Having set himself what seemed an easy goal, track Makun and take the book, Zack got to work. He took a bowl and a dagger from his bag, drew the blade across his palm, and held his hand over the bowl while dark, thick blood welled up and dripped into it, once, twice, three times. Enough.
He set the bowl on the floor near the mirror and turned everything off. The music stopped mid-note, and silence filled the room. He switched off the desk lamp, then the overhead light, and the room fell into a darkness broken only by a faint glow from the street, not enough to see by. From his bag he took two thick, white, unscented candles, set them on the floor in front of the mirror and lit them; the flames caught small, then steadied, the only light in the room.
Then he drew a circle in front of the mirror, not in chalk or paint but in his own blood, dipping two fingers into the bowl and tracing a wide ring across the hardwood until the ends met precisely, with no gaps or breaks. The candles sat inside it, their flames throwing long shadows that danced across the walls.
Zack stepped into the circle between them, faced the mirror and began to mutter, not in any language someone outside the Mystic world would recognize, but in old chants, binding phrases meant to open channels and form connections. His voice was low and steady and rhythmic.
The moment he began, the candle flames started whipping in every direction, bending left and right until they were almost horizontal, writhing and twisting, but they never went out.
Still standing in the circle, he tapped his forehead twice to activate his Sight. The room shifted: colors deepened, shadows gained texture, and the air itself became visible, thick with particles and streams of energy.
As a third-grade Adept, his Sight was far clearer than Makun's, and now he could see energy rising from the blood on the floor in thin red-and-black threads, like smoke, reaching into the mirror. The mirror answered. The corrupted glass rippled, the smoke inside it thickened, and at its center a vortex began to form, one no ordinary eye could see.
He waited patiently, never pausing his chant. The vortex turned and grew, the smoke spiraling inward faster and faster, the glass seeming to bend as if reality were being pulled toward a single point. Then images appeared, fractured and flickering, but there.
He saw the Night Market in Old Town, the plaza with its hooded figures and impossible goods. He saw himself beside the veiled woman's stall, fist raised and energy surging. He saw the moment he spat, frame by frame: the drop of blood separating, falling, attaching, the mark forming. His pulse quickened. It was working.
He watched Makun stand talking with the veiled woman, their lips moving and their hands gesturing, the pendant changing hands. The mirror showed images, not sound, so he had no idea what they said, but he didn't need sound. He needed a location. Then Makun walked away from the plaza, and the image followed him through empty streets, dark alleys and cracked pavement. Zack watched quietly, eager to see where he went so he could finish him.
The image flickered, once and briefly. Zack frowned and kept chanting. The scenes went on, Makun at a bus stop, boarding, sitting in the back, and then the image flickered again, longer this time, and after that it kept flickering, growing weaker and weaker.
Zack let out a hard breath. What? Does he have some protection I couldn't detect? That shouldn't be possible. I saw his spiritual energy. It was weak. He has to be new to this world.
He refused to accept it. The image was fading, and the vortex was losing its shape. No. Not after all this. He pressed on his wound and squeezed until it reopened and blood poured onto the floor, pooling, the energy rising faster now. If the connection wanted to flicker out, he would simply make it bigger.
The threads thickened and surged into the mirror, and the vortex answered with a low roar. The candle flames whipped faster and faster, as if a battle were being fought around them, spiraling violently, but still they didn't go out.
And the more blood Zack poured, the more the scenes flickered, as though something were using his own energy to block them.
He saw Makun step off a bus and walk through an industrial district, dark and abandoned. Then the image shattered into fragments.
Zack forced it. He couldn't let the book go. He slashed his palm again, deeper this time, and grunted as the blood flowed freely and his hand shook over the circle. The energy surged, the vortex expanded, and for a moment the image re-formed, as if to show him what he needed.
Then it collapsed.
Zack's breathing was heavy and his hand burned. He had failed. Both candles went out at once, and with a sharp sound like ice splitting, a thin black crack ran across the bottom of the mirror.
Darkness covered the room. It was not ordinary darkness. It was a darkness unlike anything Zack had ever seen, and he knew at once that it was wrong. He couldn't feel anything, not the floor under his feet, not the air around him, not his own body. He couldn't feel himself existing at all. The only thing left was fear, fear of the unknown, cold and deep and suffocating, as if the dark itself were alive and watching him.
He fell. In his mind he was falling through empty air with no impact and no sound, falling forever.
THUD.
His body hit the floor among the blood, the smeared circle and the dead candles, his hand still bleeding, the cracked mirror silent above him.
He lost consciousness.