Ayla's boot heel snagged in the carpet's rose-patterned tear, rotting wood splinters stabbing her ankle. They'd stumbled into the abandoned ballroom—seventeen-meter mirror walls stared through cataract-like cobwebs. When Lucas reached to steady her, the nearest cheval glass shuddered, spider silk snapping like harp strings. Fourteen-year-old versions of themselves tumbled out, skirts and shirtsleeves still dusted with studio gypsum.
(Her nails dug into his festering wrist, cerulean beads seeping into mirror crevices)
The phantom Lucas played a piano with missing keys, moss crawling between ivories. Teenage Ayla carved a candlestick into a wolf's head, chips etching the beginnings of "save" on sheet music. Real blood dripped from Lucas' cheek, snaking Morse code dashes across the carpet.
"Avoid B-flat!" Eric's shout echoed through the mirror corridor, pocket watch chain tangled in chandelier wreckage. "Wrong notes trigger Odile's neurotoxin—"
Too late. Ayla's foot already crushed the faded ivory key pattern. Every mirror reflected twenty-year-old Odile slicing her marriage contract with laser-ring, fragments drifting into fourteen-year-old Lucas' coffee cup. Reality and illusion's piano notes clashed into dissonance, soundwaves slamming Ayla against glass. Her pre-rebirth hairpin gleamed in phantom Lucas' mechanical eye.
(The hairpin's tip oozed cerulean liquid, forming "Northeast" in carpet fibers)
Lucas dragged her into a waltz, blood splattering with each spin. They'd learned these steps at fourteen, peeking through banquet curtains. Back when his mechanical fingers didn't rust, steady at her waistline. Now his palm circuits shorted, static burning her shirt: "Follow my bleeding rhythm...stomp mirror joints on third beat!"
On the seventh rotation, Ayla shattered a full-length mirror. Cracks revealed surveillance footage—twenty Ayla clones brewing "Cedar's Tear" perfume, bottles labeled with Lucas' gene codes. The eldest clone turned, lips forming: "You're the 21st defect."
(Eric's watch face exploded, gears striking mirror-Odile's ring)
Illusions crumbled. The phantom piano burst into gypsum wolves while real blood spelled coordinates toward a Persian tapestry. As Ayla yanked it aside, Lucas gasped—a crystal shoe shard from the mirror pierced his spinal port, heel engraved with her mother's initials.
"August 24, 1999," Eric wiped charred calendar numbers surfacing on glass. "The night your mother shattered these shoes, she distilled memory-reversal serum."
The hidden alcove held seven empty "Cedar's Tear" vials. Cerulean residue at their bottoms matched Lucas' bloodstream gears. When Ayla crushed the glass, all reflections inverted—teenage her drove a chisel into Lucas' heart, while real Lucas clutched his bleeding chest, grinning like a glitching automaton: "Now...do we share..."
Sirens shredded his words. Mirrors carbonized inch by inch as Odile's specter oozed from blackened frames, clutching half a marriage contract. The laser-erased name wasn't Lucas'—but Eric's former identity.