CHAPTER 9: ONLY ONE REMEMBERS
PART 1: THE QUEEN IN THE WALL
The Mirror Room was quiet.
Too quiet.
The kind that followed fire—not before it.
Seorin stepped through the curtain alone. The lantern she carried gave off a dull glow, flickering against the bronze frame, throwing her shadow behind her like a long wound.
No guards stood outside the chamber tonight.
No incense burned.
But the mirror was lit.
Not by flame.
By something else.
She approached.
And stopped.
Not because she was afraid.
Because the Queen was already there.
Not in the room.
In the mirror.
Standing.
Staring back.
Not a reflection.
A presence.
Her palms pressed against the inside of the bronze, her mouth open in a silent scream, eyes wide, unblinking. Her hair was wild. Her robes were torn. Her lips moved—but there was no sound.
Seorin stepped closer.
Closer.
The lantern trembled.
She looked at her own reflection, standing just beside the Queen's—herself, yes, but different.
Sharper.
More solid.
Alive.
Then she looked past the glass.
At the Queen.
And she understood.
The Queen—her body—had still been walking the palace halls.
Giving orders.
Burning names.
But this—
This was where she had gone.
The Queen was no longer in her body.
She was here.
Trapped.
Like a memory held too long in the wrong soul.
Seorin reached out—
And for the first time, the Queen inside the mirror looked directly at her.
Not through her.
Not past her.
At her.
And mouthed a word.
> "Help."
Seorin stepped back.
The flame inside her lantern flared.
And behind her—
Footsteps.
Not from the hall.
From everywhere.
From walls tha
t no longer held breath.
Because the Queen wasn't just in the mirror now.
She was trying to get out.
---
PART 2: THE GIRL WHO WAS BURIED
The burial grove lay beyond the outer wall.
Past the silk gardens, past the shrine ponds, through the last rusted gate that even the crows forgot.
Only the royal women were buried here.
Not with monuments. Not with fire.
With silence.
And dirt.
Seorin walked there alone.
Her steps left no prints in the frozen grass.
The sky was gray. Windless.
The tree was still there.
Bent.
Split.
A peach tree that hadn't bloomed in a generation.
The stone at its base was the smallest in the grove.
No name.
Just a single mark: a slash through a circle.
The symbol of "nothing given, nothing claimed."
She knelt.
Touched the soil.
Cold. Undisturbed.
Until her fingers pressed deeper.
And met a crack.
She froze.
Dug.
Slowly, with hands meant for ink and memory, not earth.
The soil broke open—like it had already been waiting.
But there were no bones.
No cloth.
No remains.
Only a ribbon.
Sea-gray.
Frayed.
Tied around the root of the tree like a child's keepsake.
Seorin held it up.
It was hers.
Not a copy. Not a memory.
Hers.
She had worn this.
When she was young.
Before her name became a mask.
She looked at the empty grave.
And she understood.
The child had never died.
She had been buried alive.
Not by ritual.
Not by curse.
By replacement.
And something had waited down there.
For her name to be called again.
---
PART 3: THE MASKLESS COURT
The throne room was full.
Every minister. Every lady. Every official who still dared to breathe the Queen's air stood at attention beneath the high beams, where sunlight barely filtered through the dust.
The Queen sat upon the throne.
But not as she used to.
She wore no crown.
Her robes hung wrong, like she had forgotten how they fastened. Her hair was loose in places, strands stuck to her cheek.
Her hands gripped the armrests too tight.
And her eyes—when they moved—searched the crowd with the hunger of someone trying to remember the names of her own bones.
A herald stepped forward.
"The Queen calls forth Lady Seorin of House Daeyang."
Silence.
Then:
Footsteps.
Soft. Measured.
Seorin entered from the eastern corridor, alone.
No robe of state.
No attendant.
No mask.
Her hair unbound, her hands empty, her feet bare.
Gasps murmured through the chamber.
Because the woman on the throne…
And the woman walking forward…
Had the same face.
But not the same weight.
The Queen sat taller.
But Seorin stood heavier.
Denser. Like the past clung to her.
As she crossed the floor, her shadow stretched behind her—
And stopped just short of the throne's dais.
The Queen looked down.
Her eyes narrowed.
Then widened.
Because Seorin cast no shadow.
Not anymore.
The ministers shifted uneasily.
They looked from throne to floor to fire to woman.
And one of them, very softly, whispered:
"…Which one are we meant to follow?"
Neither answered.
Because the an
swer no longer mattered.
Only one would remain.
And memory was choosing.
---
PART 4: MEMORY BLEEDS
They faced each other beneath the gaze of the court.
No guards moved.
No ministers spoke.
No scribes wrote.
Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.
Seorin stepped forward, until she stood below the throne. Not kneeling. Not bowing.
Just there.
Present.
And the Queen—eyes wide, lips parted—rose to meet her.
Slowly.
Like someone walking out of a dream.
"You're not real," the Queen said, quietly.
"I was," Seorin answered.
"You're a memory."
"I'm your memory."
The Queen flinched.
As if the words struck something raw.
"You don't belong here."
Seorin stepped onto the dais.
"I belong in the place you buried."
Their voices overlapped.
Same tone. Same cadence.
The sound shook the pillars.
The bronze mirror behind the throne began to ripple—its surface warping like water under heat.
Then—
A flicker.
Symbols began to rise on their skin.
Burning faint gold.
The broken circle.
The flame.
Old sigils of binding and remembrance.
The same ones Seorin had seen in the shrine. In the book. On the grave.
Memory was no longer choosing.
It was burning through them both.
The Queen's lips trembled.
"I don't remember which one I am."
"You don't have to," Seorin said. "Because I do."
She reached out.
Touched the Queen's cheek.
And for one breathless second—
They merged.
The court saw it.
Two faces folding.
Two voices fading into one.
But only one shadow disappeared.
And the Queen—
The one who had worn the crown—
Began to fade.
Not with pain.
Not with fire.
With forgetting.
She whispered, "Who… are you?"
Seorin answered, "I'm the one who remembered."
---
PART 5: ONLY ONE REMEMBERS
The mirror cracked.
Not loudly.
Not all at once.
Just a sound like ice giving way under weight—quiet, distant, final.
Seorin stood alone now.
The Queen was gone.
Not dead.
Not vanished.
Forgotten.
By morning, the ministers would speak of a strange trial.
A ceremony of memory. A reenactment, perhaps. A trick of incense.
But none would name the Queen.
None would remember two.
The scribes unrolled scrolls of royal lineage.
And her name—Seorin—stood alone.
Uncontested.
Undivided.
As if it had always been that way.
Even Yeonhwa hesitated when she bowed.
Not from fear.
From doubt.
Like part of her remembered two voices.
But could no longer find the second.
---
The mirror was sealed that night.
The shrine locked.
The cracked bronze veiled in black silk.
But Seorin stood before it one last time.
She placed her palm on the glass.
The surface was cool now.
Still.
No faces.
No voices.
Just her.
Just one.
But somewhere—
Deep beneath the stone.
In the place the grave had cracked open.
A mirror still shimmered.
And in it,
Just briefly,
A second face blinked—
And smiled.
---