Chapter 21 — The First Fracture
Dawn broke over the hills like a knife tearing cloth — ragged, red, and loud. Isabelle hadn't slept. Her body was still, but her mind raced.
The Sealbearers had names. Purpose. Doctrine.That meant there was an opposite.
Somewhere, others must have also seen through the veil. Others who had tried to break the cycle — and maybe, just maybe, succeeded.
The mirror shard in her pocket tingled again. She pulled it out, its surface no longer smooth but fractured into a spiderweb pattern. Within the cracks, faint light pulsed like a heartbeat. A message, maybe? A map?
She remembered the name whispered in the monastery's library before the shadows swarmed her.
"Valen."
A place, not a person. Forgotten by maps, erased from most minds. But not all.
She rode two trains, one bus, and walked for five hours across an abandoned rail line to reach the edge of an unmarked village swallowed by mist.
A wooden sign leaned crooked at the path's edge. Faded letters read:
Valen: Keep Moving. Keep Forgetting.
But she stopped. And she remembered.
Inside the village, time moved strangely. People didn't look at her, but they noticed. The grocer sold no mirrors. The chapel had no reflection in its stained glass.
Then came the message — a slip of parchment left under her door at the local inn.
No sender. Only words:
"You've cracked the glass. We've been waiting. Midnight. Cemetery gate."
She almost didn't go. But of course she did.
At midnight, five figures waited in the fog. No robes. No chanting. Just eyes — sharp, tired, human.
"We're not saviors," one of them said. "We're just tired of being puppets."
They called themselves the Shatterers.
Each had seen their lives reset. Each remembered other versions of themselves. Each bore scars from resisting.
And now they had Isabelle.
Not their leader — but something else.A signal.
The mirror shard gleamed in her palm as one of the Shatterers extended a hand.
"Let's break what's kept us caged."
And Isabelle, for the first time, didn't feel alone.