Chapter 7: Reflected Roots

When Eryndor set foot down beyond the gate, the ground itself was wrong backwards in the way a dream is wrong but disorientingly real. Light was bent in strange ways, sliding around things as if one swam through water. Forests bent above in impossible bends. Rivers dropped upwards into the sky. Everything warped against expectation and gravity.

Sylven padded beside him, ears twitching, claws sailing over shimmering grass that drifted like moss in water. Sylrae inhaled sharply beside them. "That's the Mirror Vale," she whispered. "A reflection of the world's radiance and its fractures."

He took a breath, tasting a metallic tang in the air. "Is Lysian… safe?"

Sylrae's eyes darkened. "He didn't follow. The gate wouldn't hold him. We're on our own now."

Alarm twisted in Eryndor's chest. "What now?"

Sylrae raised a hand. "We go." She pointed towards a distant crystal spire rising up from shattered trees. "That's the Mirror Spire—refraction of the tower before the Ruin. It should lie in the middle of the Ashroot Grove's reflection. If we make it there, perhaps we see Lysian or at least answers."

Eryndor gulped. The air drew him, called and rejected at the same time. But under that, something anchored his footsteps: the Spiral's quiet warning. He would not turn back.

They traveled towards the spire on floating roots and drifting mists. Every step was a step into a glass world shadows reflected in overhead pools, inverted echoes of themselves echoing from above branches.

Sylrae moved with jerky-straightened step, eyes darting to and fro as if searching for threats—real or reflective.

"See," she breathed, breaking the stillness.

On the edge of a burning pool, Eryndor saw himself except the image shifted of its own accord. The face stared back with eyes even darker than his.

He flinched. "What is this?" he said.

Sylrae knelt beside him. "A Mirror Echo. The Vale birthed reflections of soul and spirit. Most are not damaging. But some years can devour them."

Eryndor shuddered. "Can they cross over?"

"They can," Sylrae said, her tone a low whisper. "And when they do, they take away pieces of your memory, yourself as hunger. You lose you."

He swallowed hard. "How do I stop it?

She gestured toward the spire. "We continue. And when we get to the spire, perhaps the Vale's hold relaxes enough to resist."

They moved forward.

Mists curled into shape, ghost forests of silken creepers and crystal flower. Everywhere, life shone but only in silhouette. The real life lay below.

They found a grove of reflective trunks; trunks whose bark glimmered like polished glass, whose roots were intertwined in silver threads. On one root, a lone green sprout living and fierce had taken hold.

Eryndor knelt, following the fingers along its stem with caressing touches. It pulsed quietly. He drew out a hair of visual string from the vine, feeling its fine breathing in his mind.

A trapped echo stirred in the reflection pool above the trapped image of a girl wearing vines, eyes like moonlight. She pressed a pale hand against the underside of the pool's surface silently pleading.

Eryndor's breath caught. "I've seen her… but not here."

Sylrae unhooked a leather cord. She tied it to his wrist, careful. "If the echo reaches for you—don't touch the pool. Don't let it tempt you."

He nodded, eyes fixed upward.

Hours ticked by in the Vale. The reflected wood went on forever. Each step made echoes, branches upon upside-down branches; reflection piled on reflection until reality shattered.

As they caught sight of the spire's prismatic tip in the distance, set against reflected sunlight, Sylrae came to a stop.

"This is it," she said. "But as we approach, the reflection becomes stronger. We should find an anchor before we proceed."

Eryndor looked around. "How?

Sylrae placed a battered hand on his shoulder. "By creating beyond our reflections: act for the living, call to what's real."

He drew in the Vale's sting, containing his focus back within his own heartbeat, his own pulse, and not the shadow dancing at the rim of the pool.

They'd press on, side by side.

Water above them shone like a mirror, cracked, and the girl's reflection was shattered loose, falling through like raindrop into their world and plunging between them with a crash that shattered glass into vines.

She rose, chalk-white hair and dark depths of eyes. A curl of vine reed rested between her fingers.

And as she looked at Eryndor, she smiled the same lopsided way he'd seen in the Warden's chalice memory with a mouth full of roots.

"I've been waiting," she said.

 "I've been waiting," she said, her voice like velvet soaked in dew. Her eyes—deep pools with faint glimmers of green—fixed solely on Eryndor. Not Sylrae. Not Sylven. Just him.

Eryndor's hand extended towards his satchel instinctively, fingertips tracing over the leather strap that contained the seedstone Lysian had given him. He didn't draw it out. He somehow knew it would be of no use here.

"Who… are you?" he asked, his voice unwavering despite the chill in his belly.

