Morning came soft and gray. The candle by my wall stayed dark, but the air still smelled faintly of wax and ash. The mark on my chest no longer stung - it only waited. I told myself the world was as it had been. I told myself it would stay that way.
It didn't.
We were stacking wood along the wall for winter. A wagon arrived with rough-cut logs. We formed a line. We passed the pieces hand to hand. I tried to enjoy the work. It felt honest. But the sun pressed my head and I had to squint to see. A man from the village cut a knot with a short axe. The axe slipped and slid along the grain into his palm.
He did not cry out at once. He looked at his hand, and I looked too. Blood spread in a quick red fan. He swore and dropped the axe. Brother Hale reached him first. "Sit," he said, guiding him to a stump. "Hold this. Tight." He took a strip of cloth from his belt and wrapped it once, twice. The cloth turned dark.
I stood close without meaning to. The world narrowed to the man's hand, the pulse in his wrist, the way the blood found every crease and line. I felt something in my chest pull tight, like a cord someone had tied too hard. My breath came shallow. I could not look away. In that moment, a thought rose, uninvited and strong: the Light can fix this.
I did not know what to do with the thought. I reached out and put my fingers near his wrist without touching him. The air felt warmer there. The mark on my chest stung like someone had drawn a sharp fingernail across it. My vision narrowed more. The noise of the yard faded. Brother Hale said my name. I did not answer. The Light moved in the corner of my eye, very small and very close, as if it had come to see what my hands would choose.
I made the wrong choice. I put my palm over the man's wound.
It was like touching water that is not water. Something pressed back against my hand from inside his skin. For one second the world grew loud with a high ringing note that did not come from any bell I knew. The cloth went bright under my palm and then dim. The man's eyes went wide. He pulled his hand away with a jerk.
The bleeding had slowed. It was not gone, but it was not spilling. The village man stared at me, then at Brother Hale. He looked afraid. Brother Hale breathed out, a long slow breath I had never heard from him. He took my wrist and moved my hand to my side.
"Thank you for your help," he said to the man. "It will be well. Go to the chapel and wait for Sister Maren. She will clean and bind it."
The man nodded too fast and walked away, cradling his hand, not looking at me. Brother Hale did not speak for a moment. He bent, picked up the axe, and set it against the wall. Then he turned to me.
"Lucian," he said. He used my name like a question.
"I am sorry," I said. I did not know for what. My heart was still beating fast. I felt like I had run without moving.
He glanced at the other boys, who had stopped pretending not to look. He put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed once. "Work slowly," he said to me in a calm voice. Then, to all of us, louder, "Keep the line moving."
We did. When the wood was stacked, he sent the boys inside and asked me to carry the last three pieces with him. We walked the long way around the courtyard. He set his load down and stood with his back to the wall. He took a breath.
"Do you feel unwell?" he said.
"No," I said. "I felt something when I touched him. Like a rope pulling."
He nodded as if this made sense. Maybe it did to him. "You must be careful," he said. "Hands are meant for many things. Not all of them are yours yet."
"Did I do wrong?" I said.
"You helped," he said. "And you frightened him. Both can be true."
I looked at my hands. They looked normal. I wanted to hide them in my sleeves. Brother Hale tapped the middle of my chest, gentle, once. For an instant the mark warmed under his finger, like a small coal under skin.
He saw my face change. He pulled back his hand and studied me. "Has anyone spoken to you about what the mirror shows?" he said.
"No," I said. "It does not show me. When I look, there is nothing."
He held my eyes for a long second. The bell rang for the midday prayer. He nodded toward the chapel. "Come," he said. "Let us wash. We will talk later."
We did not talk later. Work and meals filled the day. The boys argued about something small and forgot it. A storm rolled in from the west and broke apart before it reached the hills. The light in the chapel was gray and soft. I waited for Brother Hale to find me after supper. He did not. I thought that maybe he had decided there was nothing to say. I wanted there to be nothing to say.
That night I could not sleep. I listened for the sound of feet in the hallway, of a door opening, of the wind in the eaves. The dormitory was quiet. The candle at my wall was not lit. I wondered if it was finally over. I closed my eyes.
I dreamed of rain and a road and a car horn that made my stomach drop. In the dream, a woman smiled through tears and a man made the air bright with his hands. The light was too much. I woke with my heart pounding and stared into the dark until my thoughts slowed.
I got out of bed and dressed without a sound. The floor was cold. I looked at the other beds. Everyone slept. I took my shoes in my hand and walked out into the hall. I did not know where I was going until I was halfway there.
The chapel was locked at night with a simple iron latch. Brother Hale had showed me how to lift it quietly when we needed to fetch a broom or a kettle before dawn. I raised the latch and slipped inside. The air smelled like wax and old wood. The light from the moon made the colored glass look like deep water.
I went straight to the mirror.
Up close, the frame showed small carvings I had never noticed. Spirals within spirals, very faint, cut so thin they felt more like a idea than a thing. The pale stones set into the wood had a soft sheen. When I leaned near, they reflected nothing clear. Not my face. Not the room. Just a shade of light by itself.
I touched the glass with my fingertips. It was cool. I pressed my palm to it. Usually I saw fog, or a clouded shape that might have been me but never was. Tonight the glass stayed clear, and inside the clear there was only a soft white that deepened when my skin warmed the surface. A whisper rose near my ear, so soft I could have imagined it. It was not a word. It was the feeling of a word trying to form.
