Chapter 22 — Through the Cracks
The Shatterers didn't speak of hope.Hope got you killed.
Instead, they dealt in patterns, in fractures, in the invisible logic of the curse — where things broke, repeated, or refused to stay buried.
The abandoned schoolhouse on the outskirts of Valen became their base. Dust-choked, boarded windows. Chalkboards that still bore faded arithmetic. But in the basement, they'd carved maps into the walls — lines of red string stretching between old towns, forgotten rituals, and violent disappearances.
Isabelle watched as Cal, the youngest of the group, pinned a new photo to the wall.It was from 1984: a mirror shattering mid-ceremony. Blood and flame in the background.
"Same signature," he said. "Spiral fracture, blue smoke, no survivor."
They were hunting mirror incidents, trying to find a pattern in the chaos. Isabelle began noticing similarities — the names, the symbols, the precise astronomical timings.
But with every thread they pulled, the world tugged back.
One of them — Lena, quiet and twitchy — reported hearing voices through blank mirrors. Not her own. Ones that had never reflected anything. "They're adapting," she whispered. "Watching us watch them."
That night, the group broke into a ruined observatory deep in the forest. Isabelle's shard guided them — a dim throb when they stepped in the right direction.
Inside, dust covered a circular chamber with a shattered central mirror. At its heart lay a journal. Pages inked in multiple hands. Some ancient. Some recent.
It detailed a failed attempt in 1863 to sever the loop — a ritual that required sacrifice, not just intention.
And at the bottom, scrawled in blood-brown ink:
"Only the broken may shatter. Only the willing may forget."
Suddenly, Cal cried out — the shard in his pocket glowing hot. Something was coming. The air rippled. A mirror on the wall trembled.
From its surface, a second version of Isabelle stepped halfway through — younger, wilder-eyed, with the same scar above her lip.
She looked directly at Isabelle and said, "You're doing it wrong. Again."
Then she vanished.