The Mirrored One

Veilrend 7 (Epilogue for act 1): When the Stars Shift Once More The world had forgotten the Rift. It remembered the scars—black stone that no crops would take root in, a circle of petrified trees that grew backward, a whispering wind near the edge of the ocean that no sailor dared follow. But the names—Seris, Thar’Zul, Kaelen—had faded into story, then silence. Time passed. Empires rose and fell like the tide. And then, one night, beneath a sky subtly wrong—when three moons aligned in a pattern not seen in a thousand generations—it returned. Not a rift. Not a tear. A mirror, suspended in the sky like a shard of black glass. It did not reflect light. It reflected intentions. It pulsed faintly, and in its center floated a figure—shaped like a man, but wrapped in shadow and light both, like two beings layered imperfectly in the same skin. One eye burned violet. The other glowed gold. Seris. And something else. Not monstrous, not yet—but not wholly human either. Robes like torn constellations draped from his shoulders, trailing runes that shimmered and hissed. Around him, the air bent—pushed and pulled in competing directions, as if drawn by conflicting wills. He touched down in the dead lands. His feet left no prints. The wind held its breath. Children in faraway villages began dreaming in other languages. Scholars opened books and found words rearranged. Storms twisted in spirals not seen since the Breaking. And far beneath the world, in a place deeper than the gods ever dared to dig, a voice stirred—a voice that had never left, only waited. Thar’Zul, unforgotten. Watching from the mirrored soul of his once-vessel. Now a passenger. Now a jailor. > “We are not whole,” the voice whispered in the man’s mind. > “No,” Seris replied aloud, eyes scanning a horizon only he could see. “But we are... balanced. For now.” Above them, the mirror pulsed again—one side black, one side burning. > “What do you seek?” the void-hunger asked.