POV: Theda Moonridge
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The North Had Gone Quiet
Which is how Theda knew something was wrong.
Mirror fractures never spread silently. They crackle through the world like frost through veins. And yet the northern wind had stilled. The birds had vanished. The glass in her garden refused to grow.
She held her breath, pricked her finger, and dropped the blood into her divination bowl.
It hissed.
> "She's not gone," the surface whispered.
"She's only shedding her name."
---
In the Town of Vilier's Hollow
A girl walked barefoot down the old cobbled path.
She wore no coat, though it was snowing. Her eyes reflected the sky, but not the clouds. When she stepped in puddles, they didn't ripple. When she passed a dog, it howled.
No one remembered seeing her arrive.
No one asked her where she came from.
But they all remembered her leaving.
Because the night she passed through, every mirror in the village turned to face the wall.
And one little boy said she whispered his dead sister's name.
---
Theda Dreams of the Mirror Roots
She should have told Irlenne. Should have warned her that shards don't rot — they reseed.
Theda lit ten candles that night and tried to scry deeper.
> She saw a throat stitched shut with hair.
A girl standing in a field of broken promises, whispering in Mara's voice.
A letter floating down through a crack in time.
And Lucien standing at the center of it all, holding a note that hadn't existed the day before.
---
Lucien's Letter
He found it in his coat pocket.
He hadn't worn the coat in weeks. Since the mirror snapped. Since Irena — no, Irlenne — came back from the other side with bloodied palms and eyes like fireflies.
The letter smelled like ash and roses.
The handwriting was Mara's.
But the signature read:
> "You always loved the echo.
Not the girl.
— Elowen."
He burned it.
But the smoke tasted like her laugh.
---
Irlenne Feels the Pull Again
It begins in the mirror above the kitchen sink.
A drop of red on her lower lip.
Not blood.
Not hers.
She wipes it away, but it smears upward — back into the reflection.
Then another drop. Then a voice:
> "You buried me alive."
Irlenne doesn't scream. She stares.
And the reflection — no longer her — tilts its head and smiles:
> "But I learned how to climb."
---
Theda Warns of a Second Fracture
"She's not just memory anymore," Theda says. "She's a seed."
Lucien is pacing, eyes wild.
"I thought Irlenne took it back."
"She did," Theda nods. "But you can't un-birth something that never needed permission to exist."
Lucien freezes.
"So what do we do?"
"We find the second vessel," Theda says. "Before she finds us."
---
Elowen in the Mirror Town
Vilier's Hollow is gone.
Theda, Irlenne, and Lucien arrive three days too late.
The village is silent. The homes are empty. The wells run dry.
But every mirror in every home reflects a girl with black eyes and no mouth.
And in the center of town:
A cracked fountain.
A mirror shard set into the stone.
And etched beneath it, in childish script:
> "Not all reflections ask permission."
---
Theda Touches the Shard
Her fingers bleed instantly.
The shard doesn't want to be held — it wants to be understood.
Theda stares into it and sees—
> Herself.
Then Mara.
Then Elowen.
Then a forest of mouths all whispering the same name:
"Irlenne."
---
A New Threat Awakens
Elowen is no longer trying to become Mara.
She's becoming Irlenne.
Not her past. Not her double.
Her replacement.
Each mirror she touches rewrites a piece of the real world in reverse.
> Leaves fall up.
Laughter becomes silence.
A girl who once trusted no one now opens doors for strangers with teeth.
And Irlenne feels it — in the marrow of her name. In the hunger in the mirrors. In the way Lucien looks at her now like he's unsure which version of her he wants to keep.
---
Theda Gives Irlenne a Choice
"There's a place," Theda says. "Beyond the cracks. The heart of the Mirror Realm. Where names go to be devoured."
"If I go," Irlenne says, "I might not come back."
Theda nods.
"But if you don't—she'll wear your face forever."
---
Irlenne Packs the Mirror Shard
She doesn't tell Lucien where she's going.
She kisses his temple while he's asleep, leaves the shard wrapped in velvet, and writes her real name in the condensation of the mirror by his bed.
> Irlenne. Not Irena. Not Mara. Not her.
And when the sun rises—
She steps through the glass again.
Only this time—
The mirror doesn't resist.
It welcomes her back.
---