In the city, in a room lit by a single red candle, Madam Elsie watched flames flicker over her desk, an assistant stood across from her, nervous and fidgeting.
"He saw it," the assistant said.
Saw what? Elsie snapped
"The mirror." the assistant said , traces of fear lingering over his body
Elsie stiffened. "Was it the Binding mirror?"
"Yes, ma'am."
She cursed under her breath.
"We can't allow him to recover everything, not now."
"Then break the next seal," she said coldly. "Before he breaks it himself."
The night air inside Kael's quarters had turned unusually still, the kind of stillness that crept beneath skin and wrapped itself around bone. He sat hunched at the edge of his bed, sweat on his neck, his eyes fixed on the cracked mirror across the room.
The pieces of glass still held their place, barely, after the outburst hours earlier, his reflection now came in jagged fragments, one eye here, part of his jaw there, He didn't recognize himself anymore.
And yet, the mirror stared back like it had known him all along.
From beneath his pillow, the pendant seemed warmer than usual, not hot enough to burn but insistent, Alive, He pulled it out and held it to his chest.
Then, slowly, he approached the mirror.
The pendant pulsed once.
And then it happened.
Not magic, no blinding light or swirling portals, just… stillness... the world seemed to pause, like it was holding its breath.
The cracked mirror no longer showed Kael's room. Instead, it reflected a chamber of gray stone walls and narrow windows. A man stood at the center of it—tall, broad-shouldered, and cloaked in royal blue. His back was turned.
Then he turned.
Kael's breath caught.
It was his father... Younger... Stronger... Regal.
But behind him stood someone else. A woman in nurse's scrubs his mother, but younger too, smiling gently, her hand resting protectively on a bundle in her arms.
A child.
A newborn.
The reflection blurred for a moment, then shifted, the same man Kael's father, stood now beside a different woman, tall, sharp-faced, eyes calculating: Madam Elsie. She laid a hand on the man's chest, whispered something in his ear.
Kael pressed closer to the mirror, he couldn't hear them, but the man's face was conflicted, then hardened.
Another shift.
The same room.. Now empty.. the floor bore the faint imprint of the same crown, the three-eyed symbol carved into the center tile.
The reflection blinked.
And Kael was staring at his own broken face again.
He stumbled back, heart thumping.
He wasn't just a rejected son, he was the child hidden away.
Protected… or erased?
Downstairs, Sai had been watching him from the edge of the hallway, a tray of untouched tea in her hands. She stepped into the room, the soft thud of her footsteps pulling him out of the whirlwind inside his mind.
"You look like you've seen a ghost," she said softly.
Kael didn't respond right away. He looked at her, really looked.
"You ever feel like… you were born from the wrong ending of someone else's story?" he asked.
Sai placed the tray down and walked over. "No," she said after a beat. "But I know what it's like to carry someone else's secrets like they're your own."
He looked away, jaw clenched.
"I saw my father," he said. "And my mother… together. Like before everything. Before I became… this."
Sai reached into her pocket and pulled something small out, It was a photograph creased at the corners pof her as a child beside her mother, standing before a statue Kael now recognized: the veiled woman from the Garden of Whispering Statues.
"I think we're more connected to the past than we think," she whispered. "I think we were both born into silence."
Kael turned back to the mirror. His voice low. "But I want answers now."
Back at the mansion, Kael stood beside Sai as she gently lifted a cloth from a box she had once tucked away in her closet.
"I found this when I was twelve," she said. "It belonged to my grandfather. He used to speak in half-words and riddles before he passed, but he always said something about 'watching the eyes that watch us.'"
Inside the box was a leather-bound journal, its pages yellowed with age. Kael opened to the first page, there, drawn with painstaking precision, was the same three-eyed crown.
"Your family knew," Kael said, voice barely above a whisper. "I don't know how much, but they were part of something," Sai admitted. "My father he has always been on edge about you, watching, as if he knew who you were long before I did."
Kael sat down slowly, flipping through the pages, passages filled with references to "the heir of two paths," "binding mirrors," and "crimson accords."
Later that night, Kael slipped outside, the pendant now cold and silent. He walked alone through the garden until he reached the servant quarters. There, he stood before the mirror again, the same one that had triggered the vision.
He stared.
"I am not afraid of the truth anymore," he said.
The mirror didn't respond.
But Kael knew the journey had just begun, not just a journey but a search for his identity and maybe his liberation.