The Eschatonic Mirrors

The midnight bells of Holyland rang thirteen times, though Evelynn counted fourteen.

The discrepancy lodged itself in her mind like a sliver of glass, small, sharp, and impossible to ignore.

She stood in the study, her pulse steady but her thoughts frayed, tangled in the impossible weight of all she had learned. The Chronophage. Thys'ryth-Ygg. The first lock undone. Words that felt more like incantations than facts, dragging her into the gravity of something vast and unfathomable.

And yet, beneath the horror, something burned. Not just fear. Not just grief. Resolve.

She exhaled slowly, pressing her fingers to the bridge of her nose. "If we're truly beginning, then tell me, where do we start?"

Voss did not answer immediately. Instead, he moved to the window, peering through the warped glass into the streets below. The flickering gas lamps illuminated a world that barely resembled a town. The cobblestones twisted unnaturally, their angles wrong, their placements inconsistent, as though the roads had been rearranged overnight by an unseen hand.

Then there were the figures.

They walked the streets in slow, aimless patterns, their movements too stiff, too rehearsed. Evelynn's stomach clenched. At first glance, they looked like ordinary townspeople, until she realized their reflections did not match.

Some were elongated, stretched thin like silhouettes cast by a flickering flame. Others lagged behind, moving a second too late, their actions out of sync with their owners. And some… some simply stood still, staring outward, waiting.

She turned to Voss, her voice steady but low. "What are they?"

He did not look away from the window.

"Eschatonic Mirrors."

Evelynn's jaw tightened. "Mirrors?"

"A term coined by your brother," Ophelia murmured. "They are reflections unmoored, entities cast not from light, but from the void itself."

She stepped closer to the window, watching as a man in a long coat walked down the street. His face was pale, drawn, his hands trembling as he clutched something inside his pocket. He passed a storefront, and his reflection moved with him, until it didn't.

The glass betrayed him.

His mirrored self did not follow, did not align. Instead, it stopped mid-step, standing perfectly still as the real man continued forward. For a moment, the figure did not notice. Then, as if sensing the wrongness, he hesitated.

Slowly, he turned back toward the window.

His reflection smiled.

Evelynn's breath caught.

The real man did not move. He only stood there, his shoulders tensed, his fingers twitching against his coat. His mirrored self raised a hand, the wrong hand, and pressed its palm against the glass.

The smile widened, too sharp, too wide.

Then, without warning, the reflection reached through the window.

The glass did not break. It simply parted, like water disturbed by a single finger. A blackened hand grasped the man's wrist, and in a blink, it pulled him inside.

There was no sound. No scream. Only the flickering streetlamp and an empty road where a man had once stood.

Evelynn's stomach turned.

Her mind raced through the possibilities, an optical illusion? A trick of the light? Some unknown neurological affliction? But she knew, deep in her bones, that there was no scientific explanation for what she had just seen.

Voss sighed, finally stepping back from the window. "They've grown bolder."

Evelynn swallowed. "You knew about this?"

He nodded. "They've been appearing sporadically over the past year. At first, only one or two… but now, half the town is infested."

Ophelia turned, her dark gaze fixed on Evelynn. "They are drawn to knowledge. To those who question. And they have noticed you."

A chill crept up her spine.

"Then how do we stop them?"

Ophelia tilted her head, the silver strings of her harp humming faintly as she shifted. "We don't."

Evelynn's pulse quickened. "Then what do you suggest? That we let them take people?"

"We do what must be done," Voss said. His tone was calm, clinical, but there was a hardness to it. "Come. I need to show you something."

Evelynn hesitated, then nodded.

Voss led her down the winding corridors of the mortuary, past walls lined with surgical diagrams of bodies that had never existed, past jars filled with organs that twitched of their own accord. The deeper they went, the more the air seemed to warp, pressing in around her like unseen hands.

Finally, they reached a heavy iron door. Voss withdrew a key from his coat, its shape jagged and asymmetrical, as though meant to fit a lock that did not adhere to the laws of geometry. With a slow turn, the mechanism clicked open.

The door swung inward.

The stench hit her first. A deep, wet rot, the scent of flesh twisting against itself. Evelynn pressed a hand to her nose and stepped inside.

And she froze.

The chamber was vast and cold, lit only by weak gas lamps affixed to the stone walls. At the center stood a row of iron-barred cells. And within them—

People.

At least, they had once been people.

Evelynn's breath caught in her throat. Some sat curled in corners, rocking back and forth, their eyes locked on something unseen. Others twitched, their limbs jerking in unnatural spasms, as if their bones were trying to escape their own flesh.

And then there were the ones who did not move at all.

Their eyes were open. But their reflections, Evelynn saw them clearly in the metal bars, in the glassy puddles along the floor, moved when they did not.

One of them, a woman with graying hair and hollow cheeks, turned toward Evelynn.

Or rather, her reflection did.

Her real body remained still, unblinking, unbreathing. But in the reflection, her lips parted, her mouth moving, whispering something Evelynn could not hear.

Her pulse thundered in her ears.

"What… what is this?"

Voss exhaled. "The ones who survived."

Evelynn turned sharply. "Survived?"

"Their bodies are here," Voss said. "But their selves, their identities, their thoughts, their souls, are in the glass."

Evelynn felt ice in her veins.

"You… kept them?"

Voss's face was unreadable. "We need to understand them. If we are to stop the Eschaton's influence, we must study its symptoms."

Her fists clenched. "These are people, Voss. Not specimens."

"They were people," Ophelia corrected. "Now they are something else."

Evelynn turned back to the woman in the cell. Her real body remained utterly still. But in the reflection—

The whispering continued.

And then, in a single jerking movement, the reflected woman lunged at the bars.

Evelynn gasped, stumbling back.

Her real body had not moved. Not even an inch.

But the thing in the reflection pressed its face against the metal, its eyes locked onto Evelynn's.

And this time, she could hear it.

A whisper, curling in the back of her mind like a blade sliding between ribs.

"I see you."

The words slithered into Evelynn's mind, a whisper not heard but felt, as though a thought had been forced upon her by something other than herself.

"I see you."

A simple phrase, but it coiled around the base of her spine, tight as a noose. The woman's reflection clung to the bars, her lips moving too fast, as if the words were spilling out faster than her mouth could form them. But her real body remained motionless, eyes vacant, chest still.

Cold dread gripped Evelynn.

"She's… alive?" she managed, though the word felt insufficient for what she was witnessing.

"In a manner of speaking," Voss said, stepping beside her. His voice was steady, but there was something in his posture, something just a fraction too rigid.

Evelynn turned to him sharply. "Then bring her back."

He did not answer immediately. Instead, he reached into his coat and withdrew a hand mirror. Its frame was tarnished silver, its surface dark, not reflective, but deep, as though something beneath the glass was waiting.

"Watch," he murmured.