XLV
He spoke to the spiritual leader of the elven tribe, its wiseman. An elder wise woman with kind grey eyes and braided silver hair threaded with tiny bells speaks with him, a birch rod serving as a walking stick in hand. A fluffy brown and grey bird twitters as they speak, occasionally preening its feathers. They lead us to a round tent nestled in a corner of the village, a tent-like tarp surrounding a stone scrying pool, highly reflective with glowing stones at the bottom.
The wisewoman moves with a kind of quiet gravity, the sort that makes the entire village instinctively soften around her. Her grey eyes are gentle but impossibly deep, like she's seen centuries pass and still greets each new moment with patience. The silver bells braided into her long hair chime softly as she walks, just a whisper of sound that feels like a blessing.
A birch rod serves as her walking stick, polished smooth by age and use. It's carved with spirals and mirror‑symbols, the same motifs you've seen on the fountain and the stone circle. A little grey/brown lark perches on her shoulder, hopping occasionally to preen its feathers or chirp a soft comment into her ear. She seems to understand it perfectly.
Sigmund speaks with her in low, respectful tones. Their conversation is fluid, almost ritualistic. His voice hums steady, hers warm and melodic in elven language so quick I couldn't catch it. The villagers watch with reverence. Even the guards relax their stance.
The wisewoman gestures for you and Lorian to follow.
She leads us through a narrow path between two great trees, their roots forming natural archways. Nestled in a quiet corner of the village is a round tent, its walls made of layered tarps dyed in forest greens and pale birch‑white. The fabric is held up by living branches that curve inward, forming a perfect dome.
Inside, the air is cooler, hushed, scented with crushed herbs and faint magic.
At the center lies a stone scrying pool.
It's shallow, carved from a single slab of limestone, polished until it gleams like a mirror. Water fills it to the brim, perfectly still. At the bottom, glowing stones pulse with soft light glittering blue, gold, and silver, making the water shimmer like liquid starlight.
The wisewoman taps her birch rod once on the ground.
The bird chirps approvingly.
Sigmund steps aside, giving you space. His expression is calm, but there's a flicker of anticipation in his eyes. His eyes are tired like he's been waiting years for this moment.
The wisewoman speaks, her voice gentle but resonant.
"Child of the Mirror," she says, now perfectly understood thanks to the elder's spell, "this pool shows truth, memory, and fate. It will reveal why the mirror called you… and what awaits beyond its reflection."
Lorian stands close enough that you feel the warmth of him, his damp coat brushing your arm.
The water ripples once—though no one touched it.
The glowing stones brighten.
And the wisewoman nods toward the pool.
"Look," she says. "And let the mirror speak."
A vast valley of grey stone appears, carved by time and magic into jagged ridges and broken plains. The air in the vision feels cold, heavy, ancient. At its center stands a monolith of limestone, towering like a mountain's severed heart. Embedded in its face is a dark mirror, enormous, cracked along one edge, easily the width of an elephant.
The crack runs jaggedly across the surface, like a wound that never healed. Around its base coils grey fog, thick and boiling, churning like water heated from below. It pulses with a strange rhythm, as if something inside it is breathing. Every few seconds, the fog flashes with faint silver light, like lightning trapped in smoke.
Lorian inhales sharply beside you.
Sigmund's expression tightens.
The wisewoman's bells tremble in her hair, "This mirror is the Broken Reflection. It is a travel mirror much like your great uncle's but it has been corrupted."
The vision widens.
Surrounding the monolith is a dilapidated village, built from bone and stretched skin, bleached and greyed with age. The structures sag, ribs and spines forming archways, skulls used as lantern housings, hides stretched into roofs that flutter like dying breaths.
No movement. No people.
Just the wind moaning through hollow bone.
The place feels abandoned, but not empty. Something lingers. Something watches.
The fog thickens around the mirror's base, rising and falling like a creature's slow respiration.
The vision sharpens, pulling you closer to the cracked monolith and its boiling fog. The bone‑and‑skin village around it seems to wake in slow, dreadful motion.
One by one, shapes emerge from the doorways of the bone huts.
At first, they look like elves, thin, starved, stumbling.
But then they lift their heads. And the truth becomes clear.
Their eyes glow blue, not with life but with a cold, unnatural light. Their bodies are emaciated, ribs sharp beneath dirty pelts. Their limbs are elongated, joints bent wrong, ending in fierce claws that scrape the stone as they walk. Their ears are pointed, but twisted grey, and around their necks and shoulders grows a ruff of tangled fur, matted and infused with shifting shadow.
They move with a jerky, predatory rhythm. They move slow half‑alive, half‑something else.
The wisewoman inhales sharply. Sigmund's hand tightens into a fist.
Lorian's breath catches beside you.
The vision draws closer to the center of the bone village, closer to the cracked mirror.
