The Eschatonic Mirrors (2)

He lifted the mirror toward the cell, angling it so that Evelynn could see both the woman's real body and her mirrored form. The reflection reacted instantly, it snapped its head toward the mirror, its mouth still moving, whispering secrets to something only it could perceive.

Then, it changed.

The reflected woman's face stretched, her jaw widening far past human limits, her teeth extending into jagged, splintered remnants of bone. Her eyes darkened, black veins bursting through the whites. And then, her head snapped back, her mouth yawning wide in a silent scream.

The candlelight flickered violently. The bars of the cell groaned, metal bending as if under unseen pressure. Evelynn's pulse spiked.

Then Voss tilted the mirror away.

At once, the reflected figure snapped back into place, returning to its previous form. The silent whispering resumed. The metal bars stilled.

Evelynn exhaled, only now realizing she had been holding her breath.

Voss lowered the mirror. His expression remained unreadable, but there was something behind his eyes, something cold.

"We cannot bring them back," he said. "Because they are not gone. Their minds are trapped elsewhere, folded into reflections, ensnared by the Eschatonic laws that govern this place. If we try to pull them free…" He glanced at the mirror in his hands. "They do not come back as they were."

Evelynn clenched her fists. "Then how do we stop it? The reflections, the whispers, how do we break whatever's doing this?"

Voss met her gaze. "We don't."

The answer sent a jolt of anger through her.

"Then what do we do?" she snapped. "Stand by while more people vanish into glass? While their own selves are stolen from them?"

Ophelia sighed, the silver strings of her harp vibrating faintly with the movement.

"Dr. Blackthorn," she said. "You are thinking in terms of cause and effect. But Holyland is not governed by such simplicity."

Evelynn turned to her, frustration rising. "Then tell me what is governing it."

The Baroness's lips curled slightly. "Ambivalent causality."

The words hit her like a cold wind.

Evelynn knew the theory, of course. A principle that should not have been possible, a law that suggested every action birthed a contradiction, that cause and effect were not linear, but schismatic. A child saved from drowning might retroactively erase the bloodline that led to their birth. A book written might erase the hand that penned it.

Reality did not move forward in Holyland. It moved in knots.

Evelynn swallowed, the implications unraveling in her mind like an unchecked thread.

"Then…" Her voice was quieter now. "If the mirrors take someone, does that mean… that they were never meant to exist?"

Voss tilted his head slightly. "Or that they were never meant to leave."

A heavy silence followed.

Evelynn turned back to the imprisoned woman, still rocking in the corner of her cell, oblivious to the reflection that whispered in her place.

A single thought burned in her mind.

"Elias was studying this."

He had found the first lock. He had uncovered the nature of Holyland's fractures. And then… he had died.

She exhaled shakily. "I need to see my brother's notes."

Ophelia and Voss exchanged a glance.

Then the Baroness plucked a single, mournful note from her harp.

"Then you shall," she said.

The study smelled of old parchment and dying candlelight. The air was thick, heavy, watching.

Evelynn sat at her brother's desk, her fingers running over the yellowed pages before her. Elias had written obsessively, his script was fevered, each stroke of ink carving meaning into the fragile fabric of reality itself. Some of the words had bled together, warped by age or perhaps by something less natural.

Voss and Ophelia stood behind her, silent. They had given her what she had asked for, but they did not offer guidance. This was her burden now.

Evelynn inhaled and began to read.

Extracts from the Fractal Vault Journal of Elias Blackthorn

Holyland is not a town. It is a consequence.

Everything is here because it was cast out of another reality.

The Eschatonic Mirrors are not distortions. They are corrections.

To look upon one's own reflection is to see what should have been. A glimpse into the unrealized paths, the paradoxes that must be undone.

The first lock has already been undone. I did not break it, I only witnessed its unraveling. The act of observation alone was enough.

(I did not mean to see. I did not mean to know.)

They whisper now. Not always in words, but in numbers, in shapes. The equations shift when I blink. They rearrange my thoughts when I sleep. I do not think my mind is my own anymore.

I saw my own reflection change.

It smiled at me.

Tomorrow, I will test the Schismed Citadel. If the texts are correct, the retroactive ink should reveal the nature of the second lock. But I must be cautious. The last scholar who attempted to read those pages vanished from history entirely. Even his name was erased.

Evelynn stared at the words, nausea curling in her stomach.

I saw my own reflection change.

Her fingers tightened on the parchment.

