~ "What you see is not always what you are. But it remembers." ~
The star that blinked back into the sky still shimmered faintly when Spidey turned.
She expected the mirror to have vanished to have closed behind her like a secret sealed tight. But it remained, its glass surface rippling like breath caught between heartbeats.
> "It's still here," she said softly.
Nyxi, resting on her shoulder, watched the shifting silver with wary eyes.
> "The mirror opens more than doors. It remembers what you are before you do."
Spidey swallowed hard, stepping closer. The last thread she offered her first laughter still echoed in her bones. She wondered what else she would be asked to give.
> "Do I have to go back through it?"
> "Not back," Nyxi whispered. "Deeper."
Spidey reached out. The mirror's surface was cool, but it rippled around her fingers like water made of memory. She didn't hesitate this time. She stepped in.
---
The world warped.
It wasn't falling, it wasn't flying it was forgetting.
Not just where she'd been, but who she was. Her limbs stretched into ribbons of thought. Her mind scattered like seeds in wind. Her breath turned into threads and vanished between heartbeats.
And then stillness.
She stood in a corridor made entirely of mirrors. Ceiling. Walls. Floor.
Reflections stretched infinitely in every direction. A thousand Spideys blinked back at her some smiling, some broken, some cruel.
One wasn't there at all.
> "This place feels… wrong."
> "This is the Hall of Might-Have-Beens," Nyxi said from her head. "Where reflections whisper could-have, should-have, never-did. Where truth is a puzzle you must choose to see."
Spidey stepped forward.
To her left, she saw herself in an enormous library, her fingers stained with ink, her lips mouthing spells written in forgotten languages. To her right, she stood tall in glistening armor, commanding a legion of spider like spirits, her face unreadable and cold.
Ahead, a Spidey sat in a dark room, her mouth sewn shut with golden thread, eyes hollow.
Spidey looked away.
> "These aren't real."
> "No," Nyxi said. "But they could have been. Or still might be."
She kept walking.
The mirrors began to twist. Some showed her crying, curled into herself in the corner of a quiet room. Others showed her laughing manically as the Web burned behind her. In one, she turned her back on Nyxi. In another, she crushed a spider beneath her heel.
> "I'd never do that," she whispered.
> "You've thought about doing worse," Nyxi said gently. "It's okay to have shadows. Just don't feed them."
---
The corridor pulsed. The air grew heavier.
At the end stood a jagged mirror with a thick crack down the middle. Behind it, the air shimmered like held breath.
Her reflection stepped forward but it moved before she did.
It smiled.
> "Hello, Spidey."
Her blood turned cold.
> "You're not me."
> "No," the reflection said. "I'm what you become when you stop choosing. When you give too much and forget what's yours."
> "You're a shade."
> "No," it whispered, pressing its hand against the glass, "I'm you. A few threads away."
Spidey stepped back. But her reflection followed, eyes gleaming with something too knowing.
> "You think giving up a laugh was noble? That was nothing. Wait until the Web asks for your pain. Your name. Your mother's scent. The way sunlight felt before everything went wrong."
Spidey clenched her fists.
> "I'm doing this to help."
> "And when you're gone?" the reflection asked, its voice laced with velvet cruelty. "What good is a thread without a weaver to hold it?"
---
The mirror cracked.
A hundred shards burst into the air, floating, humming, whispering.
Each one showed a version of her.
Crying. Bleeding. Raging. Begging. Gone.
> "You're not enough." "You were never wanted." "You will vanish, and no one will notice." "You'll become like her." "You'll forget why you started."
Spidey fell to her knees, pressing her hands over her ears.
> "Make it stop. Please make it stop—"
Nyxi crawled close, pressed her small head to Spidey's temple.
> "They are echoes. That's all. You are the sound. You are real."
Spidey sobbed once. Then again.
But she looked up.
Her hand reached out. She touched a shard.
And in it, she saw herself no magic, no mirrors a small girl sitting in a corner, whispering stories to a broken doll. No one listened. But she told the story anyway.
> "I remember her," she said. "She mattered. She always mattered."
The shard pulsed. Glowed.
Then dissolved.
The air shifted.
The corridor silenced.
The mirrors froze no more movement, no more threats. Just stillness.
And where the broken mirror once stood, a thread bridge stretched into the mist soft, glowing, lavender and silver, woven from her truth.
---
> "You passed the Mirror Trial," Nyxi whispered.
> "I didn't even know it started," Spidey said, wiping her eyes.
> "It always starts when you look at yourself."
Spidey stepped onto the bridge. Each thread hummed beneath her feet.
> "What's next?"
> "We find the Ghost-Moth's Lantern," Nyxi said. "But beware. Riddles sting. And grief glows."
Spidey kept walking.
She didn't know where this bridge would lead only that it held because she did.
And as the mist curled around her, she whispered to the dark:
> "I'm Spidey. I was born beneath a blood moon. I speak to spiders. I dream in webs. And I will not be unmade."
---
TO BE CONTINUED…
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