Two elves, real elves, terrified and struggling, are dragged into view. Their captors yank them forward with clawed hands, tossing them like discarded prey at the base of the monolith.
The cracked mirror looms above them, its surface pulsing faintly, as if responding to the offering.
The fog boils harder. The ground trembles.
The bone village seems to lean inward.
The emaciated creatures circle the captives, their glowing eyes fixed on the mirror, not the elves. They hiss in a language that feels wrong. Elven language in broken growling syllables, warped echoes of the elves' liquid tongue.
The wisewoman's bells tremble violently in her hair.
The vision's intensity bleeds into the air around you. The scrying pool ripples, glowing stones flickering like panicked hearts.
The wisewoman steps forward, voice low and grave.
"These are the Hounds of the Hollow," she says. "Souls drained by the broken mirror. Bodies left behind… twisted by hunger for what they lost."
Sigmund's jaw tightens.
"They were once elven villagers, much like this village," he murmurs. "Families. Craftsmen. Hunters. All taken when the mirror cracked, and something unclean emerged."
Lorian's voice is barely a whisper.
"They're offering the captives to it."
The wisewoman nods, sorrow heavy in her eyes.
"The Broken Reflection mirror is corrupted, whatever has polluted it feeds on living souls now. It calls to those who are desperate… or lost. And it has begun to gather."
The scrying pool shudders.
The cracked mirror in the vision pulses as if sensing us, to the beat of our living hearts.
The wisewoman slams her birch rod down. "Inconceivable."
The vision snaps to the captured elves.
The scrying pool shudders as the screaming starts. I hesitate to look. They're sacrificing the two elves to the mirror. The fog enters their bodies as their throats are slit and blood is spilt. The souls of their two elves are forcefully ejected from their bodies as something dark invades. Bones stretch and crack as shadow hounds as big as wolves take over the elven bodies, elongating limbs, distorting joints, their ears growing into points, hair darkening into a grey tangled ruff.
The elves' bodies are gone. What rises in their place are shadow hounds, massive and wrong, dripping fog from their jaws, eyes glowing the same cold blue as the soul coins.
The creatures howl into the night, the long mournful cry vibrates through the scrying tent, through your bones, through the very air of the elven village.
The wisewoman slams her birch rod against the ground, trying to break the vision.
But the pool keeps shaking, as if the mirror on the other side is aware of us now.
The scrying pool doesn't just show them, but the entity that controls them.
It shudders under the weight of his presence, the water rippling outward as if recoiling from a predator pressing its face against the glass of another world.
His silhouette forms inside the cracked mirror, tall and thin, dressed in that unmistakable black top hat and long coat that hangs like a shadow peeled from night itself. He is not fully present. He forms only a reflection; a smear of darkness pressed against the inside of the mirror's surface. But his waxy yellow eyes burn through the vision, glowing with hunger and impatience.
He leans forward, palms flattening against the inside of the mirror. The glass warps under his touch, bending inward like soft metal. He cannot break through, not yet, but every push sends a tremor through the scrying pool.
The wisewoman's bird screeches, feathers puffed in terror.
Lorian steps closer to me, instinctively protective.
Sigmund's face hardens, all warmth gone.
The shadow hounds prowl at the base of the monolith, fog dripping from their jaws. They look up at him like loyal beasts awaiting command. He has managed to send them through the crack, but not himself. It infuriates him.
He slams a hand against the mirror's inner surface. The crack pulses, widening a fraction. The fog boils harder, rising like steam from a cauldron. The bone village trembles. His voice is a whisper of scraping metal, but the scrying pool carries it clearly:
"More souls. Tasty."
His eyes sweep the valley, then the reflection, and for a heartbeat, they seem to lock onto me. That familiar cracked face, and it's familiar sharp toothed grin.
The pool's water recoils, splashing upward as if trying to escape the vision.
Those waxy yellow eyes widen, pupils thinning into predatory slits. His hunger is palpable not for food, not for power, but for souls.
New fresh souls from a world he has not yet tasted, and his power was growing.
The elves' souls, ripped from their bodies moments ago, swirl behind him like trapped fireflies. They flutter brightly, desperate, flickering. He reaches toward them, but the crack is too narrow. He cannot pull them through.
He snarls, a sound that vibrates through the tent, through your bones, through the very air of the village.
The wisewoman slams her birch rod against the ground, trying to sever the connection.
The glowing stones flicker violently. The scrying pool shakes as if something is clawing at its underside.
Sigmund steps between me and the pool, his voice sharp.
"Enough. This vision is too much." But the vision doesn't break.
The top‑hatted figure presses closer, his face flattening against the mirror's inner surface, yellow eyes stretching into grotesque ovals.
He whispers again in a dreadful promise, a threat, a vow:
"Soon."
The crack pulses. And the scrying pool finally snaps the vision shut, the water going still with a violent jolt.
Only the faint glow of the stones remains in the heartbreaking silence.