The obsidian spire didn't just sit in the center of the city; it acted as a drain.

  As they moved closer, the oppressive, fractured light of Ashkael’s glass towers began to stretch and warp, pulled toward the black stone like water toward a whirlpool. The air here was colder, smelling of ozone and the dry, stagnant scent of an old tomb. The sound of the glass powder under their boots changed—it was no longer a crunch, but a high-pitched, rhythmic shriek, as if the very ground were begging them to stop.

  Ashaf led the way, his right arm tucked into the crook of his elbow. The green root was no longer just a physical presence; it was a rhythmic throb that felt like a hot needle being driven into his brain every time his heart beat.

  Through the Bond, he felt nothing but a wide, terrifying silence.

  To his left, Guideau walked with a light, airy step. She was humming a tune Ashaf didn’t recognize—a soft, melodic thing that felt entirely out of place in a city of shattered minds. Her face was smooth, the lines of tension and trauma erased as if by a sculptor’s chisel.

  "It's so quiet here," Guideau said, her voice bright and hollow. "Like the world is holding its breath for us. Isn't it lovely, Ashaf?"

  She used his name, but it had no weight. It was just a label she had found in a box.

  "It’s not lovely, Guideau," Ashaf said, his teeth clenched. "It’s a graveyard. Don't touch the walls."

  "Why not? They look like they want to be touched." She reached out a hand toward a shard of black obsidian protruding from a ruined archway.

  Morrigan’s hand shot out, catching Guideau’s wrist. The beast-woman’s fingers were covered in coarse, dark fur now, the iron chains around her arm fused into the meat. Her amber eyes were bloodshot, pupils pin-pricked with a primal terror.

  "Don't," Morrigan growled, her voice a wet, guttural rasp. "The stone is hungry. I can hear it licking its lips."

  Guideau didn't pull away. She just smiled at Morrigan—a sweet, vacant smile that made the beast-woman flinch. "You’re so loud, Morrigan. All that growling. You should let the Master take the noise away. It’s much nicer when it’s empty."

  Morrigan let go as if burned. She looked at Ashaf, a silent plea in her eyes. Kill her, the look said. Or kill me.

  They stopped to rest in the lee of a collapsed amphitheater. Reina slumped against a pile of rubble, her hands shaking so violently she could barely hold her water skin. She hadn't spoken since the light had shattered. She spent her time staring at the silver coins she held in her palms, her lips moving in a silent, frantic prayer to the logic that had already abandoned her.

  "We leave in ten minutes," Ashaf said, though his own legs felt like they were made of lead.

  Guideau leaned her head against a slab of obsidian and closed her eyes. Within seconds, her breathing slowed.

  She was in a room with no windows.

  The floor was made of cold, polished marble, and the air smelled of lilies and lye. She was small—smaller than she remembered being. She was wearing a white dress that was too tight around her chest, making it hard to breathe.

  A man was standing over her. He didn't have a face, only a blur of light where his features should be. He was holding a needle. It wasn't a sewing needle; it was a long, thin spike of bone, and it was threaded with a strand of shimmering, red silk.

  "Keep still, little bird," the man whispered. The voice wasn't Ashkael’s. It was older. Deeper. It was a voice from a life she had forgotten. "We have to fix the leaks. You’re letting too much of the world inside."

  He pressed the bone spike into her shoulder.

  She didn't scream. She couldn't. Her mouth had already been stitched shut with the same red silk. She felt the needle grate against her collarbone, the sound echoing inside her head like a shovel hitting stone. He pulled the thread through, and she felt her arm grow heavy—not with muscle, but with the weight of the silk.

  "One for the fear," the man murmured, pushing the needle into her thigh. "One for the hope. And one for the part of you that thinks you’re a girl."

  He worked with a clinical, unhurried pace. He was turning her into a quilt. He was sewing her skin to her soul so tightly that there was no room left for her to move. Every stitch was a memory being pinned down, flattened, and dried.

  She looked down and saw her hands. They were no longer flesh. They were made of porcelain, cracked and stained with the red thread.

  "There," the man said, leaning back. "Now you’re a weapon. Weapons don't need to breathe. They just need to wait."

  He reached out and touched her cheek. His fingers felt like ice.

  "But remember, little bird... if you ever try to unpick the thread, the whole world will come apart with you."

  Guideau’s eyes snapped open.

  She didn't gasp. She didn't jump. She simply sat up and looked at her hands. They were flesh and bone, covered in the fine white dust of the glass city.

  "Did you sleep?" Ashaf asked, standing over her. He was watching her closely, his eyes searching for a flicker of the girl who used to tease him.

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  "I had a dream," Guideau said, her voice regaining that pleasant, terrifying neutrality. "I think I was a doll. It was very pretty. There was so much red."

  Ashaf felt a spike of ice-cold dread through the Bond. It wasn't a message, just a momentary ripple in the vacuum—a ghost of the pain she had felt in the dream.

  "What kind of red?" he asked.

  "The kind that stays," she said. She stood up, brushing the glass dust from her trousers. "Are we going to the tower now? I want to see the Master again. I think he forgot to finish the hem."

  Ashaf turned away, his stomach knotting. He looked at Reina and Morrigan. Reina was now pressing the silver coins against her eyelids, her fingers digging in. Morrigan was chewing on her own lip until it bled, the beast-side of her face twitching in a rhythmic, hideous palsy.

  "Move," Ashaf commanded.

  The entrance to the Cathedral of Reflection was not a door, but a vertical slit in the obsidian. As they stepped inside, the light of the city vanished completely.

