The night rose slowly, like a tide made of silver.
Clouds drifted eastward in long ribbons, clearing a path for the full moon as it climbed out of the horizon's bruise. Its reflection reached the valley first — trembling across the river's skin, gathering itself at the place the villagers once called Water's End, where the current widened and lost its name among the reeds.
Leona stood there barefoot, the hem of her gown soaked.
She had followed the river all afternoon, listening to its shifting voice — sometimes a murmur, sometimes a hymn. In her pocket lay the small glass-tear she'd taken from the bleeding frame. It throbbed faintly, in rhythm with her pulse. Every so often, she felt it whisper, not in words but in light — flashes of places she'd never been: a stairwell beneath the floodgates, a hand painting the moon's face with ash.
Jonas joined her, carrying two lanterns. Their glow barely touched the air; the moon had already claimed the night.
He set one beside her and watched the water.
"It looks different here," he said.
"Because it's remembering," Leona replied. "The river always glows when the past wants to return."
They waited.
Somewhere upriver, a bell tolled once — not from any steeple, but from beneath the water, deep and muffled. The sound rippled through the valley like a heartbeat under ice.
Then the river began to rise.
Only by inches at first, but unnaturally calm. The surface thickened, glass-like. Leona knelt, touched it, and found it solid — not frozen, but coherent, like a mirror made of breath.
Her reflection moved a heartbeat slower than she did.
The moonlight bent sharply, forming a pale corridor stretching across the river toward the opposite bank. It pulsed faintly, as though inviting passage.
Jonas whispered, "It's a bridge."
Leona shook her head. "No. It's a question."
She stepped forward.
The moment her foot touched the light, ripples of silver fanned outward, and the air changed — colder, older. The valley's sounds faded until only the pulse of the moon remained, steady and enormous. Jonas followed, though every instinct begged him not to.
At the center of the luminous bridge, the current below seemed to vanish. Instead, beneath the glassy surface, they saw movement: silhouettes walking upside-down, faces luminous and sad. Some resembled the lost villagers from the flood; others bore Leona's own features, fragmented through time.
"They're reflections that learned to live without us," she murmured.
"Ghosts?"
"No," she said. "Versions."
They continued until the bridge ended at a small island of stones barely wide enough for two people to stand. On it rested a single object — an unfinished mirror, its rim carved with symbols of moons and rivers intertwined. The center was blank, not yet born.
The glass-tear in Leona's pocket flared, as though recognizing its home. She placed it gently into the mirror's hollow heart. The instant it touched the surface, the moon overhead dimmed — not eclipsed, but turned inward, as if it had blinked.
A faint beam descended, threading itself through the mirror, through Leona, through the water. The world inverted for a moment: sky below, river above. Every reflected soul beneath them lifted its head to look upward — toward them — and the moon opened its eye.
Leona gasped.
Because the moon wasn't white anymore. It had a face.
Her face.
For a heartbeat, she saw herself looking down — not from the bank, but from the heavens, luminous and solemn, carrying every scar of the river's history upon her cheek.
The mirror on the island trembled. Fine cracks spread from its center, bleeding light instead of shadow. A low hum filled the air, neither threatening nor gentle — simply vast. The reflection beneath the glass rippled; all the upside-down figures raised their hands toward her, as though returning something they had carried for centuries.
And then she understood:
The moon wasn't watching them. It was remembering them.
Every act of mercy, every withheld kindness, every forgotten prayer had been recorded not in books, but in the moon's reflection upon the river. The two had been mirrors of one another — sky and water keeping parallel ledgers of the same grief.
The cracks in the mirror widened. A column of light rose from it, spiraling upward until it touched the moon's face. The light pulsed once, twice — and the reflection began to weep.
Silver tears fell through the night, hitting the river like rain. Each drop left a circle of calm where it landed. The bridge dissolved into ripples. The current resumed its voice.
Jonas pulled Leona back as the island began to sink. The mirror remained afloat a moment longer, then folded inward on itself, becoming a single shard no larger than a coin. It drifted downstream, glowing like a slow-moving star.
When they reached the shore again, the moon's face was gone — blank once more, though softer somehow, like a wound that had begun to heal.
Leona looked at her reflection in the water.
For the first time, it looked back perfectly — no delay, no distortion, no rival self.
"So this is what the river wanted," she said.
Jonas asked, "And what did it take?"
"Nothing," she said. "Only the right to remember."
The wind carried the faint sound of wings — herons, gliding low across the silver surface. The bell beneath the water tolled again, quieter now, as though marking the end of confession.
Leona turned toward the distant cathedral, its cracked window glimmering faintly with the borrowed moonlight.
"Tomorrow," she said, "the light will fall differently."
They walked back along the bank in silence. Behind them, the river flowed smoother than it had in years, and for the briefest instant before dawn, the moon paused — just once — and looked back.