The Black Mirror of Indifference
Hazel looked down to the item at her feet, her breathing shallow and ragged. Black water from the Spawning Lake flowed over it in relentless waves, but the item never cleared—it stayed black as night, seemingly covered in an oily black muck that refused to be washed away. Still, through her divination instincts, she knew exactly what it was: a mirror. But this was no ordinary silvered glass. The slick oil coating it was not physical oil at all, but a dense layer of runes that continually shifted and writhed, a dark surface that seemed to slip and slide around with a mind of its own.
It felt alive. Worse, it felt inviting. Hazel's pulse hammered against her ribs, but she refused to look at it directly; she knew the cost of meeting such an object eye-to-eye. Instead, she leaned on her dreamscape connection, reaching out with her ethereal senses to feel its characteristics, allowing them to form a conceptual picture within her mind. It was a slab of obsidian darkness etched with runes so intricate they felt like tiny, squirming insects against her consciousness. The reflective surface—or what should have been reflective—was nothing but a dull, hungry shadow.
As Hazel examined it, she felt a cold frown deepen on her face. The runes didn't just move; they changed in ways that elicited innate, visceral reactions within her. Her heart seemed to shift its rhythm, her breath quickened into a panicked staccato, and her focus began to fray like an old rope. She pulled back sharply, her divination instincts screaming a cacophony of warnings in the back of her mind.
But it wasn't predatory, it was inquisitive, analytical. The mirror wanted to know, it had to know and all that it knew it consumed. The runes giving it power yet inhibiting it as well. The runes made it strong, increased its yearning curiosity, but kept it on a tight lease.
With a trembling hand, she summoned another bubble of magic from her wands. It flowed downward like liquid light and fell onto the black mirror, swallowing it whole. As if reacting to the containment, both the mirror and the bubble began to silently shrink. Hazel reached into her robes and produced a gilded box, flipping the lid to reveal a plush, satin-lined interior. The bubble settled smoothly into the box, and Hazel closed it with a sharp, final snap.
She took a moment to look at her surroundings, her chest heaving. Her physical body was lying on the shore of the Spawning Lake, but a terrifying realization struck her: she could no longer sense any fate lines around her. She paused, correcting herself—it wasn't that the lines were gone, but that they were bent, warped, and curving in and around themselves in a localized knot of impossible geometry.
Exhaling slowly, she rose from the ground. Her third eye snapped open, glowing with a fierce intensity, and the dreamscape around her grew still—waiting like a loyal beast to understand what its mistress required. She exhaled again, and this time, multi-colored streams of pure divination and inquiry left her mouth. They moved out and through the dreamscape like searching tendrils. As the feedback returned to her, Hazel's frown returned.
She was on a vast island, completely disconnected from the greater social consciousness of the world – she had only sensed her own form because of her excellent sense of self. The collective thoughts of the vast dimensions rolled toward her like a distant ocean, but they were stopped by a wide, terrifying buffer of silence—a void where thought could not exist. At her instruction, her color-streams entered the area and were instantly sucked into oblivion.
"A thoughtless moat," she whispered.
She pulled the streams back, guiding them around the edges of the vacuum. Her third eye widened as she focused her entire being on the barrier. Exhaling a third time, a denser surge of color flowed from her, braiding into the original streams until they were thick and heavy. She directed the braided light to dive deep into the ground of the dreamscape, seeking the "root" of the isolation.
It took an agonizing amount of time, but finally, a smile touched her lips as she sensed the exit. She relaxed her being, allowing the multi-colored streams to wrap around her and take her with them. The dreamscape began to swirl like a melting bowl of rainbow ice cream, drawing her forward and then plunging her beneath the conceptual ground.
She moved through the odd, folded space as an incorporeal being. Her senses intensified, sparking with static as they alerted her to the shifting layers of reality around her. Then, recognition sparked. Once she crossed back over the thoughtless area, she disconnected herself from the streams. Her being slowed, and the colors returned to her, flowing back into her chest like a long-overdue breath.
With a final surge of will, she stepped toward the waking world. A portal opened at the Spawning Lake next to her physical, resting form, and Hazel stepped out. She looked around quietly, the air still humming with the intense magic she had unleashed. Above her, she could see her friends and her mother, still encased in the protective, transformative shells of black glass.
Hazel's spirit stepped into her physical body, and she sat up, looking at the lake with a blank, exhausted expression. She pulled out the gilded box, feeling the unnatural weight of it, and clicked it open. The mirror sat innocently on the dark satin fabric, its face down.
Nearby, Shylah became visibly agitated, letting out a soft, anxious screech. "The Black Mirror of Indifference," the bird sang into Hazel's ear.
The back of it was etched with thousands of small, delicate runes that squirmed like slivers of dark thoughts. Hazel focused on them, wanting to gain even a sliver of understanding on how to use the item. As soon as her mind touched the runes, thousands of scenes—shattered lives, forgotten deaths, and cold, emotionless voids—exploded before her.
A thick, blueish-black ichor suddenly dripped from her third eye, hot and stinging. Hazel let out a jagged scream, clutching her head as she tried to close her eyes and her mind. She was seeing too much—horrors and truths that no human mind was built to hold. Then came the whisper. It was an oily, wet sound in the back of her ear.
"Hazel Potter… Hazel McGonagall. Do you know who you are?" The voice was ancient, sounding like small pieces of gravel be crushed underfoot. "Never use things old and deep without knowing who you are."
There was a heavy pause, and a trail of black oil dripped from Hazel's ears, staining her robes. "The Emotion Doll?" The voice let out a quiet, mocking laugh. "Do I still exist? Time is such a funny thing. You don't know who you are, little diviner – who you will be."
Hazel slammed her eyes shut. She began to force her mind away from the mirror's confused, non-linear logic. She could sense the item existed across multiple time and fate lines simultaneously, making its words a labyrinth of varying meanings. She fought for calm, her divination showing her a myriad of terrifying possibilities, until she felt the soft brush of Shylah's wings against her cheek. The star bird's presence was a buffer, and the chaos subsided. Shylah looked to the gilded box and it slammed shut with a click and peace raced into Hazel like a cool reviving stream.
"This item is powerful, it will handle the Emotion Doll well," Shylah's tone grim as Hazel snapped the gilded box with a sense of finality.
Hazel stood, dusting the white stone dust from her robes, and looked up at her floating friends, only to notice her mother descending. "It is the Emotion Doll—an aspect of her, anyway. I think she needs to be split to be overcome."
As she spoke she watched Minerva as she descended to the lake, A new, gleaming crystal-and-gold monocle was fixed over her eye, reflecting the dim light of the cavern.
"It seems Mother will be able to calculate even more now," Hazel noted, watching the way Minerva adjusted to her new, geometric vision. She turned back to the dark water. "It seems you can always find what you need here, provided you can survive the cost."
Hazel looked up at Marcel and Evervine, still encased in their trials, even as Minerva stepped to her side. "We need to get back to Star Academy. It's time for Rosa to finally be stopped."