Book One – Chapter 3

What slowed Yves’s step was the singular straight path of broken nets that led directly from the mirror past him and further along to the tunnel entry. With no fractured creature in sight, Yves wondered if he had been equally restricted in his old form as these creatures were. Was this why moving had been so strenuous before and now, after his transformation, felt so light? Did his pursuer simply stalk him by following the obvious broken nets of light that Yves had left behind? Also, if Yves could pass through the light nets after absorbing mirror world energy but not with the outerdimensional energies from his own plane that had comprised his first original form, what did that make the fractured creatures?

Reaching his mirror, Yves focused on the here and now. He had sealed off the tunnel and only left traces within the clearing. With that, it should not be able to track him. Stepping onto the mirror, he placed the crystal half ball in the socket at the centre and began the ritual to exit the mirror world. However, he stopped abruptly and stared.

Now close to the all-encompassing wave-barrier, he recognised distinct patterns in the dark grey surfaces that were, in his plane, the ocean. There was no passage like the one he just closed and in all the times when he had entered the mirror plane from the lighthouse, he had never seen anything but the impenetrable grey matter. But, straining his second sight, Yves now recognised lighter patches that hinted at passages or even an open clearing amidst the barrier, far, far away and then again much further in the distance, where there should be nothing but ocean in his reality. Yves looked around, but the patches seemed to be distinctly concentrated in one area only.

He was intrigued, but he did not dare to dwell on this observation. He had already placed his crystal half ball on the mirror, which put him in a most vulnerable position. He was too cautious to delay his departure any further and began his incantation anew. The mirror’s light began to fade, losing its soft white light, and Yves felt a tingling sensation in his feet.

And then his mirror cracked.