The Crack in the Mirror

Rosaline's POV

The mirror cracked.

Not a shatter. Not yet.

Just a single, delicate fracture like a silver vein cutting through the oil-dark surface. From its edge, light leaked in a thin, deliberate line, glowing like starlight caught beneath skin.

I stared at it, frozen. The silence in the room thickened. Even the air seemed to hesitate.

Adam's hand, still brushing my cheek, dropped slowly to his side.

"You saw that too," I said.

He didn't answer.

The glow from the mirror pulsed once, then faded. The crack remained.

It felt like a warning. A whisper from something beyond the veil. Something waking.

Awaken.

The word still echoed in my bones.

I stepped back from the pedestal, needing distance—from the mirror, from Adam, from everything burning in my chest. My fingertips tingled. My heart beat too fast. The pendant at my collarbone throbbed like it wanted to crawl into my skin.

"That wasn't just a vision," I said. "That was… me. Some version of me."

Adam didn't deny it.

"The more you see, the more you become," he murmured. "The mirror only shows what's already inside."

"I don't know if that should terrify me or not."

"It should."

His honesty startled me. There was no softness in it. No comfort. Just a fact.

I turned on him. "You told me the seals are breaking. But you never said what happens when they're all open. What then, Adam?"

He looked at me—truly looked at me—and for the first time, I saw it:

Dread.

Not fear for me.

Fear of me.

"When the seventh seal breaks," he said slowly, "you won't be Rosaline anymore."

That broke something in me.

I walked away from him, pacing the room. The walls felt closer than they had a moment ago, like they were breathing. Watching.

"I never asked for this," I whispered. "I didn't ask to be a weapon, or a sealbearer, or the 'last flame' of a kingdom I barely remember."

"And yet here you are," Adam said. "Every step of your bloodline built toward you."

I whirled around. "Then what do you want from me?"

He didn't answer right away.

"You said if I opened the final seal, you'd have to choose between me and the world." My voice shook. "So tell me, Adam. Are you already deciding?"

That question hung like a dagger between us.

His silence was the answer.

The mirror behind me shimmered again, less stable now. The reflection flickered. My face, and then… something else. A stranger wearing my skin. Her smile was cruel, and her golden eyes were bright with power and fury.

I turned away before she could speak again.

"I can't sleep," I said quietly.

Adam nodded, understanding. "Then don't."

He walked toward the table, uncorked a bottle of dark red wine—not blood—and poured two glasses. He handed one to me. The other, he drank in a single swallow.

We sat on opposite ends of the long obsidian couch, a stretch of space between us too wide to cross.

"You were right," I said after a long silence. "I've seen everything now."

Adam looked at me over the rim of his glass. "No. You've seen just enough to start asking the wrong questions."

That sent a chill down my spine.

Later, I lay in bed with my eyes wide open. The moonlight bled across the marble floor like a pale ghost.

The mirror's crack haunted me. So did Adam's voice.

You won't be Rosaline anymore.

But the question that pulsed louder than any other…

When the fifth seal breaks… Who will betray whom?

I didn't know the answer.

I only knew I wasn't ready for it.

Not yet.

The dream began with fire.

Not the kind that burns.

The kind that sings.

Golden flames danced across an endless field of white ash, stretching beyond any horizon. Trees bent in reverence to an unseen melody. The sky above me shimmered, stars burning like old gods blinking awake.

In the distance, a throne of stone floated midair, cracked, empty, waiting.

I took a step forward, barefoot on warm earth.

The wind whispered my name.

Not Rosaline.

But something older. A name in a language I didn't know.

A name that made my bones ache with recognition.

"We are waiting, my Flame."

I turned.

A man stood beneath a twisted archway of light and shadow. I couldn't see his face just the glint of a halo behind his head, rusted and half-broken. His robes shimmered like smoke, his eyes hidden beneath a carved golden mask.

But I knew who he was.

The Saint.

The one who watched me in dreams. The one who called me "weapon." The one Adam would never speak of.

"The fifth seal nears, and still you hesitate."

