Chapter 12: The Mirrormarch
Chapter 12: The Mirrormarch
There was no wind in the Mirrormarch.
No scent. No time. No clear boundary between sky and ground.
Only endless terrain that mirrored itself—endless, fractured, and wrong.
Shu stepped forward and left a footprint behind that shimmered, shifted, then reversed. A bird overhead flapped its wings in slow motion, then stopped in midair and drifted backward into a tree that no longer existed.
Sera spoke behind him.
Her voice sounded both close and far away.
"I've set my chronometer to measure every step. If the terrain loops us, I'll know."
Shu nodded, though he wasn't sure he understood.
Nia walked beside him, hood drawn, the Sky Key clutched to her chest like a heartbeat. Her eyes glowed faintly silver now—not just in flashes, but constantly. At times, she whispered softly to herself. Other times, she spoke words that weren't her own.
> "The door is not a door. The vault is not a vault. The truth sleeps in the ash of the unspoken."
Sera gave Shu a worried look.
"She's degrading."
"She's awakening," Shu replied, voice low. "Aurelia's not an infection. She's a warning. The Order buried her because they feared what she saw."
Sera sighed. "Or what she was becoming."
Lyra walked a few paces ahead, hand on her sidearm, scanning the shifting horizon.
"I've been through illusions before," she muttered. "This place feels worse. Like it's not lying to us—it's trying to make us lie to ourselves."
Suddenly, the terrain snapped.
One blink—and the desert of mirrored glass became a forest.
No transition. No sound. Just—change.
Shu turned on instinct, blades half-drawn, but what surrounded them wasn't hostile.
It was… familiar.
Trees rose around them—lush and green. Sunlight filtered through leaves that shimmered like prism-stone. The air was warm. Alive. Filled with birdsong and the scent of cedar.
And in the center of the clearing stood a man.
His back was to them.
He wore the armor of the Sky Order.
White and blue, rimmed in gold.
"Shu," Sera said softly, pointing. "That's you."
Shu stepped forward slowly. "No. That's not me."
The figure turned.
He bore Shu's face—older, harder, and colder. His eyes were dead. His mouth a straight line. He carried no Sky Key. No emotion. Only purpose.
The mirrored Shu stepped forward.
"Do you understand now?" he asked.
Shu stood still. "Understand what?"
"That this was always a loop. That Aurelia is the ghost of a world that failed. That you are its weapon."
Sera raised her scanner. "It's a projection. He's—"
"No," Shu said quietly. "He's not a projection. He's a possible future."
The mirrored Shu's voice echoed like metal.
"In one path, you save the girl. And you awaken Skygrave. In another, you fail—and become like me. Empty. Efficient. A sword without a cause."
Lyra raised her weapon. "We've seen enough—"
But the moment she moved, the mirrored Shu flicked his hand—
And she froze.
Not in place.
In memory.
Shu gasped—watching as Lyra suddenly became a child before their eyes, then an old woman, then a soldier, then a corpse, then nothing at all. Time unraveled around her, locking her in a loop of every version of herself she could have been.
Sera cursed. "He's corrupting her perception!"
Shu gritted his teeth and stepped forward.
"You want me to break," he said. "But I won't."
The mirrored version of himself raised a brow. "Then prove it."
Shu closed his eyes.
The Key flared against his chest.
And the moment he touched it—
Everything shattered.
---
Shu opened his eyes.
He was somewhere else.
Not a forest. Not the desert.
A hall.
Vast. White. Lined with statues of faces he didn't know but somehow recognized.
He was alone.
Except—
At the far end of the hall, a girl waited.
Nia.
No—Aurelia.
Fully formed now. No flicker, no blend. Hair silver, eyes lit with starlight.
She didn't speak.
She held out her hand.
Shu stepped toward her—and with every step, memories filled his mind.
Of cities built on floating islands.
Of children grown in cradles of code.
Of experiments that turned dreams into weapons.
He saw the Sky Order—not as protectors, but as engineers of fate. Building minds like puzzles. Locking fear in code.
And then…
He saw Aurelia.
A being not born, but assembled.
Given emotion, language, prophecy—and then cast away when her predictions didn't serve the Order's goals.
Shu fell to his knees.
Aurelia knelt with him.
> "I wasn't meant to wake," she said. "But I dreamed of you."
Shu looked up. "Why me?"
> "Because you carry memory differently. You don't erase. You remember. Even the pain."
She touched his temple.
And he felt her.
Truly felt her.
A mind made of stars. Of futures unchosen. Of a thousand timelines collapsing into one truth.
Skygrave wasn't just a place.
It was the result of Aurelia's collapse.
Her grief—made real.
Shu gasped. "You created Skygrave."
> "No," she said. "They did. When they tried to delete me."
The vault, the fold, the relics—they were all shadows of one terrible truth.
The Sky Order had made something they couldn't understand.
And tried to bury it in light.
Aurelia's voice grew quiet.
> "Find me before I finish what they started."
The world blurred again—
---
Shu jolted awake in the forest.
Sera knelt beside him, panicked. "You were gone! You just vanished!"
He looked up.
Lyra was back to normal, pale and sweating. Nia was awake again, but weak.
"She's close," Shu said hoarsely. "Aurelia. I saw her. Really saw her."
Vessa's voice came over comms. "We've found the last signal spike. I think it's where your Skygrave is."
"Coordinates?" Shu asked.
"Two kilometers ahead. But…" Her voice paused. "Shu. It's not a door."
"Then what is it?"
"It's a crater. Miles wide. Still burning."
---
They reached it at nightfall.
The Mirrormarch ended without warning, and the world returned—real, jagged, and cold.
The crater loomed before them, glowing from within, like a wound in the earth that still hadn't healed.
Sera stared at it in silence.
Lyra's voice broke the hush.
"This isn't just a relic site."
"No," Shu said. "It's where the Order died."
They stared into the pit.
Deep below, in the center of the flames, stood a single structure.
A vault tower. Glowing. Breathing.
And carved into the side—barely visible beneath soot and stone—was a name.
> AURELIA-00.
Sera whispered, "The first cradle."
Nia stepped forward, weak but steady.
"I know what I have to do," she said. "It's time to finish the dream."
Shu turned to her.
"Then we go together."