Chapter 6 - The Weight of the Void
Selmora did not move. Standing beside the tall arched window, her smooth, featureless oval of head caught the pale, fractured moonlight, turning it into a shimmering shield of absolute stillness.
"You broke the mirror, Lysenne," Selmora’s voice resonated directly within the minds of everyone in the room, sounding like the deep chime of a bronze bell echoing across an empty canyon. "You believed that by erasing my face, you would become the sole sovereign of all reflection. But a face is not a decoration. It is a covenant between souls."
Orion stepped forward, falling to his knees beside his aging, weeping wife. He reached out a trembling hand toward Selmora’s robes, his fingers stopping just short of the fabric, terrified to touch the mother he had abandoned for a crown of illusions.
"Mother, fix this," Orion pleaded, tears spilling over his lashes. "The mortal realms are tearing apart. The dead cannot find their graves, and children are waking up screaming into mirrors that show them nothing. I... I was a coward. I watched her take your identity, and I said nothing because I feared the loss of my own peace."
"Peace bought at the cost of another's erasure is tyranny, my son," Selmora replied, her voice carrying an infinite, crushing weight. "You crossed the bridge of bone I built for you every night, yet you forgot that the bridge rests upon my willingness to hold the weight of the sky."
Lysenne let out a high-pitched, pathetic wail as another decade of life violently assaulted her body. Her skin turned translucent, showing the blue, sluggish pulse of failing veins beneath. The Eclipse Mirror in her hands began to heat up, glowing with a dangerous, unstable crimson ring around its black perimeter.
"Take it back!" Lysenne shrieked, her voice sounding like dry metal scraping against stone. "Take the face back! Take the curse! I am dying! I am rotting away into nothingness!"
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"You cannot simply return what was stolen by force," Selmora said calmly, turning her blank face toward them. "A stolen identity must be reclaimed through sacrifice, just as it was taken through malice. The balance of the cosmos demands a price."
The air in the chamber grew so dense that breathing felt like inhaling broken glass. The Eclipse Mirror surged in Lysenne's grip, its surface rippling like liquid oil, threatening to shatter and scatter the stolen faces across the dark corners of the universe forever.