"I didn't ask for any of this," I whispered.

The saint stepped closer. "You were never meant to ask. You were made to choose."

"Choose what?"

His voice dropped to a whisper.

"Who will bleed? And who will burn?"

I woke with a jolt.

The room was dark, the sheets tangled around me. My skin was damp with sweat, the pendant hot against my chest.

A humming filled the air. Soft. Rising.

I sat up—

And the mirror across the room cracked again, a second fracture splitting down its surface.

"Shit," I breathed.

The air shimmered around me.

And then—without warning—the pendant flared, and the glass of my bedside lamp exploded.

Shards flew outward. One grazed my cheek.

Blood.

Just a drop.

But the room reacted, with sigils on the far wall flickering to life and then vanishing.

The power inside me had stirred.

And I hadn't even called it.

The pendant pulsed once, then went still.

I sat there for a long time, knees drawn to my chest, hands pressed flat against the marble like I was trying to hold the world together by touch alone. My breath fogged the air.

The mirror was still cracked. And the light bleeding from it had faded.

But the feeling in my chest remained:

Not grief. Not fear. Something older.

Something like a choice already made.

Adam wasn't there. He wasn't coming. Of course he wasn't.When I finally moved, my limbs felt like glass. I didn't go to him.

I didn't knock on his door, or call his name, or wait for him to feel me leaving.

I went to the hall closet. Pulled out the canvas satchel Amanda once said "looked too mortal for a place like this."

She was right. I wanted to feel mortal again.

I tossed in a few things. Boots. Gloves. A silver dagger I had no training to use. The charm Amanda had given me "just in case." I didn't know what case she meant. Maybe this one.

At the desk, I hesitated. Then I picked up a pen.The note was small.Folded once. Left in silence.

Adam,

Don't wait.

—Rose

No explanations. No goodbye.

Just a thread, cut in ink.

The wind outside howled as I closed the door behind me.I didn't take the front elevator.

I slipped down the old service shaft—the one Amanda showed me during our first week, when we still smiled like nothing could swallow us.

My boots hit the back alley with a soft thud. Cold mist crawled across the stones like a living thing. The city breathed differently down here. Harsher. Wilder. Real.

Above me, the tower glowed like a silent god. Adam's kingdom. His cage.

I didn't look back. The streets narrowed the deeper I went, coiling like veins around a dying heart.

Shuttered shops. Neon signs flickering in languages older than Latin. Black-cloaked figures stood whispering under bone lamps. The scent of sulfur and lilies tangled in the air like perfume and poison.

This place was older than the glass skyline above.

It didn't belong to vampires.

It belonged to the forgotten.

I passed a vendor selling bottled shadows. A blind woman humming lullabies that made my skin crawl. A boy with stitched lips who reached for me but never touched.

Still, I walked.

I knew where I was going.

Not because I'd been here.

But because the pendant pulled me.

There was no sign. No door.

Just a torn red curtain stretched between two stone walls, faded from age, fraying at the edges. It hung like a wound in the world, shifting gently even though the alley was still.

The wind that moved it wasn't natural. It didn't rustle trash or whisper through fire escapes.

It moved only the curtain. And it breathed with rhythm.

Like something on the other side was waiting for me to step through.

Behind it, I felt magic.

Not the cold, controlled energy of Adam's world. This was older. Wild. Feminine. Watching.

It smelled like scorched herbs and old blood.

Like time gone sour.

The pendant at my throat flared once softly, warning. I reached forward, fingertips brushing the fabric.

It didn't feel like cloth. It felt like skin.

The moment I touched it, the world behind me went quiet. The street faded. The city air vanished. Even the cold fell away.

The veil pulled back.

And I stepped through.

The curtain sealed behind me without a sound.

Candles burned blue in floating bowls. Shelves groaned under herbs, knives, bones, and jars filled with eyes that blinked when I passed. The air shimmered with spelllight.

She sat at the back, cloaked in moss-green silk, skin the color of dried parchment. Her hair was made of roots. Her eyes, white and blind, still turned directly to me.

"So," she said. "The last flame arrives."