Chapter 8 - The Crucible of Glass
Silence settled over the chamber once more, broken only by the frantic, desperate breathing of the fallen goddess. Lysenne looked from the terrifying void of Selmora’s face to the dark, pulsing surface of the Eclipse Mirror. The voices inside were screaming louder now—thousands of children, mothers, and wandering spirits crying out for their names, their identities, and their homes.
With a ragged, broken sob, Lysenne turned to Orion. Her ancient, ruined face looked up at him—the man who had watched her commit a cosmic crime in silence.
"Will you hold me?" she whispered, her voice barely audible over the roaring of the cosmic winds outside.
Orion looked down into the cloudy, tear-filled eyes of the woman he had loved, seeing past the wrinkles and the shrunken skin to the terrified spirit within. For the first time since the wedding night, the cowardice that had paralyzed him shattered. He placed his hands firmly over Lysenne’s withered wrists, pressing her palms directly toward the pulsing black glass of the Eclipse Mirror.
"I have let you fall once," Orion said, his voice steadying with a sudden, fierce resolve. "I will not let you fall again. Do it."
Lysenne closed her eyes, letting out a long, shuddering breath, and plunged her bare hands straight into the center of the Eclipse Mirror.
The reaction was instantaneous and cataclysmic. A blinding flash of silver and obsidian light erupted from the glass, filling the chamber with a shockwave that blew out every window and tore the heavy silk tapestries from the walls. Lysenne screamed—a sound of pure, unadulterated agony—as the freezing void rushed up her arms, stripping away the last remnants of her illusionary glamour, turning her veins into rivers of liquid ice.
Orion gritted his teeth, his own hands locking around hers inside the freezing perimeter of the glass. The cold surged into his flesh, frosting his armor and turning his fingertips numb, but he did not let go. He pulled her forward, anchoring her against the terrible suction of the artifact.
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"Hold fast!" Orion roared against the howling wind.
Inside the mirror, the thousands of trapped voices reached a deafening crescendo—and then, with a sound like a glacier cracking open under the summer sun, the glass fractured from edge to edge.
