The ruins whispered with memory.Every step Clara took stirred a faint sigh from the dust, as though the stones themselves remembered too much. The once-grand hallways of the Order’s sanctum had collapsed inward, overrun with roots that had forced their way through ancient cracks. Faint veins of light pulsed along the walls — not from torches, but from the broken shards embedded in the stone, flickering with reflections that didn’t match the present moment.Sometimes, Clara caught a glimpse of her younger self walking ahead of her. Sometimes, she saw Michael staring at her from behind — though the real Michael walked beside her.“This place feels wrong,” she murmured.Michael’s eyes scanned the corridor, his hand brushing against the cracked insignia of the Order carved into a fallen archway. “It’s not wrong,” he said quietly. “It’s remembering. The breach’s energy fused the sanctum’s walls with its own echoes. Every reflection here is a piece of the past trapped in time.”Clara’s gaz

The mirror’s heart pulsed around them like a living organism — slow, rhythmic, alive.Each pulse sent waves of silver light rippling across the horizon, distorting everything in its path.The void seemed endless, but not empty.It whispered.Clara could hear the echoes now — thousands of voices, speaking in unison and yet out of sync, as if every version of herself that had ever lived was calling out from behind the glass.Their words overlapped, indistinct, but one truth pressed through the noise:> “Every reflection must return.”Michael kept hold of her hand, his knuckles pale from the strain. The air here was weightless, yet suffocating. Every breath felt stolen from the mirror’s lungs.Jonathan — or the thing wearing his form — stood ahead of them, watching. His expression was unreadable, his once-warm eyes now fractured with shifting silver veins.Clara stepped forward. “You said one of us must take its place,” she said, her voice trembling. “But why? What does that even mean?”