Book One – Chapter 2

He paced, his steps echoing his mounting anxiety, each stride propelling him deeper into the heart of uncertainty while his much too rich imagination painted unsettling scenarios of their next encounter. The contemplation swirled in his mind, a vortex of questions, doubt, and the frisson of fear.

As the minutes bled into each other, Yves’ restlessness found him drawn before the witch mother crystal half ball. He settled at the timeworn wooden table, his eyes locked onto the reflective surface. His own image looked back at him, the hollow stare of a non-Transcender ensnared by the tendrils of instinctual foreboding. It was a phantom whisper. Was he, to the dimension of shards, not a spectator but an intruder, an anomaly disturbing and disrupting sentient existences in that world?

Yves looked away from the crystal half ball.

No.

He covered the crystal half ball with a piece of cloth.

Clearly, it was a wizard who had addressed him.

He turned the first of his mirrors face-down on the table.

That was the only logical explanation.

He turned the second mirror face-down.

It was obviously a wizard who had spoken to him.

He placed his cloak atop all three artefacts.

The voice he had heard was not some supernatural echo, nor a stray entity. No, it had been that of a wizard. Very unmistakably.

He moved away from the table.

If indeed someone else had mastered the art of crafting ethereal mirrors, it had to be a wizard with intimate access to the academy’s safeguarded underground troves of arcane wisdom, most likely a tutor or erudite sage of the most exalted order. For Yves to create and achieve control over the ethereal mirrors just a few years after nearly completing his academy curriculum was a triumph, but it also signalled the potential for more seasoned wizard to achieve an even grander mastery. If Yves could collect all components to craft the mirrors within a few years, so could a multitude of tutors and scholars who had access to all of the academy’s vast collection of artefacts and resources. If he managed to create the ethereal mirrors at the mere age of twenty-one, so could those wizards who had mastered their skills long before he was even born. And if he had learned to traverse the mirror plane consciously in just three years of unguided practice and exploration, there was no telling what a luminary could do after thirty.