The forest twisted around them like a bad memory. After leaving the mapmaker, Rose, Basil, and Nimbus followed the thread the coin revealed—only visible when held to moonlight and whispered to. It glowed a faint blue and tugged them into stranger and darker places with each step.
"We're not walking through time," Rose muttered. "We're trespassing."
Nimbus hovered above her head. "Everything smells like regret and cinnamon. Why is that comforting?"
Basil walked beside her, sword sheathed but ready. "I can feel her ahead. The one the mapmaker warned us about."
"Other me?" Rose asked.
He nodded grimly.
They entered a clearing shaped like a cracked mirror. Seven stone arches circled a reflective pool in the center. From the pool rose a girl with Rose's face—but her eyes were silver, and her smile was all wrong.
"Well," the Echo Queen said, stepping onto the stone with barefoot grace, "I was wondering when I'd meet the version of me that hesitated."
Rose's fingers twitched, magic sparking at her fingertips. "And I was wondering what I'd look like if I never got therapy."
Echo Rose laughed. It was sharp, cold, too precise. "You cling to jokes because you're afraid of your power. I embraced mine. Mortain showed me the truth—we're storms pretending to be girls."
Basil stepped forward. "You're not her."
The Echo's smile widened. "But I could be. In a thousand worlds, I am. And in most of them… you're mine."
Rose felt her breath hitch. The way Echo Rose looked at Basil was too familiar. Like something buried and half-forgotten.
"I don't need your approval," Rose said, fire building in her palms. "Or your reflection."
The Echo raised a hand and the pool rose like a serpent, coiling above them. "You need a mirror, dear. To see what happens when you stop pretending to be small."
The water lashed toward them.
Rose reacted on instinct, flinging her magic into the air. The ring on her finger flared, absorbing the hit. Basil dashed forward, striking the serpent's base with a clean, brutal arc of his blade.
Nimbus screamed, "DUCK!" as a second lash came from behind.
Rose rolled, dodging just in time. "This is so overdramatic!"
Echo Rose hovered now, a storm of mirror-shards circling her. "Mortain wants you alive—for now. But I'd love to see what happens if that changes."
Rose met her gaze, steady. "You're not the only storm here."
She hurled lightning—not wild, but shaped, formed into a circle of runes that bound the shards mid-air. The storm froze, just long enough.
Basil grabbed Rose's hand. "Now!"
Together, they channeled their energy through the ring, which pulsed like a beating heart. The spell shattered, mirror shards flying in all directions—except back into the Echo.
She vanished, her final words lingering like smoke:
"You can't outrun yourself forever."
The pool stilled.
Nimbus landed with a wheeze. "That was horrifying. And oddly motivational."
Rose looked at her reflection. It stared back, cracked but whole.
"I'm not her," she whispered. "And I never will be."