“When the storm returns, even silence listens.”The wind whispered before the light appeared. Emily looked up, her fingers tightening around the fractured talisman that had once bound her to Adrian.For days or perhaps lifetimes she’d waited in this strange, half-born land. The sky shimmered like cracked glass above her, each cloud reflecting a world that could have been.And yet, in all that emptiness, she could still feel him. A pulse. A spark. The whisper of thunder beneath the silence.She pressed the talisman to her heart. “Adrian… where are you?”A shadow stirred on the horizon. At first, she thought it was the wind until the light bent around it. The grass bowed, trees shivered, and the faint scent of ozone crept through the air.Emily took a step forward, heart pounding. Then, a sound soft at first, then growing, a deep rhythmic pulse that made the air tremble.Thump. Thump.A heartbeat. Her eyes widened. “You kept your promise…”Lightning cracked through the sky. Not violent,

“Every reflection is a memory that refused to die.”Emily woke to a world of glass. Her eyes opened to endless sky except it wasn’t real. It shimmered like water, trembling with each breath she took.When she tried to stand, the ground rippled beneath her feet, transparent and soft, like the surface of a mirror that refused to break.She looked down and froze. Beneath the translucent floor was another version of the same world. Rivers flowed upside down, clouds drifted in reverse, and her reflection looked back at her… except it blinked first.Emily’s heart raced. “Adrian?”Her voice echoed softly, bouncing off invisible walls before fading into silence. No answer.She took a step forward, and the world shifted. Her surroundings bled color for an instant before regaining form. Flowers grew, then withered. Trees straightened, then curled inward as if afraid.Emily frowned. “This isn’t the new world… it’s something between.”A whisper brushed her ear. “Between… and below.”She spun. “Wh

“A reflection is not an imitation it is the truth we refuse to face.”Adrian landed hard, skidding across cracked glass that cut into his palms. Lightning trailed behind him in broken arcs, sputtering like dying fireflies.The mirror world above twisted, folding and stretching as if trying to trap him inside an endless loop. Then footsteps.His reflection walked through the shards, each step making the surface hum. The mirrored Adrian looked untouched by the battlecomposed, calm, eyes glowing with that unnerving red-white symmetry.“You always rush forward,” Mirror-Adrian said softly. “Always trying to break things before you understand them.”Adrian wiped blood from his mouth. “And you talk too much for someone made of glass.”The reflection smiled faintly. “Glass remembers everything that touches it. It doesn’t forget… like you do.”They circled each other. Sparks danced across the fractured terrain, the storm above flickering with flashes of inverted lightning white that burned bla

“Peace is not the absence of chaos. It is the wound that learns how to breathe.”The world was quiet too quiet. Adrian opened his eyes to the soft glow of dawn. The grass beneath him shimmered faintly, bending toward the sun as if in worship.For a long time, he didn’t move. His body ached not the kind of pain that came from battle, but from rebuilding. From being alive again.He turned his head. Emily lay beside him, half-buried in light. Her hair was tangled with the grass, her face calm in sleep. A faint ember still glowed at her collarbone, pulsing softly with each breath.He reached out, brushing his fingers against her wrist. Her pulse answered steady, strong. He exhaled shakily. “You did it, Emily…”He sat up slowly. The landscape stretched around him, vast and renewed, yet wrong. Mountains floated like mirages in the distance.The rivers pulsed with veins of gold. Every few seconds, the world seemed to shift, as if trying to remember what shape it was supposed to take.He clen

“When a god splits, the reflection is not the opposite it’s the truth they tried to hide.”He could feel her heartbeat inside his own. Emily. Every breath, every flicker of flame under his ribs it wasn’t his storm that moved anymore. It was them, breathing as one.Adrian stood amid the glass forest, his reflection multiplying in every direction. Each surface caught a different version of him one bleeding lightning, one burning with fire, one hollow-eyed and silent.And beneath them all… another reflection. The one that smiled back.He pressed a hand against his chest. The mark there pulsed, threads of scarlet lightning and gold fire weaving together in violent rhythm.Emily’s voice came faintly through it soft, barely a whisper. “Adrian… you have to stay with me.”He exhaled shakily. “I’m trying.”The ground beneath him pulsed again, like a heartbeat. Each pulse mirrored in the air, forming ripples that distorted the forest around him.The reflections began to move on their own, stepp