Twilight bled violet across the upper courtyard, the sky bruised with the last light of day, as if the heavens themselves had taken a wound and were slow to heal.
Thirteen mirrors stood in a perfect ring tall, black-bronze frames etched with serpents devouring their own tails, an endless cycle of hunger and renewal. The glass lay dark as the River Styx until moonlight brushed it, then it shimmered with something almost alive. Old academy whispers, passed down in frightened voices, claimed the mirrors were shards of the polished shield Perseus once borrowed from Athena: stolen centuries ago by grieving sorcerers, reforged with spells of truth and torment, cursed to show mortals what even gods feared to see in themselves.
Tonight, the mirrors were awake and they were starving.
Students entered in silence, barefoot on cold stone, wearing only the plain gray tunics of the condemned. No house colors. No jewelry. No armor of status or pride. In every pair of trembling hands waited a bone-white tragic mask smooth, eyeless, faintly smiling. The smile of the gods just before they ruin you.
Maria's mask felt fever-warm against her palms, pulsing faintly, as though it had its own heartbeat. Arem, beside her, tried for levity one last time. "If yours starts quoting Oedipus, just run. I'll hold the crowd." His voice cracked on the last word. No one laughed.
Headmistress Althara stood at the circle's heart, owl-crowned staff planted like judgment itself. The owl blinked slowly, golden eyes reflecting every face in the courtyard.
"When the mask touches skin," she said, voice carrying like an oracle's decree, "the Erinyes within the glass will hunt what you have buried. You may not remove it until the mirror releases you. Lie, and the serpent's wake. Tell the truth, and the mirror forgives."
She did not say what happened if the mirror refused forgiveness. She didn't need to. The air itself seemed to tighten.
One by one they stepped forward.
Nahlia first. Her mask became her mother's face cold, perfect, turning away forever. A child alone in endless snow, arms outstretched. "I was never enough," Nahlia whispered, voice breaking like thin ice. Frost raced across the stones in delicate veins. Nobles gasped, breath fogging. The mirror hissed once, then dimmed. Forgiven.
Ashren next. His mask sprouted wings of living shadow and screamed in his mother's burning voice flames licking the edges of the vision. He fell to his knees, palms open to the sky, letting the shadows drink his tears. A girl in the crowd sobbed for him, hand over her mouth. Forgiven.
Jorell's mask showed him old and forgotten in a library of ash, books crumbling to dust around him. He wept without shame, shoulders shaking. His friends looked away, ashamed for him and for themselves. Forgiven.
Silas laughed until blood ran from his nose, his mask mocking him with his family's graves rising from the earth to accuse him. He laughed harder, defiant, wild. A professor stepped forward to steady him as he swayed. Forgiven barely.
Then Maria.
The mask slid onto her face like it had been waiting seventeen years like it knew her better than she knew herself.
The mirror did not show Marin Velyn.
It showed a moonlit shore. A golden-haired baby in a cradle stitched with silver eyes. Black sails on the horizon. A goddess falling from the sky, silver fire pouring from her chest into the infant's heart like ambrosia forced down a mortal throat beautiful, terrible, inevitable.
Maria staggered. The mask burned cold Persephone's pomegranate seeds made of ice, binding her to a fate she had never chosen.
A voice that was not hers older, vast, merciful rang through the courtyard, shaking the very stones:
"You are not lost. You are hidden. And the hiding is over."
The Tear beneath her tunic blazed white-hot. The mask split down the middle with a sound like Athena's shield cracking under divine wrath.
Light poured out pure, merciless mercy that seared the eyes and soothed the soul in the same breath.
Students screamed. Some fell to their knees as if struck. Others covered their eyes as if the light itself judged them unworthy. A noble girl fainted clean away. A boy vomited into the roses lining the courtyard edge. Professors shouted wards, but the light ignored them.
Maria collapsed.
Seraphina watching from the shadowed edge, royal composure finally shattered pushed through the crowd like a storm breaking.
She caught Maria before she hit the stone, arms wrapping around the stranger as if she had done it a thousand times before.
Skin touched skin.
For one heartbeat the world narrowed to that contact warm, electric, inevitable.
Seraphina felt sunlight on golden hair, a toddler's laugh echoing in sunlit halls, the ghost of small arms that had once reached for her through a locked nursery door. Maria felt a dark-haired girl pressing her ear to wood, whispering "I'm here, I'm here" into endless silence.
The flash vanished as quickly as it came.
Seraphina's voice came out raw, trembling, almost pleading:
"You… you feel like home."
Maria, half-conscious, terrified, tears cutting clean tracks through the dust on her cheeks:
"I don't… I don't have a home."
The courtyard held its breath absolute, stunned silence.
Then Seraphina's own mask silver, veined with Valmont blue shattered on its own, falling from her face in glittering dust.
Every mirror followed.
Shards hung in the air, suspended by silver light, rearranging into one final, colossal image that filled the sky above the courtyard: A goddess pierced by blue flame. A god holding the spear, tears streaming down his face. An infant cradled in dying mercy's arms, light flowing from goddess to child like the last breath of the heavens.
The light rushed into both girls at once violent, tender, unstoppable.
Maria went limp.
Seraphina held her tighter, heart hammering against the stranger's ribs like it recognized the rhythm it had been missing all its life.
Above them, the Hollowfire Stag roared from the rooftops a sound that cracked the sky itself open, revealing stars that had not been there moments before.
The academy fell to its knees as one.
The Trial of Masks was over.
The age of remembering had begun.