The desert stretched endlessly before them, a canvas of scorched gold and silent winds. For days, they had traveled by foot and airship, cutting through ancient territories marked only by faded stone spires and bones polished by centuries of sun. Somewhere out there, beneath a forgotten dune, lay the tower Mara had seen in her vision—the place the Third Seal had awakened.
The place the Mirror King wanted her to find.
Their caravan included Adrian, silent and grim as ever; Alric, buried in his scrolls even while walking; and two guards from the Ardent Order—Elira and Cormac—tasked with protecting Mara from everything the Mirror King might throw their way. But even their presence felt like paper shields against the weight of what lay ahead.
"We're close," Alric murmured, lowering his spyglass and pointing toward a depression in the dunes. "I see glyphs—sand-eaten, but unmistakable. That's where we dig."
Mara stepped forward, the wind lifting her hair and stinging her eyes. She felt it even without the spyglass—a pulse in the earth, like a second heartbeat syncing with her own. The crystal in her satchel burned softly, as though whispering encouragement and warning in the same breath.
She descended the dune, each footfall sending sand cascading around her boots. The others followed silently. When they reached the basin, Adrian took the lead, sword unsheathed, eyes scanning the horizon for threats both magical and mundane.
Then they saw it.
Half-buried in the sand was a structure of blackened stone, its surface carved with flowing symbols that shimmered like oil on water. Though worn by time, the tower had not crumbled. It remained tall and crooked, reaching up as if trying to pierce the sky.
Mara approached slowly, drawn like iron to a lodestone. The crystal at her side began to glow brighter with each step. She could feel her blood humming, like the Seal inside her recognized this place—and feared it.
Alric brushed sand from the nearest glyph. "It's the tongue of the Mirror Court. Pre-Reckoning. I can't translate it fully, but this... this is a ward. Meant to keep something in."
"Or keep something out," Adrian said, eyes narrowing.
Mara's hand grazed the stone, and the world shuddered.
---
She was falling.
Not through space, but through memory.
Visions flared around her: figures robed in black and silver, chanting beneath moonlight. A mirror, taller than a cathedral, its surface boiling with trapped faces. A child with silver eyes, chained and weeping inside a chamber of obsidian glass.
And a man.
The Mirror King.
Before the corruption, before the rise.
He stood within the tower, hands pressed to the stone, whispering words Mara couldn't understand but felt deep in her bones. His sorrow was endless. His hunger—deeper still.
Then she saw herself, reflected in the tower walls. Not as she was, but as she might become. Eyes like fire. Veins traced with silver. Wings of blood unfurled behind her.
"Choose," the Mirror King whispered in the vision. "Or be chosen."
Mara gasped and tore herself free of the vision.
The real world returned in a violent rush. She staggered, collapsing into Adrian's arms.
"What did you see?" he asked.
"Memories," she breathed. "But not mine."
---
It took them hours to clear the entrance. Cormac used a runed pickaxe, each strike loosening layers of sandstone without disturbing the glyphs. Finally, they uncovered a stairwell spiraling down into darkness.
No torches were needed.
The moment Mara stepped into the stairwell, the Seal flared to life, casting a pale glow that lit the path.
They descended for what felt like an hour. The air grew colder, thicker, as though every breath had to pass through centuries of silence. The stone around them shifted subtly, the carvings becoming sharper, angrier.
At the bottom, a circular chamber opened up before them. Pillars of dark marble rose like fangs from the floor, surrounding a dais upon which sat a mirror.
It was cracked down the center.
Not broken—merely fractured.
The surface rippled like water, reflecting not their appearances, but versions of themselves.
Mara stared at the reflection.
In the mirror, she stood alone, holding a sword made of light and shadow, eyes burning with fury. The others were gone. The world around her was ash. And on her lips was a smile that didn't feel like hers.
Adrian reached out, but before his hand could touch the mirror, it screamed.
A thousand voices.
One pain.
The chamber shook.
A blast of energy erupted from the mirror's surface, sending them all sprawling. The mirror rippled violently, and a figure stepped through the crack—emerging as though peeling itself from another world.
It was cloaked in a robe of smoke and mirrors, its face hidden, but its presence unmistakable.
A Sentinel.
But not like the ones they had faced before.
This one was ancient. Stronger. Its voice was a chorus of glass shattering.
"You were not meant to come," it hissed. "You disturb the cycle."
Mara stood, drawing on the Seal's energy. "Then the cycle is broken."
The Sentinel raised a hand, and the temperature dropped sharply. Frost crawled across the stones.
