Flaga stood across the fractured glass, her form unstable. Her limbs twitched. Her skin cracked, pulsing faintly. Black veins spread under her surface, glowing with dying energy. She clutched her side, staggering like a puppet with cut strings.
"You were hiding this the whole time…?"
Maël didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
The air around him pulsed.
Not loud. Not angry. Just... heavy. It pressed on the world like the weight of judgment. The mirror maze groaned. Glass webbed with cracks in rhythm with his breathing. The walls trembled as if struggling to stay together.
Then he moved.
A single step.
But it didn't sound like a step. It sounded like pressure. Like a god knocking on the gates of a world too fragile to hold him.
Lyraen clung to her mirror, frozen in place. Her voice was gone. Her heartbeat was deafening. The dreamworld dulled all feeling, but what she saw etched itself into her soul.
Light crawled up Maël's arm. White shimmer like living frost climbed his fingers.