The girl approached. Vines followed behind her bare feet, and where they touched, the grassy reflected surface twisted and quivered. Her skin was pale, with freckles covered lightly in moss like spots. She was but a few years older than him, but there was something in the way she moved that was older than trees.

"I am what you cast aside," she declared bluntly. "Or who was created out of what you cast aside. I don't know. Reflections do not follow rules."

Sylrae had drawn her sword, although there was more wariness than hostility in her stance. "She is a Mirror Wrought," she growled. "Something created by the Vale—forged of memory, or of soul."

"I'm more than a glass trick," the girl answered smoothly, smile unwavering. "A name would be helpful. You may call me Lysira."

Eryndor's stiffening was immediate.

"Lysira? That sounds like—"

She nodded. "Yes. It's his name. Or part of it. A shard of him stepped into the Spiral. Another. into the Vale. I am that shard's daughter. Life echo. Born not of blood—but of desire."

"That is impossible," Sylrae whispered.

But Eryndor wasn't so sure. The Spiral's will had bent rules before. Who was to say the Vale couldn't birth life from emotion especially when shaped by one like Lysian?

Lysira turned her gaze upward. "You're walking toward a truth, Eryndor. Toward the Spire. But beware; some truths break more than illusions."

Sylven snarled then—a throaty warning. His fur quivered in jagged rows along his spine. He put himself between Eryndor and the girl.

Lysira did not blink. Instead, she knelt down and met Sylven's eyes with unexpected gentleness. "You smell of thorns and storms," she said. "You're anchored. Bonded. But even anchors can drift."

Eryndor stepped forward. "Why are you here?"

"To help you," she said softly. "But help… requires sacrifice. And you're not ready. Not yet."

The mirrored ground beneath her shifted, opening like water, and without further warning—she fell backward into the pool, vanishing without a sound.

Eryndor ran forward but Sylrae caught his shoulder. "No," she hissed. "Don't chase echoes. You'll lose yourself. That wasn't meant for now."

The mists thickened.

As they walked toward the foot of the Mirror Spire, reflections began to twist more quickly—whirling about trees, vines uncoiling through the air as if seeking hosts. The spire itself loomed higher than expected, and its surface shone with a thousand broken replicas of the world that wrapped around it. Birds flew backward in its reflection. Rivers wove themselves into snakes.

"It's alive," Sylrae whispered. "Not just a structure—it watches."

They edged forward warily through a slit path that was lined with mirror fruit—thin, glassy pods on curving roots. In each pod was a reflection, but none of them showed him anything of the present.

Instead, Eryndor was seeing fragments of his own past.

His father's face shuddering with disgust as Eryndor flunked his mage trial.

His mother, her eyes empty, speechless as the council declared his exile.

The storms of the outlands.

The starving.

Even Sylven's early days, when their friendship had almost shattered him.

Sylrae passed beyond her own pods in an instant, eyes ahead.

But Eryndor lingered too long. A pod exploded.

A whip-thin vine whipped out, caressing his cheek.

Blood foamed.

Sylrae spun immediately. "You stared too long! Go, Eryndor!"

But it was already too late.

Out of the broken pod flowed a ghost of himself—bloodied, younger, eyes wide with shame. The ghost stretched out a hand, and from it spouted a vine of black fire.

Eryndor backed away.

His ghost struck.

Sylven leapt, snapping jaws into the echo's chest but bleeding through it like mist. Sylrae's sword whooshed, severing the vine. The ghost faltered, its shape weakening.

"You have to deny it," Sylrae yelled. "Take yourself, or it will!"

Eryndor clenched his fists, pounding heart. "That's not me."

He moved a step closer to the ghost.

"You're not me."

It tilted its head.

"You're what I feared, what they made me feel. But I'm not that now."

He reached forward not touching but opening his palm.

The Heartwood within him pulsed.

The ghost screamed silently and unraveled into shards of light.

The pod sealed.

Sylrae exhaled. "That was close."

"Too close," he muttered.

And yet… part of him felt lighter.

They stepped into the shadow of the Spire.

It towered above, and its surface trembled with the weight of memory. Etchings—ancient and fresh—lined its mirrored walls. A whisper pulled at Eryndor's mind.

"You're near," Sylrae whispered. "Something's waiting."

They stepped through the arch.

In the middle, a crystal water basin glowed. Underneath it, a halo of suspended symbols glowed softly—old runes such as those on the Heartwood stone. But they were dark.

Eryndor approached.

The basin rippled.

And a voice echoed not with sound but inside him.

"Will you unravel what was woven?"

The water glowed more brightly.

"Will you risk the root to release the flame?"

A shape began to coalesce.

Something writhed within the basin.

Something… stirring.

