The walls groaned around us. Dust sifted from the mortar and the iron bars shivered in their sockets with a long metallic whine. Even the silver circlet locked around my wrists hummed faintly, vibrating against my skin.
The guard stumbled back, his hand flying instinctively to the hilt of his sword, eyes wide and searching as he stared into the gloom of the corridor.
From the gap in the masonry, I heard Meliory’s breath hitch.
“Look,” he whispered, hoarsely.
I turned toward the narrow window.
For a moment I thought the glass had cracked.
Light shimmered across its surface in a pale ripple, distorting the reflection of the prison walls. The distortion spread outward like a drop of ink falling into water.
Then the reflection changed and a figure stood within the glass.
Not just the glass.
The same image flickered across every surface I could see.
It glowed faintly within the puddles pooled along the corridor floor. It shimmered across the polished silver of the guards’ armor. Even the distant river beyond the prison walls caught the light, its dark waters suddenly burning with a reflection that had not existed a moment before.
The world itself had become a mirror.
And within every one of those mirrors, Talon stood.
The guards lurched toward the window,.
“What sorcery is this?” one breathed.
Beyond the prison walls, the image towered over the city.
An entire city watching.
An entire world forced to listen.
The wind tore at Talon’s dark cloak, the fabric snapping behind him like a war banner caught in a rising storm. Xylos stood at his right, Bater at his left, both rigid with a tension that seemed to hum through the air around them.
But it was Talon who held the world still.
Even through the warped shimmer of water and glass, there was no mistaking the cold certainty in his gaze as it lifted, as if he were looking directly at every soul forced to witness him.
“This message comes to you from the depths of Umbral,” he said, his voice rolling outward like distant thunder. “For centuries, we have kept a silence you did not deserve. Today, that silence ends.”
The guards beside the window shifted uneasily.
“The High Court has fed you lies,” Talon continued. “They buried the truth of binding beneath silence. They twisted the laws of this realm and named it peace.”
My fingers curled slowly around the iron bars.
“And while you believed them…”
The pause stretched just long enough for dread to coil tight beneath my ribs.
“They took the one person they should never have touched.”
I stopped breathing.
His face was calm, but the fire in his eyes was anything but.