Chapter 136: The Mirror That Breathes

The obsidian mirror stood like a wound in the throne room, silent yet pulsing with an energy that did not belong to their realm. Its gold-veined cracks shimmered faintly in the torchlight—alive, aware, watching.

Alexander didn't move from where he stood, one hand resting on the hilt of his sword, the other clenched at his side. His instincts screamed at him to shatter the cursed glass, but something in Isabella's face held him back.

She had dropped to one knee before it, runes swirling around her fingers as she whispered incantations old as the sky itself. The magic responded sluggishly, as if reluctant to come near the mirror.

> "It's sealed," she murmured. "But not broken. Something inside is trying to remember its shape."

Alexander frowned. "You make it sound alive."

> "It is," Isabella said without looking up. "Or... was. Before the Kings of Flame buried it."

The name chilled him. The Kings of Flame were myths—so ancient that even bedtime stories had forgotten how they ended. If this was something they imprisoned, then it was never meant to wake.

> "Then let's destroy it," he said sharply. "We've won the war. We don't need another."

Isabella rose slowly, brushing soot from her knees. "We don't destroy what we don't understand. That's what made the old kings monsters."

> "And what if trying to understand it makes us monsters too?" Alexander asked, voice low.

She turned to him then, her expression unreadable, but her eyes held fire.

> "Then we fight it. Together. Like we always have."

---

The Whisper Beneath Glass

Later that night, as the palace was cleared and soldiers escorted the wounded away, Alexander returned alone. The mirror was now veiled, wrapped in chains of cold iron and runic bindings, pulsing like a heartbeat.

He stared into its dark surface, and for a moment—just a flicker—he saw a version of himself inside.

But the eyes in the reflection were wrong.

Too old. Too hollow.

And they were smiling.