Cormac charged, blade in hand, but the Sentinel simply waved—and Cormac froze mid-stride, trapped in a prison of mirrored light. Elira screamed and lunged after him, only to be flung against a pillar with bone-cracking force.
Adrian unleashed a blast of bloodlight, but it barely slowed the creature.
Then Mara stepped forward.
And the crystal in her satchel exploded with light.
---
The power surged through her—not just from the Seal, but from the tower itself. It recognized her. The hybrid line. The last echo of those who built this prison.
She raised her hands.
The mirror trembled.
The Sentinel shrieked, its form fracturing.
"You are a key!" it wailed. "The last lock! You will not—"
Mara clenched her fists.
The mirror erupted in a flare of light.
The Sentinel was consumed, its body drawn back into the mirror's crack, screaming all the while.
When the light faded, the chamber fell silent.
Mara collapsed to her knees, gasping.
Adrian was at her side in an instant.
"You did it," he whispered.
But she wasn't so sure.
---
Later, they gathered in the chamber, Alric kneeling beside the mirror's remains.
"This wasn't the Fourth Seal," he said. "It's a gate. A threshold. But something was binding it. And Mara just... unbound it."
"Meaning?" Adrian asked.
Alric looked at them gravely. "The Fourth Seal isn't here. But now... it knows she is."
Mara stood, every bone in her body aching. "Then we find it before he does."
"But Mara," Elira said weakly from where she sat bandaging her ribs. "What if that's what he wants?"
Mara didn't answer.
Because deep down...
She feared Elira was right.
---
That night, sleep evaded her.
She sat beside the campfire they'd built on the surface, the tower now sealed behind layers of spell and stone. The desert wind had returned, howling like a warning through the dunes.
Adrian joined her without a word.
They sat in silence for a long time, listening to the fire crackle.
Finally, Mara spoke.
"I'm changing."
He looked at her.
"I feel it. In my blood. My bones. The more I use the Seal, the more... I hear him. The Mirror King. It's like I'm not just fighting him. I'm... connected to him."
Adrian didn't respond immediately.
Then he said, "That's what makes you dangerous to him. And to everyone else."
She looked at him sharply.
"Because you might be the only one who can kill him," he continued. "Or the one who takes his place."
Mara shivered.
"I don't want to be anything like him."
Adrian's eyes met hers across the flickering firelight. "Then don't be. Fight it. Use the power—but don't let it use you."
She looked down at her hands. They were trembling again, just slightly. She'd fought a Sentinel, and won. Not with a sword. Not with spells. But with something buried deep inside her that terrified her more than anything else had.
Power without form. Light without shadow. Something that even the Sentinels feared.
She wanted to believe it was good. That she could steer it. That she could save the world with it.
But the image in the mirror haunted her still. That future—standing alone in a dead world, smiling with burning eyes. It hadn't been just a trick. It had been a possibility.
Adrian, ever watchful, reached out and placed a hand on her shoulder. "We'll face whatever's coming. Together."
Mara gave a soft nod, grateful for him in ways she couldn't yet say aloud.
Then, from the edge of the firelight, came Alric's voice.
"I've deciphered more of the glyphs from the tower. You need to hear this."
He was holding a parchment he had scrawled on, ink smudged from sweat and sand.
"It wasn't just a prison. The tower was a beacon. A call to something beneath the surface of the world. The original builders weren't just hiding the Mirror King's power. They were trying to delay something."
"Delay what?" Mara asked.
"The breach," he said. "The Mirror King was never the true origin. He's just... the first to answer. There's something deeper. Older. Something that will come through when all Seven Seals fall."
Mara's blood went cold.
"You're telling me he's just a herald?"
Alric nodded solemnly. "And the more Seals that break, the louder the call becomes."
She stood up, heart pounding. "Then we can't just be finding the Seals. We have to stop them from awakening."
"But the Mirror King's manipulating everything so that you do," Adrian added. "He wants you to unlock them."
"And if I refuse?" she asked, the wind tugging at her cloak.
Alric hesitated. "Then he'll find someone else. Or worse... he'll take your body as the vessel."
Silence fell again, heavier than before.
The wind howled louder. The stars above were sharp and cruel.
Then Mara clenched her jaw and turned toward the northern horizon.
"Where's the next one?"
Alric unrolled another parchment, revealing a constellation map.
"Skellmoor," he said. "Frozen city at the edge of the world. Long abandoned. If the fourth Seal is active, the signs will be there."
Mara's eyes narrowed.
"Then we go before winter swallows it whole."
And with that, the fire hissed low as if in approval. The next path was set.
But as they packed their camp, none of them saw the faint shimmer on the tower wall—an afterimage.
A silhouette of a man.
Watching.
Waiting.
Smiling.
---