The mirror blinked first.
Cael had spent the whole night staring at it, waiting for the glass to settle.
It didn't. The surface quivered like water holding its breath.
Every twelve seconds, his reflection inhaled.
He didn't.
He set the jar down on the table. The faint echo-light inside pulsed once, twice, then stilled—as if the Bloom's residue inside him had reminded it that time could stop.
> "You've been looking at yourself for an hour," Lioren said from the doorway.
"Either you like what you see, or something in there's watching back."
He didn't answer.
She sighed, walked in, and touched the edge of the glass.
The mirror warmed beneath her fingers.
Then it exhaled.
Lioren flinched. "That's new."
---
The Archivists' Den buzzed with whispers that morning.
Order sensors in the upper sectors were malfunctioning; several towers had reported "reflection drift."
The city had begun to see two versions of itself.
Cael followed Lioren through the archive corridors. Everywhere he went, mirrors turned to face him. Some simply rotated. Others slid across walls like obedient pets.
> "They react to resonance fields," Lioren said. "But not like this. It's as if they… recognize you."
"Or remember me," Cael said quietly.
She shot him a look. "Don't start."
But it was too late.
Every step he took left a faint distortion behind, a shimmer of inverted color.
He wasn't leaking resonance anymore.
He was rewriting it.
---
When they reached the central hall, the glass floor rippled.
Beneath it, faint outlines of people moved—reflections of those who'd once walked these halls.
Lioren crouched and pressed her hand to the floor.
"They're breathing," she whispered.
"Who?"
"The erased. The city keeps them in its reflection layer. That's where memory goes when it dies."
Cael knelt beside her. "Can we reach them?"
"You already did. That's the problem."
She looked up. Her eyes flickered with blue light for a moment—the mark of resonance exposure. "The Bloom bonded to your field. Every mirror in Vaelith is now an open lung, exhaling what you remember."
---
A sharp hum cut through the hall.
Drones.
Order enforcers descended in perfect formation, faces hidden behind chrome masks.
"Echo contamination detected," one announced. "Purge protocol: 4-7-Null."
Lioren cursed under her breath. "They're tracking your frequency."
"Can you stop them?" Cael asked.
"I can delay them." She reached for her quill-sigil, drawing a quick arc in the air. The ink ignited, forming a circular barrier of text that shimmered like heat.
The drones fired light pulses—white, silent, erasing beams meant to unmake anything touched.
The barrier held for three seconds.
> "Three seconds," Ashveil's voice whispered in his head, "is an eternity if you remember it correctly."
Cael raised his hand instinctively. The glass around them convulsed. Every mirror in the Den turned at once, facing the drones.
For an instant, each reflection showed a different world—different cities, skies, faces. Then all the images collapsed inward, dragging the drones into their own reflections.
Silence.
Lioren stared at him. "You didn't just redirect them. You rewrote where they existed."
"I—" Cael swallowed. "I didn't know I could."
"Neither did they."
---
After the echoes settled, the mirrors kept breathing.
Slow, rhythmic, alive.
They weren't showing reflections anymore—they were watching.
Lioren backed away. "If the city mirrors are linked to the neural grid, and they're copying your resonance…"
"Then?"
"Then Vaelith itself just learned to breathe."
---
That night, Cael dreamt of standing above the city.
Every window pulsed like a heartbeat.
Every surface exhaled faint fog.
And in the center of it all, his reflection stood on the opposite rooftop—smiling again.
It mouthed two words.
> "Not you."
Cael woke with a start, lungs burning, air heavy with glass dust.
In the mirror across the room, his reflection was still asleep.
---