Book One – Chapter 3

Yves froze.

It was the faintest of sounds, barely audible amidst the everlasting noise of rushing sand and mechanical clicking, but to Yves, who had heard thousands of mirrors break during his lifetime, it was unmistakeable. It was the most dreadful sound.

Looking down without moving or shifting his weight, he observed how his faint shadow flickered across the mirror, but could not recognise any distortions in the glass. Yves looked back up, looked around intently, and then carefully stepped down from the mirror. He bent down to examine the glass closely. There it was. Edged in the smooth surface was the faintest of hairline fractures.

This should not have happened. This mirror was extraordinary, designed for ethereal travel. His ritual had been flawless. He had executed his spell precisely, as he had done countless times before, and yet he was looking at a breach in the unbreakable. Was it his new form that had caused this? Had the infusion of mirror world energies, as opposed to his native plane’s energy, caused this damage? Had it altered the spell itself? Would the mirror shatter again if he attempted another crossing? Oh gods, why did he know fucking nothing about otherworldly energies?

Yves broke the emerging downward spiral of petty and panic before it could trap him in a labyrinth of his own ignorance, and forced himself into meditation. He kept his eyes open.

Could he reverse his transformation by depleting the mirror world energies within him? Would that leave him with enough of his original energy to sustain his existence? And atop of that, would he have enough left for his ritual? Or would this reckless act of expelling the vast majority of his energy just invite another torrent of mirror world energy, either further distorting his being or shattering his form and existence?

As he knelt and stared, both inwards and outwards, he suddenly recognised faint ripples of light and dark greys atop the mirror’s surface. Had it always done that and he just never saw, or was this the mirror breaking right before his eyes? Alarmed, he dislocated the crystal half ball from its socket, upon which all erratic movement stopped.