Serelith wandered the Wyrmroot wastes with the Codex's ink still burning along her skin. The words had ceased to move, but she knew they were still alive — whispering into her blood, awakening parts of her that had been silent since birth.
Sleep no longer came easily. When it did, she dreamed of cities that bled stars and gods with faces carved from bone and memory.
She crossed a forgotten river made of mercury. On its bank stood a man of mirrors.
No — not a man. A thing that wore reflections like armor. His body shimmered with a thousand surfaces, each one showing a version of her: laughing, dying, aging, killing, kneeling before a throne of shadows.
"You've touched the Codex."
His voice echoed inside her skull, bypassing her ears entirely. It was beautiful — and wrong. Like a song sung backward.
She raised her hand. "Who are you?"
"I am what the gods could not kill. I am the god they buried in glass — the one who sees."
"You're a god."
"No. I am the ghost of what gods become when they lie to themselves."
His mirrored face shifted, and one reflection held steady — her, wrapped in thorns, crowned in flame.
"You carry a wound that does not belong to you, Serelith. But it remembers you."
She stepped forward. "Tell me what I am."
"You are the child of two silences: the one before the first word, and the one after the last scream."
She didn't understand. Not all of it. But the words settled in her bones like prophecy.
Then the mirrored god raised a hand, and the air between them rippled. A portal opened — not to another place, but to another truth.
Inside, she saw a chamber of stone and gold. Seven thrones — all empty. On the floor, the symbol of the First Tongue — broken in half.
"The gods were not divided by power," the being said, "but by fear. Of this language. Of what it could make them see."
She stepped into the vision. Pain lanced through her, but she did not scream.
Each throne bore a sigil: flame, root, blade, eye, wing, chain… and one blank. Erased. Forgotten.
She turned to the mirrored god. "Which throne was yours?"
He smiled with all her stolen faces.
"The empty one."
Then he vanished, and the glass river turned to smoke.
Serelith stood alone once more — but she knew now that the gods feared her. Not for what she was, but for what she could become.
And somewhere beyond the veil of stars, something had awakened… and begun to move toward her.