suit too elegant for this world.
He looked barely older than her, maybe ten or eleven. But there was something impossibly ancient in the way he stood—like time bowed to him.
"You're hurt," the boy said softly. "I can fix it."
"Are you... an angel?" she asked.
He tilted his head. "Do I look like one?"
She shook hers.
He smiled. "That's smart."
He stepped forward, placing his hand on the glass.
"I can give you life, Lin Ruoqing. But not for free."
The child hesitated. "What do you want?"
His eyes gleamed. "Your promise. That one day, when the time is right, you'll walk through the mirror and marry me."
She laughed. "Is that all?"
"You'll remember when you're ready," he said.
And the mirror began to shine.
The dream faded.
Ruoqing gasped awake.
Only she wasn't in her bed anymore.
She stood in a garden of mirrors—thousands of them rising like gravestones, reflecting not just light, but possibilities. Her childhood. Her deaths. Her futures.
And standing among them was him.
Older now. Taller. His white suit replaced with ceremonial robes, embroidered with blood-colored runes.
Lysander.
But no longer a stranger.
Now, she recognized him.
"You," she said slowly. "You're the boy from the hospital."
He smiled. "And you're the little girl who made me a vow."
Ruoqing's hands curled into fists. "You tricked me. I was dying."
"You asked to live," he replied calmly. "I granted that wish. And now it's time to fulfill your end."
The mirrors pulsed with energy.
Each one flickered with versions of her—in bridal gowns, weeping, fighting, burning.
"You are every choice you never made," Lysander said, stepping closer. "Every road not taken. Every version of you that screamed when you chose him over me."
A mirror to her left exploded, showing her stabbing Murdoch to protect Lysander. Another shattered behind her, revealing her fleeing down an altar aisle. A third—she watched herself kneeling before a mirror altar, smiling.
Ruoqing felt her heartbeat quicken.
But then—warmth.
A familiar pulse of magic flared behind her.
Murdoch.
He appeared through the mirror directly opposite, one hand on the glass, blood trailing down his cheek.
"Ruoqing—come back to me."
She turned toward him instinctively.
Lysander's voice hardened. "He does not belong here."
"You never did either," Murdoch replied coldly. "You were never part of her story. You forced your way in."
"I gave her life," Lysander said.
"I gave her freedom," Murdoch growled.
The mirrors trembled.
Ruoqing felt something break inside her chest. The shards of the past, the promise, the pain—converging.
She placed one hand on the mirror between her and Murdoch.
And one hand on her own chest.
A choice.
Two timelines. One soul.
Which version would she become?