The chapel ruins stood quiet under moonlight.
Once, it had been the heart of the Hollowheart province—an ancestral seat of fire, a sanctuary for wayward Emberborn.
Now?
Only crumbling stone and whispers.
Sira adjusted the strap on her shoulder, fingers lingering near her dagger. Dorian stood beside her, conjured lantern floating gently at his side.
"Does it feel like it's watching?" she asked.
Dorian gave a quiet nod. "The Mirror always sees. Even when it's broken."
They passed through the nave—vines choking old pews, sigil-cracked columns still humming faintly.
The altar had collapsed long ago, but behind it, carved into the hollow of a blackened tree, lay the thing they came for:
The Hollowheart Mirror.
Smooth. Unbroken.
And breathing.
Sira blinked. "It's… alive?"
"No," Dorian murmured. "It's remembering."
The Mirror was said to show the truth of the bearer.
Not the future.
Not the past.
Just the flame within—the one you hide even from yourself.
Dorian stepped forward.
And the Mirror rippled.
A younger boy—face clean, unscarred. Smiling.Holding a hand out to someone unseen.Then—betrayal. Shadows curling around him. A voice whispering "prove yourself".His smile, turning to smoke.
He stepped back, gasping.
Sira steadied him. "You okay?"
"I forgot," he whispered. "How small I used to be."
Then Sira stepped forward.
The Mirror shimmered again.
But hers—
Hers was quiet.
A blade.A hand letting go.Fire curling around her arms as she stood over someone fallen.A voice: "You survived. That's enough."
"No," she said aloud, voice trembling.
"It wasn't."
They stood in silence, the Mirror's surface returning to stillness.
Then—
A glimmer.
A sliver of molten metal emerged from the trunk, suspended in the Mirror's glow.
Another shard.
Crown Fragment #2.
Sira reached for it.
The Mirror didn't resist.
Outside, the wind had shifted.
Something distant howled—an echo like the one beneath Emberthorn.
But this time, it sounded closer.
Chronicle Entry – Hollowheart Mirror Fragment Claimed
Sira and Dorian bear the second shard.
But the Mirror saw their truths.
And truth, once known, cannot be unlearned.