The mirror garden pulsed like a heartbeat.
Each reflection shivered as if sensing her indecision. They fed off it, like beasts drawn to blood—dancing on the edge of her memories, clawing at the seams of her soul.
"Choose me," Lysander said softly, stepping beside her. "And I will give you everything you were denied. Power. Eternity. Freedom from pain."
"You call that freedom?" Murdoch snarled from the opposite mirror, his fist slamming into the glass. "Binding her with a childhood promise she didn't understand?"
"It was sincere," Lysander said, his voice quiet but dangerous. "Sincerity gives magic its strength. I did not create the contract. She did."
Ruoqing's eyes snapped to him. "You mean... I wrote the binding?"
Lysander nodded. "In your own blood, in your own words. I merely gave it form."
A shimmering scroll unfurled between them. It bore a childish scrawl, stained in red.
"If I can live, I'll be yours forever. I promise. Cross my heart."
Signed: Lin Ruoqing, age 7.
She stared at it, horrified.The handwriting was hers.
The blood—it matched the cut she'd gotten from the glass.
A seven-year-old's desperate plea to survive... had become a marriage pact.
Lysander closed his hand around hers, lifting it toward the scroll. "All you need to do is finish it. Seal it with your name again. One signature, and this endless suffering will be over."
Murdoch's voice cut through the mirror. "Don't. That's not a contract. It's a curse."
Ruoqing turned to him, tears welling in her eyes.
"What if he's right?" she whispered. "What if... all of this pain, the nightmares, the blood—it's all because I broke a promise?"
"You were a child," Murdoch said. "And a child's fear is not a contract. It's a cry for help."
"But it worked," she murmured. "I lived. I got fifteen years I shouldn't have had."
"And what did they cost you?" Murdoch's voice was trembling now. "You've been hunted, haunted, pulled across timelines. That's not living, Ruoqing. That's being owned."
Lysander's grip on her hand tightened. "He wants to keep you weak. I want to make you a queen."
"I don't want to be a queen," she said, stepping back. "I just want to be... me."
The mirror garden howled.
Glass cracked beneath her feet.
Suddenly, the reflection of Murdoch split—a second image appearing beside the first. But this one was different.
His hair longer. His eyes colder. Dressed in the black armor of the Mirror Guard, holding a sword soaked in shadow.
The second Murdoch stepped forward.
"I remember this version," Lysander murmured. "The one where he betrayed you. Where he took your memories and locked them in the Mirror Palace so you would never remember me."
The armored Murdoch raised his blade toward the first.
"I did what I had to do," he said. "To keep her alive."
Ruoqing staggered.
Two Murdochs.
Two histories.
One loved her. One lied to her.
Which one was real?
The mirrors around her began to collapse, the pressure too much. Reflections shattered, revealing a storm beneath—a twisting vortex of broken timelines and alternate selves.
And from that chaos, something crawled.
A hand. Pale. Thin. Clawed.
It gripped the edge of the broken mirror, pulling itself out.
Lysander's smile widened.
"I was hoping we'd get to this part," he whispered.
Ruoqing turned just in time to see it rise.
A twisted version of herself—eyes black, mouth sewn shut, skin marked with runes.
The version that said yes.
The version that never left the Mirror Palace.
The Bride of the Void.
She lunged forward, mouth stretching open despite the stitches, and screamed.
Ruoqing hit the ground, ears ringing.
Murdoch—both of them—drew weapons. The first used light, the second used shadow. They circled the nightmare bride, blades flashing.
But Ruoqing couldn't move.
Because she saw the third mirror open.
And this time, she stepped through.
The real her.
The current her.
The one that had lived through all of it.
She stepped between the fighters, arms raised.
"Enough!" her voice echoed.
The nightmare bride froze.
The two Murdochs paused.
Even Lysander tilted his head, intrigued.
Ruoqing looked at the scroll still floating midair.
And she tore it in half.
The parchment screamed.
Fire erupted across the garden. Mirrors burst. The stitched bride fell backward, vanishing into black mist. The Murdochs merged into one—collapsing to his knees, whole but bleeding.
And Lysander?
He did not scream.
He laughed.
"Excellent," he said. "Now we begin the real game."
He stepped backward into the mirror behind him, and it swallowed him whole.
Ruoqing tried to follow—but the portal snapped shut.
Murdoch reached her. "Are you alright?"
"No," she whispered. "He went deeper. Into the Core."
Murdoch paled.
"The Core of the Mirror Realm is where all timelines converge. If he makes it there first... he can rewrite your past."
Ruoqing turned to him, determination in her eyes.
"Then we'll get there first."
She gripped his hand.
And together, they stepped into the collapsing maze of time.