Eryndor did not move as the form crested out of the center of the water—himself, wrinkled and cunning-eyed, with thorns for a crown and a cloak that glinted like a storm mirrored in glass. The reflected Eryndor did not dance or tremble like the pod reflections. No—this one was real. Intended.

"Another shadow?" Sylrae spat, stepping into his path.

"No," Eryndor panted. "This one's different."

The air was thick with the odor of blackened bark and chill rain. Whistle dropped low, his ears lashing wildly, but he did not growl. Rather, his tail lashed once on the ground—an uncertain beat of recognition.

The elder Eryndor moved across the basin in feral grace. His eyes shone gold—such as the Chalice had—and his hands bore the Lifeweaver sigils. Twisted and darkened.

"I asked how long it would take you to locate me," the figure answered, its voice as slick as spilled oil. "You're slower than I hoped. But more whole."

Eryndor fought for air, but each sentence of the other him drew breath from his lungs.

"Who are you?"

The reflection smiled. "I'm what you are. Or what you could be if you choose to tie life up instead of mending it."

The words sent shivers racing down his spine.

He shook his head. "I'd never hurt the living weave. That's not what I'm learning."

"Not yet," the elder said. "But you've felt it—the temptation. The weight. The way the threads respond when you push on them."

Eryndor recalled the glade moment. The monster turned inside out. Lysira.

"Even if I have," he spoke slowly, "that doesn't mean I indulge in it."

The older form stepped closer until the rim of the basin fogged beneath his boots.

"Every Lifeweaver makes a choice," he stated. "To feed—or consume. The Spiral understands both paths. But the Vale?" He chuckled. "It remembers only pain."

Sylrae's hand lay on her sword, but she waited—observing Eryndor, gauging his resolve.

The older Eryndor extended a hand. "Come on. I'll show you what strength is other than merely surviving. Mastery. Admiration. No longer hiding in huts or scrounging at leftovers. You were born to dig deep and make your stand."

"And what's that, then?" Eryndor stepped closer. "Conquer the Spiral by sucking its veins dry?"

The smile became venomous. "Aren't those your people's deeds? Why deny it now?"

The truth punched him like a rock in his belly.

He remembered Lysian's whispers. The history that was never spoken. His family's magic had never been benevolent.

Sylrae was still, but her posture narrowed.

"I am not them," Eryndor gasped. "I won't be."

The elder frowned. "Pity."

And then the basin broke with reflected vines.

Whistle charged, battering into Eryndor and shoving him back as the crown-wearing double summoned a flurry of silver roots, each one pulsing with inverted life force. They snapped like whips—one lashing Sylrae's arm.

She shouted, jerking free, blade slicing a vine in two—but the vine illuminated instead of dripping sap.

Eryndor crept up, arm extended.

The basin churned.

But this time—he did not step back.

He stretched inward—to his own strand, the one that hummed with fire rather than hunger.

And he drew.

Green light surged through his veins.

Whistle glowed, his body radiating raw power.

Eryndor's hand rested on the basin and the entire room trembled.

"You think I'm not your match," he snarled, "but you are wrong. I don't have to call on the Spiral for power."

He strode forward, eyes blazing.

"I am the Spiral."

The elder hissed. The air tore around him—like paper burned from the inside out. But it was unstable. Flickering. As if even this mirror-born future couldn't hold against Eryndor's choice.

"You've made your mistake," the shade growled.

"No," Eryndor said. "I've made my stand."

He pushed his palm into the basin.

A pulse of green and gold erupted.

The older body shrieked—not in pain, but in rage—as his body disintegrated, shards of broken reflection flying across the air like shattered truth.

And he was gone.

The basin fell silent.

Sylrae fell to one knee, grasping at her shoulder. Whistle limped to Eryndor's side.

Eryndor's hand trembled.

But he stood.

The Spire fell silent.

Later, they rested near a crack in the Spire wall, moonlight filtering in through fractured glass. Sylrae dressed her wounds quietly, glancing at him now and then.

"You chose well," she said finally. "I've seen others… who didn't."

Eryndor nodded slowly. "It felt like it was me. But twisted. Poisoned."

"Because it was," she replied. "Reflections are memory and potential. And power? It always reflects the worst when bent toward fear."

Eryndor gazed into the basin again, its glow now dying. "Will I ever be tried thus?"

Sylrae breathed a sigh of relief. "Until the Spiral breaks… or you lose all concern."

He managed a weak smile. "Then I guess I'd best care."

Whistle leaned against his side.

They fell into silence, the Vale's soft hum surrounding them.

But just as he was about to fall asleep, Eryndor heard a soft, whispered voice resonate from the glassy walls—

"The Spire is only the start."