The descent ended not with the roar of flame or the crash of stone, but with silence.
A silence so heavy it pressed against their ears, as though sound itself had chosen to sleep.
They stood at the threshold of Shadira, the Mirror Labyrinth.
The ground was glass, cold, flawless, yet fractured with hairline cracks that spiderwebbed in every direction. Each shard caught them in broken fragments, reflecting pieces of faces, hands, weapons… never whole.
Above stretched a sky that was neither day nor night, only an endless twilight that refused to change.
Here, air did not move. No wind, no warmth, no breath of life. Only stillness.
The walls rose high around them, seamless planes of mirror. But these were no ordinary reflections. Each surface showed not who they were… but who they might have been.
A warrior without scars.
A king without regret.
A lover never lost.
A child never abandoned.
