LI
His scream vibrated through the mirror like a trapped storm, a sound that wasn't made for mortal ears. It rattled the silver‑backed glass, shuddered through my bones, and curled around my fingers like smoke trying to escape. I tightened my grip.
I could hear him and could feel his frustration.
The hat man's fury thrashed inside the soul‑forged mirror, his voice rising and falling like a beast caught in a cage too small for its hunger.
Behind me, the canyon roared with the final collapse. The last of the sylph villagers were escorted away by the armored fairies, their wings flashing like stained‑glass shields as they retreated into the night. The elven mages' collapse spells detonated in a chain reaction, sealing the ravine and cutting off the hounds' escape routes.
One by one, the mutant spirit hounds fell. Some dissolved under star‑iron spears.
Others were scattered by lightning‑thread bows. A few were crushed beneath falling stone. Some simply flickered out as the fog was sucked back into the cracked mirror. And every time a hound died, the mirror in my hand pulsed. Every pulse made him scream louder.
He was losing his army, his foothold into the fairy world drifting away.
The fog that kept his world bleeding into ours was dissipating.
The fog lifted in great spirals, drawn backward like smoke pulled through a chimney. It streamed toward the cracked monolith, slipping through the fracture and vanishing into the mirror realm. The bone village brightened as the mist thinned, its skeletal structures exposed under the moonlight. The portal, the crack, was closing.
And the man who kept it open like a foot wedged in a door was in my hand.
His shadow slammed against the inside of the soul‑mirror, distorting the surface like ripples in water. His yellow eyes flashed, his teeth gnashing, his voice a snarl of rage and disbelief.
"Let me OUT—!"
The mirror vibrated, but the runes held.
Lorian stepped beside me, breathing hard, his axe dripping with fading spirit‑light. "Is he… contained?"
I nodded, though my hand trembled from the force of his thrashing. "He's trapped. The mirror world is closed. He can't hold the portal open anymore."
The cracked monolith gave one final pulse, like a dying heartbeat, then went still.
The fog vanished. The canyon fell silent.
And I stood on the dais, the soul‑mirror warm in my palm, the hat man's furious voice echoing faintly inside it like a storm sealed in a bottle.
The man who haunted dreams, who devoured souls, who cracked the veil between worlds, held in my hand, contained. There he was cut off from the source of his power. This tiny shard of mirror, was effectively a cage, connected to nothing.
His weakening hit me before I even looked down at the mirror.
A soft, trembling pulse instead of the violent thrashing he'd shown moments ago.
The soul‑glass warmed in my palm, not with power, but with the fading echo of a creature who had once been vast enough to crack worlds.
I could feel him unraveling.
His frustration was physical. It became a scraping, hollow ache against the silvered surface. His power, once a storm that bent fog and bone to his will, now leaked away like water through broken fingers. Every hound defeated in the canyon stripped another thread from him. Every collapse spell sealed another vein of fog he'd used to feed. He was diminished.
Becoming one of the specters he had consumed.
His body inside the mirror grew transparent, the edges of his coat dissolved into wisps of shadow. His voice, once a velvet‑smooth threat, now rasped like a dying ember. The colors dulled. The black of his coat fading to grey, the brim of his hat losing its shape and frayed, the yellow of his eyes dimming until they were barely flickers.
He pressed his palm weakly against the inside of the mirror, the gesture so small it almost didn't register.
"Please…"
"My darling… my princess…"
The words were thin, fragile, barely audible.
"Didn't I lead you properly in our dance?"
"Were we not friends?"
"You would have become part of me forever…"
His voice cracked on the last word, the sound breaking apart like brittle glass.
He tapped the mirror again. A soft, pathetic tap instead of the furious pounding from before. His clawed fingers left no mark. His strength was gone. His predatory spark extinguished.
The fog around the bone village lifted fully now, streaming back through the cracked monolith in long, shimmering ribbons. The canyon below was quiet. The last hound defeated, the last sylph escorted away. The portal, once held open by his will like a foot wedged in a door, now sagged inward, closing as the mirror realm reclaimed its fog.
He looked up at me through the silvered glass, eyes dim, voice barely a whisper.
"Don't leave me here…," he sounded shattered.
But the mirror didn't care.
The runes pulsed once, sealing tighter.
His form flickered, thinning into a ghostly silhouette. I stood there, holding the man who had haunted dreams, devoured souls, and cracked worlds, now reduced to a fading spectre trapped in the palm of my hand.
When the fog finally lifted and the last hound dissolved into nothing, the tribes gathered in the canyon and along the limestone cliffs. The sylphs, tall and luminous even in grief, folded their wings around one another. The flower‑pixies lit drifting lanterns that floated upward like tiny souls seeking the sky. The elves stood in quiet circles, heads bowed, hands clasped.
Families who had lost loved ones wailed together in shared sorrow. Their cries echoed through the canyon, raw and unrestrained, a sound that felt like the land itself grieving. The air shimmered with mourning magic as elders of each tribe sang the names of the fallen, weaving their memories into the wind so they would never be forgotten.
I held the soul‑mirror in my hand the entire time.
I could feel him inside it as much of my own spirit had been infused into the mirror. The hat man's fading presence, his frustration turning thin and brittle as his power drained away with every impotent thrash. Every cry of grief outside the mirror seemed to weaken him further, as if the unity of the living was poison to whatever he had become.
By dawn, the elven village had tripled in population. Every creature from far and near gathered in the central square. Fires were lit. Food was shared. The chieftains of each tribe sat together for the first time in generations, their armor still stained with battle, their faces carved with exhaustion. They needed a resolution.
They debated long into the afternoon, voices rising and falling like waves. Some argued for sealing the area with wards. Others wanted to collapse the canyon entirely. A few suggested leaving it untouched, fearing that disturbing it might awaken something worse. But in the end, they agreed.
The bone village would be burned.
Every hut made of twisted remains, every bone‑fence, every fog‑stained structure would be reduced to ash. Fire cleansed spirit corruption better than any spell.
And the cracked mirror, and its corrupted portal, would be shattered.
Not simply broken, but shattered into dust, each fragment buried deep beneath layers of stone and earth, sealed with runes from every tribe. A burial of worlds. A grave for a doorway that should never have existed.
The portal would be cut off forever.