I swallowed. "What do you want from me?" I said. My voice sounded loud. It was not loud.
The white shifted. It did not move like water or smoke. It gathered and thinned until the light was a narrow band. It looked a little like a road seen from high above, or like a seam. A seam wants to be opened. The thought scared me. I almost pulled my hand away.
The door hinges sighed behind me.
I turned in a slow half-step. Sister Maren stood at the chapel entrance with her shawl around her shoulders and her hair pulled back in a plain knot. She did not look angry. She did not look surprised to find me. She closed the door and walked down the center aisle, her steps careful on the old stone.
"Lucian," she said.
"I could not sleep," I said.
She nodded. She reached the front pew and stopped two steps away from me. "I know," she said, like she truly did know. For a moment we stood in the quiet, the mirror cool under my palm. She looked at my hand on the glass.
"Your chest," she said, very softly, "does it ever burn?"
I opened my mouth. I did not know how to answer. The mark did not burn. It warmed, it tugged, it felt alive. I touched it without thinking. The edge of my shirt brushed under my fingers. When I glanced down, I saw the faint line through the cloth as if the fabric had become thin.
Sister Maren drew a small breath. She made the sign of the Light without thinking first. She stared at my chest, then looked back at my eyes. "I need you to listen," she said. "And not be afraid."
"I am not afraid," I said. It was not completely true. The line of light on the floor had returned, the little white points gathering near the mirror frame, settling in the carvings like dew. The air changed the way air changes just before a storm. Not wind. Pressure.
"I have kept something for many years," she said. She reached inside her shawl and drew out a small bundle wrapped in cloth. She held it against her stomach for a second before she moved, like the bundle was heavy in a way that did not come from weight. She set it on the front pew and unwrapped it. Inside was an old piece of wood, no larger than my hand, carved with a white spiral. The spiral matched the one on my skin so perfectly that for a second I felt my breath stop.
"This was wrapped inside the cloth you were found in," she said. "We kept it because it felt wrong to throw away. It has a name carved on the back. I never showed it to you before... some names are heavier than they look."
She lifted the wood and turned it. The back showed a single word. The letters were neat and cut deep, deeper than the lines on the front. I looked at it. I felt a pull inside my ribs as if someone had tied a cord there and was drawing it across the room. The letters did not make sense and then they did.
Lumaine.
The mirror shivered under my hand. Not the glass. The light inside it. I pulled my hand back as if from heat. The narrow band widened like an eye opening. A chill moved along my arms below the skin. Sister Maren caught her breath. She set the wooden piece on the pew very carefully and reached for me with her other hand, but she did not touch me.
"Lucian," she said. "You must step away from the mirror now."
I wanted to. I could not. The white in the mirror held my gaze like a string. Deep inside the brightness something shifted. Not a shape. A feeling. I thought of the road and the horn and the bright that wiped out everything else. I thought of a man with gold hair and a woman who smiled through tears. A sound rose behind the brightness. It was very soft, like a voice speaking from a long distance where wind takes the edges off words.
It said my name.
Not the name Sister Maren had given me. It said a name I did not know I had until that moment. The name landed in my head like a bell. The mark on my chest flared under my shirt so hard I staggered. The flame that was not a flame in the corner of the mirror climbed the narrow band and split it down the center.
"Lucian," Sister Maren said again. "Step back."
I tried. My heels scraped the stone. The white poured out of the seam like breath on a cold morning, thin at first, then more, then more. The colored glass along the walls lost its hue. The red became pink, the blue became gray. The air pressed on my ears. The carvings in the mirror frame glowed with the same faint sheen as the mark on my chest.
From the hallway beyond the chapel, the night bell began to ring, once, twice, slow and wrong, as if someone pulled the rope with a shaking hand. Footsteps sounded in the back of the church. Brother Hale called out, not in prayer. In warning.
The seam widened. The white was almost blinding now. It did not hurt my eyes. It did not feel like light. It felt like a door I had already walked through once without meaning to, and now it was opening again, not asking me if I wanted to go.
A silhouette formed inside the brightness. It was not a clear shape. It was a suggestion of a figure, tall, like a man. Something heavy hung from his shoulders. His head inclined as if he had seen me across a crowded room and was relieved. He raised a hand.
Behind me, Sister Maren whispered a prayer I had never heard. It was not one of the prayers we used for meals or sleep or storms. Her voice shook. She said, "Do not let him see himself."
The figure lifted his hand higher. My mark burned now, not warm, not gentle. Real heat. I gasped. The cord inside my chest pulled tight. The white in the mirror reached toward me like a slow river.
The chapel door crashed open. Brother Hale rushed in, hair unbound, eyes wide. Another man came with him, a stranger in a white robe striped with gold thread I had never seen before. He carried a small instrument in his right hand, set with a bright crystal. He took two quick steps and raised the instrument toward me.
"No," Sister Maren said, but her voice was too soft.
The crystal flared and a sound like the high note I had heard by the woodpile sliced the air. The mirror light surged in answer. The instrument in the stranger's hand cracked down the middle with a sharp, dry snap.
Everyone froze for a heartbeat.
Then the white reached me.
The world went quiet. My breath left my body without a sound. The mark on my chest blazed under my shirt like a small sun. I felt the seam catch me, not with hands, not with force, but with certainty.
And in that last second before the light took everything, the figure in the mirror spoke in a voice that was both far and near.
"Found you."
The light closed over my eyes.
-- End of Chapter 2 --