The sound of the mirror breaking was not like glass; it was like the world itself exhaling. A sound so vast it seemed to come from everywhere — the ground, the air, the inside of my skull.Then came silence.
For a heartbeat, the tower stood still, the fragments of light suspended midair. I saw my reflection multiplied across them — a thousand versions of me staring back, eyes wide, faces uncertain.
And then, the sky screamed.
The ground convulsed beneath me, throwing me to my knees. The glass city of Haven groaned, every tower bending like reeds in a storm. Cracks zigzagged up the translucent walls, spreading faster than lightning. Through them, I glimpsed something terrible beneath the surface — not rock or earth, but flesh. Pulsing, writhing, alive.
The Voice returned, not gentle this time. Furious.
“You broke the pattern. You unmade your reflection. You are not permitted to divide.”
I clutched my head, blood trickling from my nose. “You’re not a god,” I whispered. “You’re a parasite.”
The words seemed to wound it. The air itself shivered. “We are creation. We are the dream of children. We are what remains when belief dies.”
Outside, the sky fractured further, chunks of mirrored firmament falling like burning glass. Each piece contained faces — screaming, pleading, dissolving. Children scattered through the streets below, their glowing forms flickering erratically. Some fell to their knees, covering their ears. Others began to melt, their outlines collapsing into light.
I stumbled toward the broken window. The playground — their sacred place — was gone, swallowed by a spreading fissure. From its depths, a dull red light pulsed, each beat shaking the world.
That’s when I saw Cael.
He stood at the edge of the fissure, robes tattered, silver eyes blazing. His face was different now — stretched, inhuman. His voice was everywhere at once.
“You could have joined us,” he said. “You could have been the bridge between silence and sound. Instead, you’ve doomed us all.”
I descended the tower’s broken stairs, shards of light crunching under my boots. “You doomed yourselves,” I said. “You built a world that can’t survive truth.”
He laughed softly, and the sound echoed through the air like a thousand children giggling. “Truth? There is no truth without belief. Look around — the Voice shaped everything from the dreams of the lost. You think breaking it sets you free? It only wakes the hunger beneath.”
The fissure widened. Out of it came a wind — cold and wet, carrying a stench of decay. And then… movement. Something massive stirred below, its form obscured by the crimson glow.
I fell to my knees as the ground heaved. The adults — the ones I’d seen trapped in glass — now emerged from the cracks, their eyes open, their faces blank. They crawled toward the light, whispering fragments of nursery rhymes.
Cael spread his arms. “They return to the Source. All must return.”
And then he began to rise, lifted by invisible force, his body unraveling into luminous threads that streamed upward toward the shattered sky.
I screamed over the chaos, “Cael! What is it? What’s beneath us?”
His answer came not from his mouth, but from the Voice itself — booming, endless.
“We are memory. We are the song of lost youth. You fed us your fear, and we grew. Now we feed.”
The city split open completely. The world inverted. What had once been above — the sky, the towers, the endless light — collapsed inward as the flesh beneath rose to meet it. I saw veins of glass pulse like arteries, carrying liquid fire.
In the midst of it all, I heard Lira’s voice again — faint, desperate.
“Go deeper. Past the blood and glass. Find the heart.”
A fissure opened at my feet, revealing a tunnel spiralling downward, lined with pulsing tendrils of light. It was the only path left.
I took one last look at the collapsing city — the children screaming, the adults melting into light, Cael dissolving into a cloud of glittering ash — and jumped.
The descent felt endless. The deeper I fell, the quieter it became. The whispers faded. The air cooled.
And then, at the bottom, I landed on something soft — warm, breathing.
Before me stretched an enormous cavern. At its centre was a single, immense structure: a heart the size of a mountain, made of glass and light, beating slowly. Each pulse sent ripples through the air, shaping faint silhouettes — faces, laughter, screams.
I took a step forward. The surface of the heart reflected me — and for the first time, my reflection didn’t smile. It spoke.
“Welcome home.”
Source: Some or all of the content was generated using an AI language model
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