Alric commanded the horse forward.

  It took one step, then stopped.

  He pressed heels to flank, but the beast would not go, fixed on the mist as if hypnotized.

  Its eyes were cloudy and unfocused, muscles relaxing to standstill.

  No snorts or head movements either.

  The Crag had silenced them like it did with the others.

  Seeing the futility, Alric swung down and set the torch on the packed earth.

  Then, he tied the reins to a nearby gnarled root, securing the horse.

  Priscilla still sat slack on the saddle, muttering in strange tongues, eyes still chasing themselves.

  He slapped his injured forearm, slipped an arm around her, and lowered her to the ground.

  He then looped her leather strip to the same root and cinched it snug.

  Torch reclaimed, he straightened and raised it over his head.

  No sooner had he done so than the flame thickened, congealing mid-flick as if the air had turned to glass.

  Its pale light shifted, bleeding into hues of grey and gold that cut the grove with grim precision, the seeping sun caught between the feathered branches.

  He turned his eyes toward the pond and took a step.

  The air shimmered with intent, as though something unseen had leaned in just enough to taste his breath.

  He glanced around swiftly, but found nothing.

  A look over his shoulder revealed Priscilla and the horse exactly as he had left them: frozen in their strange, separate worlds.

  Facing the bird again, he took another step forward.

  This time, nothing came of it. No shimmer. No voice. No warning. Just his own weight pressing into the soil.

  On the third step, the world took on different form.

  Darkened walls closed in around him, and for a second he thought he saw his own image reflected in the crows’ eyes: bloodied and bruised, standing in a place he did not know, facing a deathly battle alone.

  What is happening here?

  He had to know what that crow was, and why he felt compelled to follow it.

  This pain is marvelous…

  He caught his thought mid-birth, choking it before it could poison him further.

  What can I do to solve this?

  The uncertainty gnawed at his soul as dogs do on marrow left to rot in the sun.

  I can’t let myself drown…I must find the way through.

  The urge to rip the truth from this place urged him onward toward the mirror-pool.

  The tree above stood taller than any other he had passed. Its bare branches thick as a man’s waist, spidered outward in skeletal defiance.

  Its roots threaded the ground, braiding soil and bark around the crystal-clear basin, encircling it like a woven diadem.

  The upside-down crows ringed the braid, their stillness absolute.

  As he neared the pool, he saw it: inverted heads turning to him in perfect synchronicity like soldiers awaiting orders to charge.

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  He halted, staring back at them while unsheathing his sword slowly and deliberately.

  Although he knew he could not kill all of them if an attack began, he could not let himself go down without a fight.

  Keeping his peripheral vision on them, he lifted his eyes to the white crow and saw it at the center of the murder, alone and upright.

  Its eyes were closed, but its presence pressed against him like a hand at his throat.

  Yet something in its posture felt familiar. A way of holding the head, the sharpened line of its wings, the waiting stance of someone ready to strike.

  The roots were slick beneath his boots, the braid gripping his soles like patient hands. Every breath tasted of cold iron as he came to stand over the rim’s edge.

  The torchlight wavered as the hues of grey and gold thickened, heat surging throught the metal shaft until his palm could withstand it no longer.

  He let it fall by the wayside, its glow spilling across the roots.

  Pain flared in his arm. The cut throbbed, and for a heartbeat the blood drew inward, as though his flesh had learned to drink.

  Its pull circled without end, always moving, never arriving.

  The crow opened its eyes, and in their depths, he saw himself reflected. His eyes spun just like the girl’s.

  I’ve gone mad too, it seems…

  Then the reflection moved without him.

  it lowered itself into the pool and sank willingly, swallowed in the silence of the Crag until nothing was left.

  No. The thought rang in his ears like midday bells, vast and resounding.

  “No matter what you are, I will not kneel to your visions, beast.”

  He spat at it and slashed at the water with the edge of his sword.

