Chapter 7 - The Trial of the Stolen Breath
"What price?" Orion demanded, his voice rising in desperation as he wrapped his arms around Lysenne’s shuddering, withered shoulders to keep her from collapsing entirely into dust. "Name it, Mother! Whatever the celestial court requires—my throne, my starlight, my immortality—I will give it!"
Selmora raised her hands, and the silver robes around her wrists began to unspool into threads of pure, unadulterated moonlight.
"Not your throne, Orion," Selmora answered, stepping forward until the absolute void of her face towered over the kneeling couple. "A throne is made of stone and stolen ambition. It has no value here. The price must be paid by the one who held the mirror, and the one who allowed the glass to be raised."
Lysenne whimpered, her cloudy, ancient eyes staring up into the terrifying blankness where Selmora’s face used to be. There were no eyes to meet hers, yet she felt an unsparing judgment burning straight through her soul.
"To restore the faces of the millions of souls trapped in the void," Selmora continued, "the Eclipse Mirror must be broken from the inside out. But an artifact forged of ancient darkness cannot be shattered by mortal or immortal steel. It requires a voluntary surrender of essence."
She pointed a long, luminous finger toward the writhing black glass.
"Lysenne must willingly thrust her own hands into the mirror's core, relinquishing every illusion of beauty and power she ever hoarded, and pull out the stolen features with her bare fingers. And you, Orion—you must hold her steady, sharing the cold, so that her fear does not make her drop the glass before the work is done."
Orion froze. He looked down at Lysenne, whose body was now trembling so violently that her bones sounded like dry twigs snapping inside a leather pouch. To touch the Eclipse Mirror bare-handed meant risking the total annihilation of one's spiritual essence. To hold her steady meant feeling the freezing agony of the void seep into his own immortal blood.
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"I cannot..." Lysenne gasped, curling inward like a dead leaf. "It will consume me. It will turn me to ash before I even touch the glass."
"You chose to consume another's identity," Selmora reminded her, her tone devoid of anger, bearing only the cold, unyielding gravity of a natural law. "Now you must face the reflection of your own hunger."
