The mirror didn't shimmer.
It pulsed.
A slow, steady beat—like a dying heart refusing to rest.
Kael stood before it, hands clenched at his sides. The cracked silver surface didn't show his face. It showed fragments—slices of possibility. Visions not yet real, yet already aching with truth.
He saw a crown made of ribs.
A kingdom with no sky.
A boy clutching a sword too heavy for him.
And above it all, the star still hovered in the heavens, burning down like judgment incarnate.
Kael stepped closer to the mirror.
His reflection didn't move.
It waited.
---
A whisper slipped through the air.
Not from behind.
From inside the glass.
> "Enter... or remain remembered."
Kael didn't speak.
He pressed his palm—marked with the Primordial Brand—against the mirror.
It didn't crack further.
It opened.
Like liquid swallowing light.
---
He fell forward, and the world shattered.
---
⟢ The Inner Star
Kael landed not in space, but in a sky made of flame.
The ground was a web of charred constellations, burned into nothing.
Above him, the star hung—not distant, but close, like a god breathing down his spine.
It was not fire.
It was memory.
A collapsed world folded into heat and light. And in its center floated a cocoon—a shell of glass and blood, rotating slowly, sealed with chains made of ancient scripture.
Kael approached it.
The heat didn't touch him.
His soul did not tremble.
He was beyond trembling.
But his eyes narrowed.
Something lived inside that shell.
Something alive. But not awakened.
Not yet.
---
A figure stepped out of the void behind him.
Not an enemy.
A witness.
Cloaked in robes of night-smoke, the figure had no face. Just a halo of broken halos, circling its head like a reminder.
> "Do you know what that is?" it asked.
Kael didn't answer.
> "It's not a star," the figure continued. "It's a seed. One planted by the First Sovereign. Watered with betrayal. Fed by war."
Kael looked at the cocoon again.
> "So it's a weapon?"
> "No," the witness said softly. "It's a mirror. The truest one."
Kael stared.
He saw the threads now—lines stretching from the cocoon into timelines that hadn't yet happened. Battles not yet fought. Loves not yet lost. Deaths he hadn't died.
All tied to him.
> "It's your future," the figure said. "All of them. Bound. Sealed. Waiting to choose which one gets free."
Kael reached toward the shell.
> "Then let it choose."
> "Are you sure?" the voice rasped. "You may not like the version it sets free."
> "I never did," Kael muttered. "But that never stopped me."
---
His hand touched the cocoon.
It cracked.
Just once.
And the star around him screamed—not in rage, but in release.
The future had just taken its first breath.