Shadows in the Reflection

Ezren awoke in a cold sweat, breath ragged in the stale dark. His room lay cloaked in stillness, the kind that seemed to stretch endlessly between the ticks of time. Night pressed against the walls like a held breath, and the ceiling above felt unnaturally far away, like it might vanish if he blinked.

The ache behind his eyes had sharpened overnight. It was no longer a dull pressure but a living thing pulsing with each beat of his heart, threading pain through his thoughts like needle and sinew.

Beside him, the notebook lay open on the nightstand, its parchment breathing faint silver light into the gloom. The symbol on the page a thread looped twice through a stylized eye seemed to shimmer in rhythm with the throb in his skull, pulsing with a cadence that wasn't his own.

Ezren sat up, sheets clinging to sweat-damp skin. He stared at the symbol as if it might speak. It didn't. It only stared back, silent and watching, like it had been waiting for him to wake.

He didn't recognize the room anymore.

He didn't recognize himself.

Outside, Aetherholt had folded into the arms of a restless dusk. Fog curled low along the streets, thick and oily like smoke rising from a dying fire. The gas lamps sputtered one by one to life, coughing out dim golden light that barely touched the stones. Their flickering halos danced against brick and glass like frightened ghosts.

Ezren moved through the city like a passenger in his own skin.

His coat clung too tightly to his frame, the weight of the notebook heavy and warm against his ribs. It beat there like a second heart. Each footstep echoed louder than it should've, bouncing off the walls of narrow alleys and twisting corridors until it sounded like someone or something was following close behind.

He avoided eye contact with passersby, but still he felt it: attention. As though eyes peered at him through fogged windows, watched from behind curtains, studied him from reflections that didn't quite mimic his movements.

He stopped before a cracked storefront, the glass warped and dust-flecked. His reflection swam in it, distorted. His hair was mussed from sleep, his cheeks pale, but it was the eyes that unsettled him their violet hue had darkened to the edge of black. His pupils looked too wide, too deep.

And for a moment, he wasn't alone.

Behind him, in the glass, a shadow stood tall, robed, faceless.

Ezren whirled.

Only empty street.

Only fog.

Only silence.

Then a whisper. Soft. Breath-warm.

"Ezren…"

His breath caught. "Who's there?"

No answer.

Only the steady hiss of mist curling through iron grates.

He fled toward the Archive. Toward the only place that felt like it knew him before he knew himself.

The courtyard awaited, its twisted trees bare and brittle, stretching clawed fingers toward the heavens. The books were where they always were scattered, piled, humming with a low, unseen current. The stones beneath Ezren's feet vibrated faintly, as if the earth itself had taken notice of his approach.

The ash-haired woman was already there.

She sat perched upon a low wall, coat fluttering in a wind he couldn't feel, her boots dusted with dew. Her eyes opened as he entered gray, sharp, unblinking. They pinned him to the path like a nail through parchment.

"You pulled the thread," she said. "And the Verse has answered."

Ezren swallowed. "I didn't mean to. I just… I didn't know what it would do."

"No one ever does," she said quietly. "Not at first."

He stepped closer, unsure whether he was seeking guidance or absolution.

"What happens now?"

She tilted her head. "What always happens. The world begins to resist."

She raised her hand toward the notebook in his pocket. "That mark you carry it is not merely ink. It's a sigil of disruption. A sign that something meant to stay buried has stirred. The Verse does not like that. It remembers... and it retaliates."

Ezren frowned, his hand tightening around the edge of the coat. "What does that mean?"

"It means," she said, "that for every thread you pull, a shadow is born."

Before he could speak, the fog behind him shifted.

A tall figure stepped into view, robed in a coat the color of obsidian matte, seamless, heavy with stillness. His presence arrived before his voice did, a pressure like thunder moments before a storm.

His eyes gleamed beneath a wide-brimmed hat silver-gray and flickering like dying stars. Cold, calculating.

"Ezren Cael Thren," the man said.

Ezren's mouth went dry. "Who… who are you?"

The figure stepped forward, his boots not making a sound on the stone.

"We are the Bureau."

The words dropped like iron weights.

The ash-haired woman's expression turned to steel. "You shouldn't be here."

He ignored her. His gaze remained fixed on Ezren. "You have rewritten once. That was your warning."

Ezren stepped back, instinct prickling. "Why are you watching me?"

The man tilted his head. "Because you are a Threadbearer now. And a threat. Rewrite too much… and the Verse collapses. There are laws. Boundaries."

"And if I break them?"

The man's smile was the kind made by wolves. "You won't get the chance."

The ash-haired woman stepped forward, placing herself between them.

"You will not touch him," she said.

"We already have," the man replied. "The moment he pulled the thread, he entered the story."

Then, without movement or sound, the figure dissipated into mist, swallowed by fog as though he had never been there at all.

Ezren stood frozen.

"What is the Bureau?" he asked, voice hoarse.

"Wardens of the Verse," she said. "Or so they believe. They think control is protection. But not all stories want to be caged."

Ezren's mind swam with more questions than he could contain.

"What do I do?"

The woman looked toward the silver-etched trees.

"You learn," she said. "You listen. You survive."

Ezren glanced down at the notebook, still open in his hand.

A new line had appeared.

"Beware the watchful ink. Some stories write back."

Beneath it, the symbol had changed the thread now looped three times through the eye.

The ache behind Ezren's eyes flared, sharper than ever.

He clenched his jaw, the words from Solon rising again in his memory"Every rewrite comes at a cost."

And now… it was clear.

That cost was coming due.

As the lamps guttered behind him and the streets whispered with fog, Ezren turned back toward the orphanage.

Tonight, the city no longer felt like a home.

It felt like a chapter half-written.

And the ink was beginning to run.