Ash and Thorns: The Mirror Chronicles

Once, stories were written to save us — fairytales filled with hope, love, and happy endings. But something ancient crept between the lines. A darkness that watched from behind mirrors. It didn’t want heroes. It wanted order. It wanted control. In a kingdom once ruled by magic and tales, an unseen force rewrote the endings. The Mirror Network — a secret society buried in forgotten history — used enchanted mirrors to twist reality, control identities, and bend entire fates to their will. Every mirror placed in a royal chamber, every whisper that echoed through polished glass, was part of a long experiment: to erase the truth and build a world of obedience. Red never believed in stories. Dressed in her iconic crimson cloak, sharp-eyed and sharper-tongued, she arrived at the royal palace to escape a past she could barely remember. But fate had other plans. The night she stepped into the ballroom was the night the prince died — murdered before midnight, with Cinderella at the center of the scandal. As the fairytale crumbled, Red found herself caught in a puzzle far deeper than royal betrayal. Her investigation uncovered hidden corridors behind mirrors, a diary filled with erased names, and magic that made her question every version of truth she’d ever known. Cinderella’s charm, she discovered, was a facade — a product of the same curse that bound others before her. The Mirror Network had marked Red too. But unlike the others, Red could see the cracks. Her mind fought back. Her memories flickered like a broken reel, revealing glimpses of stolen children, rewritten love stories, and a mirror that always showed someone else’s reflection. Far beyond the castle walls, in a forgotten thorn-covered palace swallowed by sleep and silence, Aurora opened her eyes. A century had passed, though to her, it felt like moments. She remembered falling asleep, but not why. She remembered her name, but not her face. All that remained was the mirror. It stood untouched by time. Smooth. Cold. Watching. Aurora wandered the ruins of her life, searching for answers in shadows. The curse that once held her was no romantic spell — it was a lock. Her dreams hadn’t been dreams at all, but experiments — visions planted by the Mirror Network to overwrite who she was. Every time she resisted, they erased a little more. But the magic faltered when Red shattered her story. As Aurora unraveled the hidden carvings etched in her tower’s stone walls, she found a name. Red. The girl who broke the pattern. The girl who survived the Network’s web of lies. And in that name, Aurora found the first thread of her own truth. Now, two stories — once separated by time and distance — begin to converge. Red, hunted for what she’s uncovered, and Aurora, haunted by what she’s forgotten, must both confront the same question: who were they before the mirrors rewrote them? The Network is collapsing. The magic they’ve guarded is fracturing. The mirrors are leaking into the world, twisting reality with every reflection. Versions of Red and Aurora — darker, crueler, broken — begin to manifest, born of manipulated memory and fear. Red must return to the place where it all began. Aurora must enter the world she slept through. Both carry fragments of the mirror, and in those shards lies the key to destroying the Network. But nothing comes without sacrifice. The deeper they go, the more truth they see. And the truth is dangerous. The curse was never meant to be broken. It was meant to transform. Only together can they unwrite the story, reclaim their identities, and face the one mirror that has never been shattered — the Mirror of Origin. Because in this world, you don’t defeat monsters by fighting them. You defeat them by remembering who you were before the story began.