Chapter 3 - The Mirror of Absolute Void
The climax of the wedding feast arrived with the unrolling of the midnight rituals. Lysenne rose from her seat, her golden crown catching the harsh glare of the chandeliers, and signaled her attendants. From the deepest vaults of the illusionist realm, two massive spirits carried forth an artifact that made even the oldest gods shudder: the Eclipse Mirror.
Its frame was forged from dead stars and weeping obsidian, but its surface held no reflection. It was not glass, but a tear in reality itself—a pool of absolute, sucking darkness that swallowed light rather than bouncing it back.
Lysenne raised the heavy frame, her golden eyes flashing with malicious triumph, and pointed the black glass directly at Selmora.
"My lady, no!" a minor star-god warned, stepping back from the table with a pale face. "That artifact belongs to the primal dark. It has no place at a wedding!"
Lysenne ignored him entirely, her smile widening into something feral.
Selmora stood frozen as the mirror began to pull. There was no wind, no sound of breaking air, but a terrible, freezing suction gripped her entire being. It did not touch her clothes or her silver robes; it reached straight past the physical form and sank its invisible claws into her identity. A bone-deep cold spread through her ancient marrow, sharper than any mortal blade, freezing the very starlight in her veins.
Across the great hall, the assembled guests gasped in unison. A collective wave of horror rolled through the room.
Selmora’s face was gone.
Not hidden behind the silver mask she had discarded, not scarred or obscured by shadows. Completely, impossibly gone. Where her eyes had once held the wisdom of a thousand galaxies, where her mouth had spoken the names of the first stars, there was now only a smooth, featureless oval of moon-pale emptiness—a blank skin of polished silver and void.
Lysenne lowered the mirror slightly, stepping close to the faceless goddess, and peered into the smooth blankness of Selmora's head, watching her own triumphant expression reflected in the void.
May you like
"A woman without a face," Lysenne declared to the hushed, terrified hall, her voice echoing off the crystal walls, "has no right to be remembered."
For a heartbeat, the palace held its breath. Then, far below the floating islands, in the mortal realms connected by Orion’s silver bridge, the first child screamed.
