The Schismed Citadel (2)

Her blood ran cold.

The ink on her hands burned.

She staggered back, her breath coming too fast, too shallow. The mirrored woman did not move, did not blink. And yet, somehow, she knew, knew that the thing in the glass was not merely an image, but something deeper, something older.

Something waiting.

Voss was watching her carefully.

"You saw something."

Evelynn forced herself to breathe. "It's not just reflections," she murmured. "It's them. They're inside."

Voss inclined his head slightly. "Yes."

She swallowed hard. The nausea roiling in her gut was not just horror, it was understanding.

She turned back to the mirror, meeting the gaze of her silent twin.

"How do I stop this?" she whispered.

The reflection smiled.

And then—

A single crack split the glass.

A hairline fracture, delicate as a spider's web, creeping outward from the center of the mirror. The air vibrated, thick with something unseen, something pressing against the walls of reality itself.

And then the whispering began.

Not from the mirrors.

From behind them.

The voices curled through the room like smoke, unintelligible at first, whispers in a language she did not recognize, thick with the weight of ages. Then, slowly, the meaning began to twist into form.

"She has read the words."

"She has been marked."

"She will finish what was begun."

Evelynn's pulse slammed against her ribs. The ink on her skin darkened, pulsing in time with the whispers.

And then—

The mirror shattered.

Not just the one before her.

All of them.

Glass erupted outward in a cacophony of shrieking echoes, shards spinning through the air like jagged stars. Evelynn barely had time to react before Voss moved, grabbing her arm and pulling her backward as the fragments sliced through the candlelight, embedding themselves in the walls, the floor

And the voices rose to a crescendo.

Not whispers now.

Screams.

The room trembled, the air thickening with an unseen weight, pressing down upon them like the hand of something vast and watching. The fractured reflections bled darkness, ink seeping from the ruined glass, curling across the floor in slow, insidious tendrils.

Voss's grip tightened.

"Run."

Evelynn did not need to be told twice.

They turned, the walls collapsing behind them, shadows pouring from the broken mirrors, reaching outward with clawed, ink-stained hands. The town outside was shifting, warping, the streets twisting in upon themselves as though reality had lost its grip.

She did not look back.

Somewhere behind them, the voices keened.

"The second lock has opened."

Evelynn ran.

And Holyland changed.

The streets of Holyland were no longer what they had been. They writhed, twisted, reshaped themselves into alien pathways that had no right to exist, as though the town had unmoored itself from logic. Buildings that should have been behind them were now in front, and alleyways opened onto courtyards that should not have fit within the town's geography. The cobblestones buckled beneath Evelynn's boots, shifting like muscle beneath stretched skin.

She ran, her breath ragged, the taste of ink thick on her tongue. The shadows from the shattered mirrors slithered in pursuit, formless yet undeniable, whispering fragments of half-lost names, numbers that did not belong in any known equation, words that slipped from memory the moment they were heard.

Beside her, Voss moved with a terrifying certainty, as though he had done this before. His coat billowed, his long strides unbroken despite the shifting ground. Evelynn had the sickening thought that if she tripped, if she hesitated for even a moment, the streets would devour her, swallow her into their impossible folds.

Somewhere in the distance, a bell tolled.

Thirteen times.

Then, a fourteenth.

The same mistake as before. But now, she understood.

The bell was correcting.

Holyland was rewriting itself in real time.

She nearly stumbled at the realization, her mind unraveling as she tried to hold onto the implications. What had been lost? What had been undone to make room for the second lock's opening?

The ink on her hands seared like an open wound.

She clenched her jaw and pushed forward.

Voss veered sharply into an alley that had not been there moments before, its mouth gaping like a wound in the architecture of the town. Evelynn hesitated, but hesitation was death. She followed, her boots splashing through a puddle that should have been shallow but had no bottom.

The air within the alley was thick, damp, wrong. The buildings loomed too close together, their walls slick with condensation, though the sky above was dry. The shadows here did not obey the flickering street lamps; they pulsed, shifting of their own accord, stretching toward the two of them like eager fingers.

