The Mirror Cage
It was contained—barely.
The creature thrashed against the shimmering prison of dream-forged light, not with the brute strength of a beast, but the fractured cunning of something still becoming. The warding sphere shimmered with tension, like a soap bubble holding back a storm. Every time it changed shape, the threads of the binding web sang with strain.
They'd moved it beneath Ridgefall into the deepest chamber of the old vaults—a place once used by the elders to guard relics too dangerous or sacred to name. Now, the chamber had been cleared, repurposed, surrounded with dream-catch pylons, memory anchors, and aether siphons. At its center stood the Mirror Cage—a lattice of soulmetal and crystal that reflected not just the creature's image, but its intent.
It hated the cage. Not because it could not escape, but because it understood it.
Mira and Alaric entered together, accompanied only by Seer Athela and two wardbinders. They wore no armor, carried no weapons. Their power here was truth—and the risk was immense.
The creature turned toward them. It had no fixed form, but it defaulted now to a face Alaric recognized. His mother's. Worn and kind. The last shape it had stolen before the ambush.
Alaric didn't flinch.
"You can drop the mask," he said. "It won't work on us."
The creature blinked. Slowly, its form melted—swirling into something vaguely humanoid, genderless and slick as oil. Its voice when it came was like wind caught in a broken flute.
"You are not afraid."
Mira stepped forward. "We've lived with fear. We've bled with it. You're just another storm."
The creature tilted its head.
"I was born from your grief."
"No," Alaric corrected. "You stole grief. There's a difference."
It leaned forward until its face met the mirrored wall, and in its reflection flickered a dozen faces—some human, some monstrous, some lost.
"I am what remains," it whispered. "I wear your castoffs. I am the thread between."
"You're the Second Failed," Mira said. "But unlike the First… you think."
"I become," it replied. "Every death, a lesson. Every sorrow, a seed. I watched your kind twist pain into purpose. So I grew."
Alaric crossed his arms. "Why the coast? Why now?"
"I sensed the Dreamwalker," it said, eyes flicking to Mira. "She is not sealed. Her thoughts are open. She gave me doors."
Mira's expression darkened. "You mean I baited you."
"No. You taught me. You showed me shapes. Now I know."
It shifted again, this time briefly into Alaric's form—but not recent. Younger. The boy before the curse. Before the war.
Mira stepped forward. "What is your goal?"
"To be," it said.
"Be what?"
"Anything better than what you are."
Silence followed.
Then Alaric asked quietly, "Who made you?"
It hesitated.
Then: "I do not remember."
"Try."
The creature shuddered.
The light around the Mirror Cage dimmed briefly as its body rippled. Images flickered on its surface like dreams caught in water.
A woman in black, whispering over a basin of blood.
A tree burning with silver fire.
A circle of wolves around a screaming sky.
Mira gasped. "That… that was the Temple of Howls. That was before the First War."
"You were made," Alaric said coldly. "You were a weapon."
"I was a seed," the creature whispered. "Planted in loss. Watered with time."
Alaric turned to Mira. "We need to go deeper. It doesn't remember, but its form does."
Mira hesitated. "You want me to dreamwalk into it?"
"Yes."
Athela paled. "That could destroy your mind."
"She's done worse," Alaric said, and looked to Mira. "Can you do it?"
She stepped to the mirror, eyes locked with the swirling mockery within.
"I won't go in alone. You'll anchor me."
Alaric nodded.
She took a deep breath, touched the mirrored wall—and fell in.