CHAPTER 84: THE MIRROR OATH

Fire and glass bent like breath around him.

The world beyond the door was not a place. Not in the way the monastery or the valley had been. It was weightless, formless—an expanse of shifting reflections, like walking through a storm made of memory and light. Each step echoed twice: once in sound, once in image. But none of the images were Leon.

He walked between versions.

In one pane of sky, he saw himself holding the blade aloft, cloaked in fire, standing alone atop a field of ash. In another, he lay still beneath the ruin of a city, the same blade shattered beside him. In another still, the child stood at his side, hand in his, both of them facing a black sun.

The images moved with him. They shifted when he turned. They rippled when he hesitated.

Elena followed just behind, eyes narrowed, her footsteps measured. "Is this the oath?"

"No," Leon said. "This is the warning."

They came to a bridge. It wasn’t made of stone or wood. It was a thread of light stretched across an impossible height, suspended between two nothings. Beneath it, memory churned like water.

The sentinel walked first.

Leon followed.

Elena hesitated, but when her foot touched the bridge, it held. Still, she gritted her teeth.

Midway across, the voice returned. Not aloud. Inside.

The blade binds.

But binding is not loyalty.

What would you sacrifice to become what you must?

Leon’s grip on the sword tightened. "I already have."

The voice pulsed again. Then give more.

The light-thread flared beneath his feet.

A figure appeared ahead. Not the sentinel. Not Elena.

His mother.

She stood in silence, just as he remembered her the night before she died. Her hands were folded. Her smile was tired.

Elena gasped behind him. "Leon—"

He raised a hand. Not to stop her but to steady himself.

The vision spoke. "You bear too much Leon. Put it down. Come home."

Leon stepped forward. "You’re not her."

"No," it said, voice thinning. "But she’s part of the price."

The bridge beneath him pulsed red.

Elena started forward, but the sentinel blocked her path.

"Let him pass," she snapped.

"He must choose," the sentinel answered.

Leon stood inches from the figure now. It didn’t fade. It waited.

He placed the blade against its chest. "You want my grief. You can have it. But not her. Never her."

The illusion dissolved.

The bridge steadied.

And ahead, a door opened—not of fire or light, but of dark wood and iron.

Leon turned back to Elena. "It’s the final chamber."

"What’s behind it?"

He stepped through.

"The part of me I left behind."

And the door closed.

—

The chamber swallowed sound.

It was not darkness that filled it—but the absence of expectation. Stone gave way to stillness. Time unspooled. There were no walls, only distance. In the centre stood a circle of mirrors, all angled inward toward a single raised platform. Upon it—another version of him. Sitting cross-legged. Waiting.

This Leon wore no cloak. No blade. Just a simple tunic, hands folded over his knees. His eyes were closed. But as the real Leon approached, they opened.

And they were tired.

"You kept me here," the seated Leon said. His voice was flat. Familiar. "Because you were afraid."

Leon didn’t deny it.

"You were the part of me that couldn’t raise a sword. That grieved too long. That asked too many questions."

"And you were the part that stopped asking them."

A silence passed between them.

Elena stepped just into the chamber’s edge. She didn’t speak. She didn’t need to. The mirrors around her shimmered—images of Leon at different points of his journey. A boy holding a wooden blade. A squire kneeling in blood. A man burying a friend.

The seated Leon looked to her, then back to the one standing.

"You never let me say goodbye."

Leon hesitated. Then, quietly: "I couldn’t."

The seated version stood. The two faced each other, breath even. Matched.

"Then do it now. Let the grief pass. Let me go."

Leon reached out, and the two touched palms.

A pulse ran through the chamber. The mirrors cracked—not shattered—like spiderwebs of release. The seated Leon smiled.

"Witness. Not burden. That’s what it meant."

And he vanished.

The platform remained. The sword pulsed in Leon’s grip. And for the first time since the journey began—

It felt light.

—

Light poured from the broken mirrors, not harsh but radiant, like the first sun after a long winter. The chamber brightened slowly, revealing what had once been hidden beneath the haze: etchings on the floor, faint lines connecting the mirrors like constellations drawn in chalk.

They led to a single point—a seal. Embedded in the stone, old and covered in dust. A perfect circle carved with the same thorn-mark now resting on Leon’s palm.

He walked to it, knelt, and pressed his hand against the centre.

The floor responded.

The seal broke.

It didn’t shatter or crumble. It unraveled. Threads of silver light curled upward, spinning into a spiral of runes that hovered above the stone. They shimmered—then sank into Leon’s skin.

He didn’t cry out.

He breathed.

And for a moment, he saw everything:

—The Eye above the world. —The ruin that birthed the child. —The sixth seal breaking. —The blade in his hand plunging into something older than death.

When it passed, he stood slowly.

Elena stepped beside him. She hadn’t spoken, hadn’t interfered. But her eyes were wet.

"Is it done?"

Leon looked down at the mark now glowing faintly in his palm. Then at the mirrors.

"No. But the burden’s different now. It’s no longer mine alone."

He turned, sword still humming with quiet light, and faced the way they’d come.

"Let’s go."

And as they walked, the chamber began to fade.

But not into shadow.

Into dawn.

—

As they passed through the arch once sealed by mirrors, the light receded behind them, taking its whispers with it. The path ahead no longer shimmered—it solidified beneath their feet, stone carved with old names and older vows.

They were not the first to walk it.

But they might be the last.

Elena glanced at him sideways, her voice hushed. "What now?"

Leon didn’t answer immediately. He watched the way ahead—toward the thin thread of horizon that had finally returned.

"Now," he said, "we find the others. We tell them what was buried. And we prepare."

Elena’s fingers brushed his briefly but he didn’t look back.

Behind them, the seal chamber sealed once more.

This time, by choice.