Breaking Open

The air between them cracked.

The reflections stood still — watching, waiting, almost breathing. Kai could feel it in his bones: this wasn’t an enemy. It was memory given spine. Echo made visible. And it wasn’t going to strike first.

Sienna took a slow step forward toward her double. “If you’re here,” she whispered, “then maybe I never let you speak.”

The mirrored Sienna blinked — once — and then dissolved, not shattered, but absorbed. Like ink sinking back into paper.

The notebook in Sienna’s arms trembled.

Pages turned on their own.

Words she didn’t remember writing surfaced.

Kai turned toward his reflection.

The double stared back with quiet fury.

“You leave. You run. You film what you never stay long enough to understand.”

Kai clenched his fists — not in defiance, but in recognition. “That’s not untrue,” he said softly. “But I came back.”

The reflection didn’t reply.

Instead, it walked forward.

And stepped into him.

The glass beneath Kai’s feet split — not dangerously, but decisively.

Lines of golden light coursed through the cracks, pulsing like veins.

Sienna’s notebook snapped shut.

The mirror plain began to hum — not with threat, but with release.

“You were never meant to stay unbroken,” came a voice — not Cero’s, not Lyen’s, but something older.
“You were meant to resonate despite the fracture.”

The ground shifted.

A new circle formed — not a well, but something after a well. A ring of light suspended in air.

Through it, a new landscape waited.

Mountains in the distance.

A tree burning without smoke.

And in the center: a voice calling.

Not for help.

For witness.