Elias had known. He had understood what the Eschatonic Mirrors were before anyone else. But the whispers… the changes… had they taken him in the end? Had he vanished the same way the others had?

No. His body had remained. His skull had held the Fractal Vault.

Which meant he had seen something more.

She lifted her gaze. "The Schismed Citadel," she said. "Where is it?"

Ophelia's fingers drifted along the silver strings of her harp. The air vibrated faintly.

"You would seek it?" she murmured.

Evelynn's jaw tightened. "Elias believed it held the key to the second lock. If I am to finish what he started, I need to go there."

Voss exhaled slowly. "It will not be kind to you."

"Neither is Holyland."

Ophelia smiled, but there was no warmth in it. Only the slow, inevitable weight of knowledge too great to bear.

"Very well," she said. "But you must understand, once you enter the Citadel, it will begin to write you, as well."

A cold shiver ran down Evelynn's spine.

And yet, she had to go.

No matter what it cost her.

The road to the Schismed Citadel was not marked on any map. Holyland did not allow such conveniences. Streets that should have led toward the northern cliffs instead curled back into themselves. Alleys narrowed to impossible slivers, forcing Evelynn and Voss to retrace their steps more than once. The buildings leaned as if listening, their windows fogged with condensation that moved against the wind.

She could still feel the whisper of Elias's journal against her fingertips.

The retroactive ink should reveal the nature of the second lock.

Voss had said nothing since they had left the mortuary. He moved with his usual measured precision, his breath even, his gaze forward. But something in his posture told her he was tense.

It was not just the Citadel that unnerved him.

Something was watching.

Evelynn turned her head sharply, catching a glimpse of movement in a shop window. But it was only her reflection. Her reflection.

She inhaled slowly. The streetlamps flickered. The buildings creaked.

And then, they arrived.

The Schismed Citadel loomed ahead, an impossibility of architecture. It should not have been here. The last time Evelynn had seen this part of Holyland, the space had been occupied by a derelict chapel, but now, the Citadel had replaced it entirely, its obsidian spires lancing skyward like broken ribs.

The stone itself was fractured.

Not cracked. Not worn by time. But fractured, as if the entire structure had been split apart and rewritten, only to be forced back together by an unseen hand.

Voss halted beside her. "This is where we part ways."

Evelynn turned to him, her brow furrowing. "You're not coming?"

His expression was unreadable. "The Citadel does not allow us inside."

Her stomach tightened. "Then why will it allow me?"

Voss's gaze flickered toward the towering spires. "Because it has already begun writing you."

She exhaled slowly.

Then she stepped forward.

The moment her foot touched the Citadel's threshold, the world changed.

The sky, gray and bloated with storm clouds, froze. The wind stopped. The distant hum of Holyland's unnatural silence pressed against her eardrums.

The doors did not open.

They unraveled.

And Evelynn stepped inside.

The interior of the Citadel was wrong.

She had expected dust, ruin, the scent of old paper. But the air was sterile, thick with the acrid tang of ink. The walls pulsed with script, words writing themselves, erasing, and rewriting faster than her eyes could follow. Shelves stretched into infinity, books shifting positions as though they were alive, rearranging themselves with each flicker of the dim candlelight.

A library.

But not a human one.

Evelynn's breath came slow and steady. She stepped forward, the floor groaning beneath her weight. The silence was suffocating.

Then

A book moved.

Not fell. Not shifted. But moved, slithering from one shelf to another of its own volition. Evelynn watched as it nestled itself among other tomes, the title on its spine rewriting itself in real time.

Her chest tightened.

She turned her head, and there, in the center of the Citadel, stood a desk.

Not a relic of the past.

A writing desk. And someone was sitting at it.

Her pulse hammered in her ears. She took a step closer.

The figure was hunched over parchment, their fingers moving with feverish speed. Scratching. Writing. The ink bled into the pages unnaturally, shifting, spiraling outward in fractal patterns.

Evelynn opened her mouth to speak.

The figure froze.

Slowly, they turned their head.

And Evelynn felt her entire body go cold.

It was her brother.

Elias Blackthorn sat at the desk, his eyes sunken, his skin stretched thin over prominent cheekbones. His lips were cracked, dark ink staining his fingertips. His chest did not rise or fall. He was not breathing.

And yet, he was writing.

The ink moved of its own accord, creeping up his hands, threading into his veins.

He should not be here.

And yet, he was.

His lips parted.

His voice was a whisper of dry parchment.

"Evelynn."

She did not move. Did not breathe.

Because behind him,

The books had stopped writing.

And now, they were reading her.