Moon_knight12

Once, stories were written to save us — fairytales filled with hope, love, and happy endings. But something ancient crept between the lines. A darkness that watched from behind mirrors. It didn’t want heroes. It wanted order. It wanted control.
In a kingdom once ruled by magic and tales, an unseen force rewrote the endings. The Mirror Network — a secret society buried in forgotten history — used enchanted mirrors to twist reality, control identities, and bend entire fates to their will. Every mirror placed in a royal chamber, every whisper that echoed through polished glass, was part of a long experiment: to erase the truth and build a world of obedience.
Red never believed in stories. Dressed in her iconic crimson cloak, sharp-eyed and sharper-tongued, she arrived at the royal palace to escape a past she could barely remember. But fate had other plans. The night she stepped into the ballroom was the night the prince died — murdered before midnight, with Cinderella at the center of the scandal.
As the fairytale crumbled, Red found herself caught in a puzzle far deeper than royal betrayal. Her investigation uncovered hidden corridors behind mirrors, a diary filled with erased names, and magic that made her question every version of truth she’d ever known. Cinderella’s charm, she discovered, was a facade — a product of the same curse that bound others before her.
The Mirror Network had marked Red too. But unlike the others, Red could see the cracks. Her mind fought back. Her memories flickered like a broken reel, revealing glimpses of stolen children, rewritten love stories, and a mirror that always showed someone else’s reflection.
Far beyond the castle walls, in a forgotten thorn-covered palace swallowed by sleep and silence, Aurora opened her eyes. A century had passed, though to her, it felt like moments. She remembered falling asleep, but not why. She remembered her name, but not her face. All that remained was the mirror.
It stood untouched by time. Smooth. Cold. Watching.
Aurora wandered the ruins of her life, searching for answers in shadows. The curse that once held her was no romantic spell — it was a lock. Her dreams hadn’t been dreams at all, but experiments — visions planted by the Mirror Network to overwrite who she was. Every time she resisted, they erased a little more.
But the magic faltered when Red shattered her story.
As Aurora unraveled the hidden carvings etched in her tower’s stone walls, she found a name. Red. The girl who broke the pattern. The girl who survived the Network’s web of lies. And in that name, Aurora found the first thread of her own truth.
Now, two stories — once separated by time and distance — begin to converge.
Red, hunted for what she’s uncovered, and Aurora, haunted by what she’s forgotten, must both confront the same question: who were they before the mirrors rewrote them?
The Network is collapsing. The magic they’ve guarded is fracturing. The mirrors are leaking into the world, twisting reality with every reflection. Versions of Red and Aurora — darker, crueler, broken — begin to manifest, born of manipulated memory and fear.
Red must return to the place where it all began. Aurora must enter the world she slept through. Both carry fragments of the mirror, and in those shards lies the key to destroying the Network.
But nothing comes without sacrifice. The deeper they go, the more truth they see. And the truth is dangerous.
The curse was never meant to be broken. It was meant to transform.
Only together can they unwrite the story, reclaim their identities, and face the one mirror that has never been shattered — the Mirror of Origin.
Because in this world, you don’t defeat monsters by fighting them.
You defeat them by remembering who you were before the story began.

Ash and Thorns: The Mirror Chronicles

The wind howled through the broken spires of Rosehall like a dying song.

Stone halls once gilded in silk and song now stood like open graves. Shattered chandeliers hung crooked, and dust curled through the light like smoke from old fires. I wandered through what remained of my childhood home, the velvet of my gown trailing behind like a shadow too patient to vanish.

The silence was the kind that crept beneath your skin.

Elias followed behind me with soft steps, his boots barely whispering over the ash-covered marble. He had yet to explain why he knew this place so well—yet he moved as though he'd memorized every ruin.

"You remember nothing?" he asked, his voice faint but sharp as a needle through silk.

"Only in pieces," I said. "In dreams that don't know they're dreams. I see names carved into air, and faces without eyes. I see a forest on fire. I see… myself… laughing."

Elias stopped. I felt his stare behind me. "Laughing?"

I nodded slowly. "Not joyfully. Not even cruelly. Just… the way a child laughs when they finally understand a secret no one else should hear."

Instead, he motioned for me to follow down a hall I swore hadn't been there a moment ago. The castle was like that now. Shifting. Rearranging itself based on where my mind wandered.

We entered what was once the royal library. I remembered reading there as a girl. Books taller than me. Stories of sorcerers and enchanted woods. I had loved fairy tales then.

Now I lived in one that had curdled into something else.

Elias approached a wall of scorched bookshelves and pulled aside the remains of a torn tapestry. Behind it was a mirror. Cracked. Blackened. But not shattered.

"You know what this is?" he asked.

"You were born cursed, Aurora. But your bloodline made you more than a victim. You were part of something older than any fairy tale they told you." He stepped aside, letting me face the mirror alone. "This is where it began."

I stepped forward. My reflection was strange. Slightly delayed. Breathing when I did not. Blinking slower.

I reached for the glass, but before I could touch it, something burned across my collarbone. I stumbled back. My skin prickled with heat and memory.

"Names," I whispered, clutching the pain. "I can feel them… like brands under my skin."

"I—I don't know if they're real. I hear voices at night, whispering names I forget when I wake."

"Nyra. Maelin. The Hollow Thorn. Velra. The Order of the Mirror. The Seven Who Sleep. The Burning One. And…"

There was one more. The name that burned hotter than the rest. The name that made my knees weaken and my heart scream.

Elias exhaled slowly, like I had just spoken something holy or profane.

"You remember more than you should," he murmured. "The dream is unraveling."

Elias looked into the mirror, his face lit by a reflection that was not mine.

"He was the first dream. The one who touched your mind before the curse. He lives behind glass. And he's waking, just like you."

"You're telling me he's real? That this… this monster from my dreams has a name?"

The Names That Burn