š¢:Sci-fi in another world will be back
The world had changed in ways too quiet to notice at first.
The trees no longer swayed the same way. Their shadows stretched longer than their trunks, bending as if uncertain which way light truly came from. Rivers shimmered like mercury, carrying reflections that did not always belong to what stood above them. And when Kael looked into still water, it was not his face he saw but hers.
Akiya.
Her image rippled softly in the reflection, her expression calm but distant, like someone watching from across a dream.
Kael knelt by the edge of the stream, his fingers trembling as he brushed the surface. The touch sent a ripple through the image her eyes blinked once, slow and knowing, before fading back into silver light.
Lyra stood behind him, her voice a quiet ache. "You see her again, don't you?"
He didn't answer right away. The sound of the water carried through the clearing like whispering glass. "Every day," he said finally. "And every day, she feelsā¦ less like her."
Lyra hesitated, then stepped closer. "You said the Rift was healing. Maybe what's left of her is.."
"No." Kael's tone was sharper than he intended. He closed his eyes and drew a slow breath. "She's not fading because the Rift is healing. She's changing because I am."
Lyra looked away. The breeze stirred the long grass, catching the faint hum of the fragments embedded in Kael's wrist. They glowed faintly beneath his skin threads of crystalline blue that pulsed with the rhythm of a distant heartbeat.
The Crown of Shards.
The price of the bridge between worlds.
He rose, the motion slow and deliberate, every movement weighed by something unseen. The air shimmered faintly around him, like the boundaries of the world had begun to fray.
"Do you ever wonder," Kael murmured, "what happens when the reflection stops waiting for us to look at it?"
Lyra frowned. "What do you mean?"
He pointed to the stream. "The reflectionsā¦ they move on their own now."
She followed his gaze, and for the first time, she saw it her own reflection in the water blinked half a second too late. Then it smiled faintly, even though her real lips did not move.
Lyra's hand flew to her mouth, her pulse quickening. "That'sā¦"
"Wrong," Kael said softly. "It started near the ruins. Now it's spreading."
They stood in silence, watching their mirrored selves shift and shimmer in the current. The reflections began to multiply faint copies forming beneath the first layer, each flickering at a slightly different rhythm, each whispering something just beyond hearing.
Kael could feel the air tightening. The same kind of hum that had filled the Rift before it tore open the world.
He turned away. "It's beginning."
"The Mirror War?" Lyra asked.
Kael nodded. "Not the kind fought with weapons. The kind fought with what's left of who we are."
A distant rumble broke the silence. It wasn't thunder it was the sound of glass breaking on the horizon.
The trees beyond the valley bent inward, their silhouettes distorting as if reality itself were folding in half. Kael felt the pull in his chest a tug toward the distortion, a call that hummed in harmony with the shards beneath his skin.
Lyra gripped her sword but didn't draw it. "Kaelā¦ if these reflections are alive"
"They're not alive," he interrupted softly. "They're what we left behind. Memories made real. But some memoriesā¦ don't forgive."
He started walking toward the shimmer on the horizon. The sun above fractured into twin orbs, each casting its own light, and for a heartbeat the world was split two skies, two suns, two shadows.
Lyra followed, her footsteps cautious. Behind them, the reflections in the stream began to rise faint, translucent silhouettes of light and memory. They mimicked their movements at first, then hesitated, as if realizing they were no longer bound to follow.
The sound of breaking glass followed them. Not loud, not violent just constant. Like the air itself had grown brittle and couldn't hold its shape.
Kael walked ahead, the faint blue light from the shards in his wrist flickering in rhythm with his heartbeat. The land was quieter than it should have been. No wind. No birds. Even the sky seemed to hesitate.
Lyra watched him from behind, her hand hovering near her blade though she didn't draw it. She had seen this look before the same one Akiya wore before walking into the Rift. That mix of peace and dread.
They reached a rise overlooking the valley. From here, the fractured sun turned everything to molten gold and silver. The horizon rippled like a reflection disturbed by unseen hands.
At first, it seemed beautiful. Then the illusion shifted and they saw it.
The valley below was filled with reflections that moved without cause. People, shapes, animals silhouettes made of light, walking through invisible memories. Some looked human. Othersā¦ didn't.
Each of them mirrored something once real.
Each of them was a memory given flesh.
Lyra whispered, "Are thoseā¦ from our world?"
Kael's eyes narrowed. "Not exactly. They're what the world remembers. What it refuses to forget."
As they watched, one of the mirrored figures stumbled toward its double a wandering traveler whose reflection broke free of the stream and walked toward him. The two met. There was no sound. Only a sudden flash and then both were gone.
The reflection remained, staring at where the man had stood, its glassy face unreadable.
Lyra shivered. "They're taking their place."
Kael closed his eyes. "The boundaries are thinning. The Rift didn't close it turned inside out. Now what's within is seeping out."
He took a step forward and the ground beneath him shimmered, showing faint images echoes of the past playing beneath the surface. He saw Akiya standing in a corridor of light, her face calm but filled with quiet pain.
"Kael," her voice whispered from the reflection, soft as wind. "Don't fight them. Understand them."
He froze, his breath catching. The shards in his wrist pulsed once, then dimmed.
Lyra saw the look on his face. "It's her again, isn't it?"
He nodded slowly. "She's trying to guide meā¦ but I don't know where."
Before Lyra could respond, the sky rippled again. The second sun darkened, dimming into a dull crimson. The light bent around them, and the air filled with tiny shards of reflected space fragments of faces, memories, and voices.
A thousand whispers spoke at once.
Each said his name.
Kael fell to one knee, clutching his head. "They're inside the light every thought, every mistake. They remember everything I tried to forget."
Lyra knelt beside him, gripping his shoulder. "Then don't face it alone."
Her reflection on the ground flickered. The mirrored Lyra looked up, her eyes burning with the same red glow as the fading sun. Then, she began to move climbing out of the reflection like a ghost peeling from glass.
Kael's eyes widened. "Lyra"
"I see it," she whispered, staring at her mirror-self standing just a few steps away. "It looks like meā¦ but it's not me."
The mirrored Lyra smiled, then tilted her head a movement too perfect, too rehearsed.
Kael reached for his shards, but Akiya's voice stopped him.
"Don't destroy it. Not yet."
He hesitated. The mirrored Lyra reached out, her hand pressing against the surface of her counterpart's sword. For a brief moment, the two were perfectly aligned reflection and reality merging like water over glass.
Then the mirror cracked.
Light burst outward. Kael shielded his eyes, feeling the shockwave ripple through the ground. When the brilliance faded, Lyra was still there trembling, breathing hard but her reflection was gone.
Goneā¦ or absorbed.
Kael looked at her. "What did it do?"
Lyra swallowed hard. "It showed me something. The other me. The one that didn't follow you."
He stared at her, but before he could speak, the sky gave a sound like breaking ice. Across the valley, thousands of reflections began to rise from water, glass, stone, even from the air itself.
They moved as one. Silent. Inevitable.
Kael felt the shards in his body vibrate violently, their hum joining the rhythm of a coming storm.
Lyra whispered, "Kaelā¦ what is this?"
He looked toward the horizon where the fractured suns began to merge into one blinding light.
"The war," he said quietly. "It's not between worlds anymore. It's between what we were and what we left behind."
And as the valley of mirrors turned to face them, the first ripple of the Mirror War began.
Kael's reflection turned its head toward Akiya's fading image in the water.
Then it smiled.
It was not Kael's smile.
...To be continued....