  The water didn’t ripple nor move. It was as if he had struck pure air.

  Fixing his gaze upon the mirror-pool’s surface, he saw countless images shifting one after the other, bleeding into each other, invading each other’s space.

  Sun-kissed stones, their warmth pressing against his ribs.

  A sky so hot, it melted iron chains and flesh alike.

  Bodies colliding to halt the encroaching tide of foreign invaders.

  Chain rasping against emaciated wrists, breaking bones and forcing fealty.

  Blood, hot on his lips, metallic on his tongue.

  A pickaxe falling from a slave’s hands as he heard of a friend’s death.

  The morning light basking the mount behind him, and the lashing that followed after it.

  And then—

  Himself.

  Seated on a throne of bone and stone, crowned in ruin. Eyes hollowed of meaning and light, armour dented and split, sword a useless shard. Blood trailing his every step, every movement shadowed by death.

  Destruction knelt to him, hopelessness mantled him.

  It raised its gaze.

  Unblinking, it pierced across the veil between them with the certainty of one who knew Alric would become the same. Those hollow eyes held the finality of destiny, resigned to their end and content to wait for the world to follow suit.

  What is this?

  As if to mock him, the water began to tremble, images spilling over the pool’s surface, a hundred faces crowding around the edges.

  But the figure upon the throne moved.

  With its eyes still locked onto Alric, it raised one gauntleted hand, palm out, and the shiver died. The pool stilled at once, frozen in place as if the will inside was strong enough to bend the surface as it wished.

  Alric dropped into a fighiting stance, muscle and steel answering before thought when encountering an enemy.

  The Mirror did not. Instead, it reached for the sword resting beside the throne and rose to its feet.

  Still facing Alric, the figure began a slow march toward him, the tip of the blade dragging along the ruined floor.

  No sound reached his ears, yet in his skull the grinding tore through every thought.

  When the march ended, it drove the sword’s tip to the ground once. The blow rang inside him, hounding his soul for purchase.

  Then, without ceremony, it released the weapon, letting it fall to the side like discarded refuse.

  The mirror turned away, retracing its steps to the waiting throne. As it sat, it lifted its head one final time, lips shaping a single word.

  Farewell.

  The voice never touched air, but it detonated inside his mind, sweeping across every corner of his consciousness.

  The word lingered in his being, its weight pressing against the marrow of his soul.

  Alric blinked once, and the figure was gone, dispersed into nothingness.

  Only the throne remained, slumped in the ruin of its maker, and the sword where it had fallen.

  The pool began to darken as he gazed upon it, not like ink spilling, nor memories blending, but as if its depths were receeding beyond reach.

  The reflection of the throne bled away into shifting grey, until even the water itself lost its shape becoming formless matter.

  Something pricked faintly against the back of his mind like dull a ache that refused to fade.

  Seeing the mirror image gone, his stance slackened, sword-arm lowering to his side.

  His breath steadied for a moment before the awarness of where he stood, and what he had yet to do, came back.

  I still need to find a way through.

  He took a step toward the tree around the basin, but stopped short.

  The roots had moved.

  They had climbed over the bridge of his boots, clutching at them like the earth itself had decided to keep him.

  He glanced down, testing his weight. They tightened as if aware.

  They’re too thick, the sword’ll just nick and splinter apart.

  While looking for something, anything, that might free him from the wooden vice, his eyes caught movement.

  Not in the pool, but the crow’s eyes.

  They no longer held his reflection.

  They held hers. Standing right behind him.

  Her spinning eyes had turned gold, and a smile stretched too far adorned her face, blindigly serene and cruel.

  When she spoke, her voice came cracked and fading, as something inside was choking on the words themselves.

  “Commander…”

  The shove came before he could turn. Her hands struck between his shoulderbaldes and the roots gave way.

  His weight pitched forward into the grey pond and it swallowed him.

  “PRISCILLAAAAAAAA!”