They burst through the other side, into the skeletal remains of what had once been a grand chapel.

Evelynn halted, her breath catching.

The structure was barely holding itself together. The roof had caved in long ago, its wooden ribs arching toward the heavens like the bones of some long-dead beast. Jagged beams jutted from the ruin at impossible angles, stabbing upward into the mist-heavy air. The altar at the far end was cracked down the middle, its stonework webbed with fractures like the shattered mirrors they had fled from.

And yet—

Something was moving beneath it.

A writhing, undulating thing, vast and coiled, a body made of ink and shadow, shifting in slow, terrible motions, as though waiting to be seen.

Evelynn felt her stomach lurch.

No light touched it. It was not a creature, not in any way she could describe. It was an absence, a void that moved, an unraveling of shape and form that should not have existed outside of fevered hallucinations.

Her breath came shallow. "Voss."

"I see it." His voice was taut.

The ink on her hands burned, responding.

She took a step forward, unable to stop herself. The thing beneath the altar quivered, as though aware of her presence.

The voices from the shattered mirrors echoed in her mind.

"She will finish what was begun."

The second lock had opened.

She clenched her fists, ignoring the way the ink pulsed in time with her racing heart. "What is it?"

Voss hesitated.

Then—

"The threshold."

Evelynn's breath stilled.

"It is not the lock itself," Voss murmured, watching the shifting mass with careful calculation. "It is the door to the lock. And now that it has been revealed…" His gaze flicked to her hands. "It is waiting for you."

Her pulse pounded.

"No," she whispered. "That's not possible."

Voss exhaled, slow. "And yet, here we are."

The ink on her skin moved.

Not like before.

Not just shifting symbols, not just pulsing sigils burned into her flesh.

It flowed.

She gasped, trying to shake it away, but it was useless. The ink bled from her fingertips in slow, curling tendrils, stretching toward the threshold beneath the altar, drawn like rivers returning to the sea.

The thing beneath the stone pulsed, responding.

Her knees nearly buckled.

It knew her.

It had been waiting.

"Voss," she choked out, her breath unsteady, her hands trembling. "I can't"

The ink pulled.

She fell to her knees.

Voss stepped forward, but it was too late.

The ink dragged her forward, slow, inevitable, as though the lock itself had reached out and claimed her.

She barely had time to scream before the world folded inward, and Holyland vanished.

Evelynn was nowhere.

Or perhaps she was in all places at once.

Her body had no weight, no mass, only thought, drifting through a sea of unformed shapes.

No light. No darkness. Only potential, waiting to take shape.

And then—

A voice.

Not a whisper. Not the hungry susurrations of the mirrors.

This was deeper. Older.

A voice like stone grinding against stone, like the first breath of a dying star.

"You have come too soon."

Evelynn existed, and yet she did not.

She had no form, yet she was aware of herself.

She tried to speak, but had no mouth.

The voice did not belong to a person. It did not belong to a creature. It belonged to time itself.

"The ink was not yet ready. The locks were not yet broken. And yet… you are here."

She felt something shift.

A presence. Something vast. Something ancient.

She could not see it, but she knew it was there.

Thys'ryth-Ygg.

The name alone seared through her like a brand.

Her mind buckled beneath the weight of it.

The thing beyond time. The paradox given form. The self-consuming god.

It had noticed her.

And it was waiting.

The ink burned hotter, twisting through her veins.

"You are written," the voice rumbled. "And you will be unmade."

The world broke.

Evelynn gasped as she slammed back into her body.

She was on the chapel floor, the ink receding from her hands, slithering back into her skin as though it had never left.

Voss was crouched beside her, his face grim.

"You saw it."

She swallowed hard, her breath unsteady.

"It saw me."

Voss exhaled sharply. "Then we are out of time."

The ink on her hands had stilled. But she knew, she knew, that something had changed.

The second lock was open.

And Thys'ryth-Ygg was watching.