Chapter 11: The City of Mirrors

It was Vampher who saw the tower first.

A single spire rising above the trees, slick as polished obsidian, shaped like a needle stitching the sky. Around it, glints of glass shimmered beneath sunlight — hundreds, maybe thousands, scattered across the land like broken reflections.

The wind carried whispers.

Not voices.

Just repeats.

Faint echos of phrases already said.

Dee paused at the forest's edge. The tips of his fingers brushed against the threads of the air — tightly wound, fraying at odd angles. Echo-loops. Temporal impressions. A memory trapped on repeat.

"The threads here are... sick," he murmured.

Hiro stood beside him, eyes narrowed.

"Where are we?"

Vampher stepped forward, frowning. "I've been here before. Once. A long time ago. Back when the world still bled from what we did."

He turned slowly, cloak brushing the ground like a wound being redressed.

"This is the City of Mirrors."

They crossed the final ridge by dusk. And the city greeted them.

But not with bells or people or lights.

With reflections.

Every surface reflected something — but never quite the right thing.

A pane of glass showed a moment from the past: Dee as a child, whispering to threads that hadn't yet learned to sing.

A puddle revealed Hiro standing over a battlefield that hadn't happened yet, hands glowing, face calm, bones weary.

A shard of polished stone captured Vampher sitting alone on a throne made of ash, crown crooked, grief fresh.

He smashed that one.

Dee didn't stop him.

Because the shards shimmered, healed, and showed it again.

"It's stuck," Dee said. "The city is caught in a recursive weave. Memories reflecting endlessly — looping off each other like light in a hall of glass."

"Why?" Hiro asked, crouching to study a mural of himself wrestling a bear made of shadow.

Vampher ran his fingers along a wall. "Because this place was ground zero."

Dee nodded.

"This was where we first faced the Severed Loom. When the weave screamed."

"Did we win?" Hiro asked, half-grinning.

Dee looked around.

Shards whispered.

Walls flickered.

Mirrors showed places that weren't real anymore.

"No," Dee said. "We just... survived."

They passed into the heart of the city as night fell.

The central plaza pulsed with stillness. Statues stood in silence — but each one moved slightly when not being watched.

Not in menace.

In grief.

The largest mirror sat embedded in the ground — a flat, flawless surface the size of a village. Its depth was endless. Stars blinked inside it.

Dee approached it slowly.

Then knelt.

His reflection didn't match him.

It was older. Sadder. Eyes heavier with decisions not yet made.

"Hello again," the mirror said, in Dee's voice.

Dee blinked. "That's new."

Vampher and Hiro flanked him, hands ready for anything.

"Don't," the reflection said. "This place isn't dangerous."

"Could've fooled us," Vampher muttered.

The reflection of Dee leaned forward. "This is a memory core. A broken one. It reflects the deepest regrets of its makers."

Hiro squinted. "Makers?"

Dee stood slowly.

"We did this," he said. "We three. We wove this place into being. A seal, a memorial, a grave marker for what the Severed Loom did. We hoped it would keep the memory alive — remind the world of what happens when threads are unmade without care."

The reflection nodded. "But the world forgot anyway. Time faded it. Thread by thread."

Dee stepped back. "Why are you active now?"

"Because the seals are shifting," the mirror replied. "The Loom stirs. And this city was one of the first anchors holding it down."

"Is it breaking free?" Hiro asked.

The mirror hesitated.

"It's... listening."

Vampher crouched at the edge of the mirror. His own reflection didn't appear. Only shadows.

"Why don't I show up?"

The mirror spoke without emotion. "Because you remember too much."

Vampher looked away.

Hiro's reflection reached up from the mirror and tugged his hand softly — then disappeared.

No one mentioned it.

They set camp that night in what remained of the Library of Echoes. A thousand shelves of empty books. Pages that once held memories long since unraveled.

Vampher sat in a corner with a flickering lantern, staring at nothing.

Hiro roasted a loaf of something that smelled like guilt and cinnamon.

Dee stood atop the library, staring at the stars. Thread wove between his fingers in idle spirals.

And far beneath the city, something pulsed.

Like a heartbeat.

A wrong heartbeat.

A woven heart unraveling.

"Do you regret it?" Vampher asked.

He was speaking to the air.

Dee answered anyway.

"Yes."

"Which part?"

"Letting Myla sacrifice herself."

Vampher nodded.

Then, after a moment: "Do you remember what she said before she went?"

"No."

"I do."

Silence.

Then Dee asked, very softly, "Will you tell me?"

"No," Vampher said gently. "Not yet."

At midnight, the city shifted.

The central mirror flared with light.

Dee, Hiro, and Vampher rushed back to the plaza, hands glowing with readiness.

But it wasn't an attack.

It was a replay.

The final moment before the seal was completed.

The three of them stood — younger, bruised, bloodied, mad with loss.

Myla stood between them and a wound in the sky.

The Severed Loom's form was incomprehensible — a threadless tangle of screaming silence and inverse color.

Myla's voice echoed:

"You don't have to save me.

Just remember me."

Then she stepped forward.

And unwove.

Not from pain.

From love.

The Loom screamed.

The city cracked.

And the first seal was set.

The vision ended.

No one spoke for a long time.

Then Hiro said, "I didn't remember her voice sounding that gentle."

Dee clenched his fists. "We shouldn't have let her."

"You didn't," said Vampher. "You begged her not to. You tried to weave yourself into her place."

Dee turned away.

The mirror cracked slightly underfoot.

They left the City of Mirrors the next morning.

None of them looked back.

But as they reached the edge of the forgotten forest, the wind whispered:

"She still waits."

And far, far below, the Severed Loom stirred.

Just a twitch.

Just a taste.

But it remembered the city.

And it hated its reflection.