  The darkness here was absolute. It wasn't just the absence of light; it was a physical weight. Ashaf felt it pressing against his skin, his lungs, his eyes. He reached out to touch a wall, and his hand sank into something that felt like cold, wet silk.

  "Ashaf?" Reina’s voice came from somewhere to his right. She sounded small. Like a child lost in a closet.

  "I'm here. Stay close. Hold onto the person in front of you."

  He felt a hand grab the back of his coat. It was Morrigan. Then another hand caught Morrigan’s—Reina. And finally, a light, almost weightless touch on Reina’s shoulder—Guideau.

  They moved through the dark, guided only by the rhythmic throb of the root in Ashaf’s arm. The Cathedral didn't have floors or ceilings; it felt like they were walking across the surface of a giant, frozen lung. Every few steps, the ground would give a soft, wet squelch, and the air would sigh with a sound like a dying man’s last breath.

  "He's here," Guideau whispered. Her voice carried a strange, melodic resonance in the dark. "He's sitting on the ceiling. He's looking at the way our hearts beat. He thinks yours is very loud, Ashaf. Like a drum in a library."

  "Shut up, Guideau," Ashaf hissed.

  A single spark of light appeared in the distance.

  It wasn't a torch or a candle. It was a pinprick of pure, silver light, suspended in the void. As they walked toward it, the light began to expand, revealing the true scale of the Cathedral.

  It was a hollowed-out mountain of glass. But the glass wasn't on the walls. It was suspended in the air—millions of shards, ranging from the size of a fingernail to the size of a house, all floating in a slow, silent orbit.

  And every shard showed a different moment in time.

  Ashaf saw himself as a student, hunched over a desk. He saw the bird he had dissected, its tiny heart still twitching in his memory. He saw Guideau the day he had found her—bloody, snarling, and more alive than she had ever been.

  "Welcome to the Hall of Eternal Seconds," a voice said.

  It didn't come from the air. It came from the shards. A million voices, perfectly synchronized, speaking through a million different reflections.

  Ashkael was standing in the center of the orbit. He wasn't a man of mercury anymore. He was a pillar of black glass, his surface etched with the faces of everyone who had ever died in his city.

  "You're late, Untouched," the God said. The faces on his surface moved their lips in unison. "The Weaver is already starting to fray. I had hoped you would be here to see the final thread pulled."

  "Let them go," Ashaf said. He stepped forward, his right arm beginning to glow with a sickly, neon-green light. The root was frantic now, lashing out beneath his skin like a trapped snake.

  "Why? They're finally becoming beautiful," Ashkael said. He gestured toward Reina.

  Reina let out a choked sound. She was staring at a shard floating just inches from her face. Inside the shard, she saw her father. He was holding a book, his face filled with a cold, academic disappointment.

  "You were never enough, Reina," the reflection said. The voice was hers, but the words were his. "All that logic. All those maps. You were just trying to find a way back to a room that never existed."

  Reina’s hands went to her throat. She began to scratch, her nails tearing through the skin, trying to find the "logic" buried in her windpipe.

  "And the beast," Ashkael turned his gaze to Morrigan. "So much effort spent pretending to be a woman. So much iron used to keep the animal in the cage. Don't you want to be free, Morrigan? Don't you want to stop hurting?"

  Inside a house-sized shard, Morrigan saw herself. But she wasn't a beast. She was a mother. She was holding a child, her hands soft and clean of blood. The image was so beautiful it was a physical blow.

  Morrigan fell to her knees, her iron chains finally snapping. They didn't break; they melted, the metal flowing into the glass floor like liquid tears. She let out a howl—not of rage, but of pure, shattered grief.

  "Stop it!" Ashaf roared.

  He didn't use a knife. He didn't use a spell. He reached out with his right hand and grabbed the air itself.

  Through the Bond, he didn't just feel Guideau anymore. He felt the entire Cathedral. He felt the orbit of the shards. He felt the God’s own ego, spread thin across a million reflections.

  He closed his eyes and thought of the bird.

  He didn't think of the beauty of its flight. He thought of the gristle. He thought of the way the skin peeled back from the muscle. He thought of the cold, dead reality of the meat.

  He projected that reality into the Bond.

  The Cathedral shuddered. The floating shards began to vibrate, a low, grinding sound that filled the void. The images of Reina’s father and Morrigan’s child began to rot. Their skin turned gray, their eyes clouded over, and their voices turned into the wet, gurgling sound of a corpse.

  "You ruin everything," Ashkael hissed, his glass surface cracking. "You are the rot in the mirror, Ashaf. You are the smudge on the perfection."

  "I am the truth," Ashaf said, his voice dropping into a register that made his own throat bleed. "And the truth is that you’re just a man who grew too many eyes."

  Ashaf lunged forward, his hand aimed at the God’s center.

  But as he moved, he felt a sharp, sudden pain in his back.

  He looked down. A shard of clear glass was protruding from his chest. It hadn't come from the air. It had come from behind him.

  He turned his head, his vision spotting with black.

  Guideau was standing there. Her hand was still extended, her fingers wrapped around the hilt of the glass blade. Her face was still pleasant. Still sweet.

  "The Master said you were the last knot, Ashaf," she whispered. Her eyes were perfect, clear blue pools of nothing. "And I really wanted to see what you looked like when you were unpicked."

  Ashaf fell to his knees, the black ichor from his hand mixing with the red blood from his chest.

  In the reflection of the glass floor, he saw his own face. But he wasn't dying. He was smiling.

  And behind his reflection, a hundred featherless crows were beginning to feast.