The envoy arrived well before dawn.
The mist hadn't yet lifted from the crater, and the broken walls of the fortress rose like ribs from a corpse half-buried in ash. His entourage moved in silence, fifty men in lacquered armor and black sashes, each bearing the Emperor's sigil: a sun pierced by its own rays.
Ya Zhen met them with the calm of a woman greeting a funeral procession. She didn't bow, only inclined her head just enough to seem respectful without surrender. The Chief Envoy dismounted slowly, gloved hands brushing nonexistent dust from his sleeves.
"You were told to preserve the Forge," he said. "And yet I find rubble."
His voice was velvet, but his tone was not.
"The Forge was unstable," Ya Zhen replied. "It consumed itself the moment it touched the divine current. My men contained the blast."
"Contained it?" The envoy's gaze swept over the crater. "The Emperor will find little comfort in containment."
"The Emperor commanded success," she said softly. "Not survival. We achieved both."
For a breath, no one moved. Then the Chief Envoy smiled, sharp and white as a blade's edge.
Ji Ming stood at my side, his posture disciplined but his fingers flexed once against his saber hilt, a movement small enough that only I felt the ripple of qi it stirred. The bond between us was quiet, but not asleep… a gentle hum beneath our skin, ready to rise if provoked.
I kept my gaze low, as if studying the soil. It helped hide the tremor that came when the Envoy's eyes turned toward me.
"You are the healer, are you not?" he asked.
I bowed. "I was, before the Court changed the meaning of healing."
A flicker… amusement? Or a warning?
"Tell me, healer," he said. "When the Forge collapsed, what did you see?"
"Light," I said. "And then nothing."
"Nothing," he repeated, stepping closer. "And yet here you stand. Curious, no?"
Ya Zhen intervened before I could speak again. "The bonded pair survived because their resonance stabilized it briefly and their link neutralized the collapse. Without them, the entire region would have been ash."
"Convenient," the Envoy huffed
She smiled thinly. "Fortune favors loyalty."
The Envoy circled the crater, boots crunching on glass and bone. He stopped at a shard the size of a man's chest, its surface still pulsing faint red. His reflection looked back — and for an instant, I thought I saw the reflection smile first.
He stepped back quickly, the air around him shifting. "It's alive?"
"Dormant," Ya Zhen corrected. "And will remain so."
He didn't argue. He didn't need to. Two of his guards moved forward and dropped a small black urn into the crater's center. A line of script glowed along its rim — Containment Seal: Class II.
A murmur passed through the soldiers.
"That will hold it?" Ji Ming asked.
The Envoy's smile returned. "If not, we'll bury what's left of you two with it."
By midmorning, the Envoy ordered his camp raised beside the ruins. Tents blossomed like black flowers on gray stone, banners limp in the wind. The surviving soldiers of the fortress were separated, some questioned, and some vanished.
Ya Zhen was called to the Chief Envoy's pavilion by name. "You will explain every detail," he said.
"Of course," she replied, and went without hesitation.
When she was gone, the silence grew too heavy to bear.
Ji Ming crouched near the crater's edge, tracing runes in the soot with the blunt end of his dagger. "He's not convinced," he said. "He knows something's wrong."
"But he's right," I said. "Something is wrong."
He looked at me, brow furrowed.
"The Mirror isn't dormant. It's waiting. It's listening to every word."
His hand stilled. "You feel it too?"
"Like a heartbeat that isn't mine."
The ground pulsed faintly beneath us. Once, twice… as soft as breath. The bond between us flared in answer, silver light threading through our skin for the briefest instant before dimming again.
He saw it. So did the nearest guard.
"Problem?" the guard asked.
Ji Ming stood, his tone casual. "Residual qi reaction. Harmless."
The guard didn't look convinced, but he moved on.
"You're getting better at lying," I murmured.
He smiled faintly. "I learned from the best."
"That's not a compliment."
"Wasn't meant to be."
But the humor there was soft and tired, the kind of exhaustion that makes one feel human again.
The hours passed like years. When Ya Zhen finally returned, dusk was settling in, staining the horizon the color of old blood.
"They're sending a messenger to the capital," she said quietly as she approached us. "The Envoy's report will reach the Emperor in four days. By then, we must be gone."
"Gone?" I asked.
"East," she said. "There's an old Red Courier line that runs beneath the salt flats. If we can reach it, they'll hide us… for a price."
Ji Ming's jaw tightened. "You've been planning this."
"I plan for many endings," she said. "Survival is only one."
She pressed a folded parchment into my hands. "Keep this. If I die before we reach the flats, deliver it to whoever wears the red ribbon."
I didn't ask what it contained. Her eyes told me I didn't want to know.
That night, the camp was quiet except for the crackle of watchfires. Ji Ming and I sat apart from the others, half-hidden beneath a collapsed arch. The air was cold, but his shoulder brushed mine… a warmth that didn't need to be named.
"What if the Envoy's seal fails?" I asked.
"It will," he said. "...eventually."
"What if it happens before we leave?"
He looked at the crater, its heart still glowing faintly beneath the urn. "Then we stop it."
"We barely survived last time."
He turned toward me, eyes steady. "Then we don't stop it for them. We stop it for us."
The simplicity of it undid me.
The wind shifted. The mist rolled through the ruins, wrapping around the crater like smoke from a candle snuffed too soon. For a moment I thought I saw faces again… our reflections twisting among the shards, watching us watch them.
One looked almost like me. The other, almost like him.
"Ji Ming," I whispered. "It's learning us."
"I know," he said. "So we make sure it learns wrong."
Near midnight, a cry broke the quiet. One of the Envoy's sentries fell to his knees near the crater, clutching his chest. His armor glowed faint red before cracking. The next second, light poured out of his eyes.
The Mirror had found a new reflection.
The urn shuddered, its script burning brighter. Then the ground beneath it began to tremble again.
"Wake Ya Zhen," Ji Ming said, drawing both sabers. "It's starting."
Before I could move, the Envoy's pavilion flap burst open. He strode out in full ceremonial armor, a blade of obsidian and gold in his hand, eyes reflecting the same red light as the crater.
"Containment is irrelevant," he said, voice no longer his own. "The Mirror does not obey the throne."
The glow from the pit flared, swallowing his shadow.
Ya Zhen appeared beside me, breathless. "He's possessed," she said. "The Mirror has taken him."
Ji Ming stepped forward. "Then we end it before the Emperor ever sees what it's become."
"End it?" Ya Zhen demanded. "You can't kill light!"
He looked at me. "No. But maybe we can blind it."