They reached it at dawn — if dawn still meant anything in a place where the sky had no source, only suggestion.
The tower stood crookedly, as if ashamed of its height. Composed entirely of mirrors, its surface reflected not the world, but the possible world — shimmering in variations of what could have been.
Tirian stood silent, clutching his blade as if it might break the illusions.
Elías approached.
His reflection did not mimic him.
It waited.
Then blinked.
"Not mirrors," he said softly. "Windows."
The tower was not a structure.
It was a consciousness.
---
Inside, the mirrors moved. Not glass — memory polished to precision.
They showed versions of Elías: one crowned in rust, one broken on a wheel of words, one with wings stitched from regret. None of them turned away. All watched him.
Some wept.
Some smiled.
One laughed.
"Why do they look like me?" Tirian whispered.
Elías didn't answer.
Because they didn't.
They looked like who Elías might become, depending on the next thing he said, the next choice he made, the next soul he let die.
---
A staircase spiraled up the center of the tower, made not of stone, but paragraphs — each step etched with a line of story.
Some incomplete.
Some crossed out.
Each one painful.
Elías began to climb.
---
Halfway up, he found a mirror that showed nothing.
A perfect void.
He stared into it, expecting it to reflect his current self.
But it didn't.
It whispered:
"This is the you who gave up."
---
Higher still, another pane shattered as he neared. Shards hovered in place, each reflecting a piece of him.
Tirian stopped before one fragment that showed Elías holding a burning city.
"Did you do that?" he asked.
"I might," Elías replied.
"But I won't."
And yet the shard didn't vanish.
It just turned black.
---
At the summit, they found the mirror that saw them truly.
It was not large. Not ornate.
Just a single square of dull silver, framed in nothing.
When Elías looked in, it didn't show him.
It showed a child.
Himself.
Before the ash. Before the weapon. Before everything.
The child looked at him, terrified.
Then said:
"Please. Don't become what they wrote."
---
A presence stirred behind the mirror.
The tower trembled.
A voice emerged — ancient and dry, like paper rotting in rain.
"You have been read," it said.
"But have you read yourself?"
Elías stepped back.
Tirian reached for his sword.
The tower laughed — not in cruelty, but in sorrow.
"You climb seeking freedom," it whispered.
"But each step you take is a sentence."
---
The tower began to crumble — not physically, but narratively.
Pages turned backward.
Time reversed in metaphor.
The mirrors cracked, each one howling a different version of truth.
And from above, something fell.
A scroll.
Wrapped in bone ribbon.
Elías caught it as the tower folded into itself.
It burned in his hands — not heat.
Choice.
---
Outside, the world had shifted again.
The plain of doors was gone.
In its place: a field of black lilies, each one facing downward. Their petals murmured in dreamspeak — half-prayers, half-threats.
Tirian said nothing.
He simply looked at Elías and asked, "What's next?"
Elías unrolled the scroll.
Inside: a map.
But not of land.
Of decision.
Each place marked was a choice never made — each landmark a life he could have lived.
And in the center, drawn in the ink of someone else's blood:
"The Garden Where Names Die."
---
That night, they set camp beneath the bones of the sky.
The stars did not twinkle.
They blinked — like eyes.
Watching.
Waiting.
And as Elías tried to sleep, one final thought echoed in his skull like a bell made of teeth:
What happens when the version of yourself you fear the most… is the only one strong enough to survive?