The explosion of silver light didn't burn — it unmade.
Aelira's memories were torn from her like threads unraveling a tapestry. She screamed as faces blurred, names twisted, and the line between Seraiya and Aelira fractured.
She stood in a void of endless reflections — not glass, not light, but soul.
This was the Mirror Vault.
The place she once created to hide the truth of herself.The prison of the Fifth Husband.And now… the place she could no longer escape.
Reflections surrounded her — hundreds of hers. Some wore crowns. Some wore blood. One knelt, one wept, one laughed like a goddess gone mad.
And all of them whispered:
"Choose."
Outside the vault, the battle raged.
Ashar's flames carved through Thorn knights like wildfire.Kaelen, bleeding from the shoulder, cast ward after ward to protect them.Theron fought with blades that blurred from sheer speed.
But it was Riven who reached the gate.
Black crystal. Pulsing. Alive.
He touched it, and the voice nearly broke him.
"Don't come."
It was Aelira.
"If you see what I buried… you won't love me anymore."
Riven rested his forehead against the crystal. "Then let me hate you at your side."
The crystal cracked.
Inside, Aelira turned slowly as the Fifth Husband approached.
He was quiet. Still. Dressed in royal robes of twilight silk. His eyes shimmered with betrayal — not rage.
"You sealed me in here," he said, voice calm. "Said it was for my own good."
"You were becoming something dangerous," she whispered.
"I was everything you made me to be."
His hand lifted, and a mirror bloomed from the air — one showing a moment in her past.
A battlefield.A throne made of bodies.And Seraiya — smiling, soaked in gold and gore.
Aelira closed her eyes.
"I didn't want to be her anymore."
He stepped closer. "Then stop wearing her crown."
She trembled. "I didn't ask for this."
"You asked for power."
Another mirror formed.
This one showed her laughing with Riven under the moon. Blushing. Human.
The husband touched it — and it shattered.
"Do you think love can cleanse what you are?"
"I don't know," she whispered. "But I want to try."
Silence.
Then:"Then try it outside."
He shoved her toward the boundary.
And took her place.
The Vault flared with white fire.
The others pulled back, covering their eyes.
And Aelira fell forward — out of the portal, gasping, alive, changed.
Ashar caught her.
"Aelira," he breathed. "What happened?"
She looked at them. At all of them.
And for the first time, her voice didn't tremble.
"I chose not to be her."
Behind her, the Vault began to seal.
But inside… the Fifth Husband remained.
Smiling.
Waiting.