Behind the distorted image of my own face, a woman with the white hair appeared. She was standing right behind my reflection, her lips curved into a conniving line.
“Come, Kaelia,” the mirror-ghost whispered.
The air in the small room vanished. The stench of blood and smoke exploded around me, so thick I could taste the rot on my tongue. The lantern light flared a violent, plagued green, and the floor beneath me began to heave like the chest of a dying beast.
My heart gave one final thud against my ribs before the glass shattered inwardly, a void of violet-black shadow rushing out to meet me.
The last thing I felt was the cold, biting grip of those spectral fingers around my throat before the floor rose up to claim me, and I fell headlong into the slaughter.
* * *
I awoke in the center of a battlefield that had no end. Above, the sky was a festering wound of plagued green, choked by roiling clouds that burned a bruised, sickly violet.
Ash fell from the heavens, coating my skin and hair in the ruin of a dying world.
The earth beneath my boots was a graveyard of churned mud and cooling blood, a wasteland marked by the prints of those who had already fallen.
Around me, chaos reigned.
The scream of steel against steel and the shrieks of the dying tore through the air, a symphony of slaughter. Human soldiers fought with warcries, their blades flashing in the diseased light.
Behind them, witches moved like wraiths, their hands wreathed in a translucent white light that twisted the very air into distorted shards.
And beyond the line of men, the Veythar moved. Obsidian smoke curled from their weapons as they carved through the living, their whispers trailing behind them like a thousand restless spirits.
The world was fire and shadow. In every direction I turned, there was only the harvest of souls.
The woman from the washroom stood at the heart of the carnage, her form illuminated by the plague-sky as if theheavens themselves were bowing to her cruelty. Her pale, white-blonde hair whipped around her face in a spectral halo, and her claw-like hands were lifted high toward the churning clouds. Power surged from her in waves.
Behind her, a circle of witches cried out in a haunting unison, their light merging with hers to weave a force so blinding that even the shadows recoiled in fear.
I stood frozen, rooted to the blood-soaked soil. My heart stilled in my chest as I watched her wield a power so deadly. Each pulse of light she sent forth swept across the field, scattering both mortal and Veythar alike like dry leaves in a gale.
Her gaze locked onto mine through the swirl of ash and death, and the world went silent. The blood, the screams, the clash of steel—it all muffled beneath the crushing weight of her eyes. Slowly, with a grace so purposeful it made the blood in my veins turn to ice, she raised her hand toward me.
“They are here,” she said. Her lips curved into a terrible smile. “And they are bringing you to me.”
The earth shuddered. It was a tremor at first, a heartbeat in the stone, and then a violent quake that rippled across the battlefield. Soldiers stumbled into the mud and witches cried out as their spells fractured. Even the Veythar faltered, their dark forms flickering. The sky convulsed, lightning splitting the violet clouds in a jagged display of fury.
“Come, Kaelia.” Her voice deepened, layered with a resonance that sounded like a thousand voices speaking through one throat. “Come and join me.”
The ground split open, jagged fissures tearing through the soil and bleeding that same eerie, green light.
From every direction, the voices rose—the dying soldiers, the screaming witches, the silent Veythar. Their mouths openedin perfect, haunting unison, their words a single command that thundered above the roar of the wind.
“Join her, Kaelia. Join her.”
The chant became a chorus, a haunting song that scraped against the inside of my skull. Their eyes—every pair of eyes on that field—turned upon me. They were empty. They were knowing. They were waiting.
The quake intensified, the fracture in the battlefield traveling beneath my feet. The sky bent lower, the plague clouds descending as if to swallow the world whole. She stretched out her hand, her palm open in a mockery of an invitation, her eyes blazing with an unearthly fire.
“Join me,” she commanded.
“Join her, Kaelia. Join her. Join her.”
The words vibrated in my bones, a song of ruin I could not silence.
The battlefield vanished, the ground collapsing into a void of shadow. The screams of the dying became the choir of the damned, and still, they sang my name until the world exploded in a burst of shadow and light, following me as I fell into the gaping hole.