Theme: Identity twisted, fate revealed — and the price of power.
The chamber was deathly cold.
Vivi stood alone before a mirror that pulsed like a living wound. Its surface shimmered red — not glass, but blood, caught mid-scream. Ancient runes spiraled around the frame, and though the room was silent, she could hear whispers clawing at her mind.
This wasn't just magic.
This was memory.
Her memory… and someone else's.
She reached out.
Her fingers didn't touch glass. They sank into something deeper — like water, like thought. The mirror grabbed her, yanking her reflection away until she was no longer looking at herself…
But at what she could become.
In the vision:
She stood in a throne room of ash and bone. Her crown was burning. Her eyes were gold, rimmed in flame.
Below her, people bowed.
No they knelt, trembling. Not out of love.
Out of fear.
Beside her stood a figure cloaked in shadows. He wore no face… but she knew him.
Viper.
"Is this who I am?" she whispered to the vision.
The reflection smirked. "This is what you could choose."
Meanwhile, deep in the forest…
Haken stood at the edge of the wilds where no sunlight reached. The beast within him was quiet for the first time in years.
But something else stirred now.
A presence.
He turned — and saw an old woman leaning on a gnarled staff, her eyes milky but sharp.
"You unlocked the gate," she said, voice like dry leaves.
"What gate?"
"To her. To them. The First Flame always burns two paths — one to destroy, one to redeem."
"And which did I open?" he asked.
The woman smiled. "Depends. Are you willing to bleed again?"
Back in the blood mirror…
Vivi stepped forward, past the ash-throne version of herself. Her hands burned, but she didn't flinch.
"No," she said.
The vision of her future narrowed its eyes.
"I won't be this."
The voice around her whispered, "You already are."
Then the fire rose, and
Reality snapped back.
Vivi stumbled away from the mirror, gasping. Her hands smoked. Her eyes were still blue — not gold.
But faintly, ever so faintly, the rune of the flame had appeared behind her iris.
She wasn't free yet.
But she was still herself.
Far beneath the palace…
Viper stood beside the child vessel.
"She saw the mirror?" the child asked.
Viper nodded. "She chose light."
"For now," the child whispered. "But light, too, can blind."