The Mirror wasn't caged.

It was in transit.

Dr. Grimm had captured it. That part had gone according to plan – barely. Soulsteel bindings, triple-fold seals, and a suppression rune matrix meant to collapse the creature's psychic field to near silence. It had taken the full force of Alpha and Omega to get it into the transfer pod – and even then, only just.

Now the pod hissed through the corridor rails beneath the Burrow, en route to the Containment Sector. What remained of the old surgical wing was behind them. Ahead: the reinforced chamber designed to hold Category Theta entities.

Or so they thought.

Inside the pod, The Mirror shifted.

Its body was shapeless now – not even a reflection, just a shimmer behind polarized glass. But something pulsed at its centre. A hum. A heartbeat. Not of life – of memory. Every flicker in its form was a face. A scream. A name.

Dan, Alyssa, Adisa, Grimm—

Chloe.

The pod lights flickered.

Not like a power surge. Like something had blinked from the inside.

Then came the first fracture – hair-thin, almost imperceptible – racing up the far panel of the soulglass like a crack running through antique mirror.

The containment alarms hadn't even finished initializing before everything went wrong.

The pod doors blew out in a flash of white light.

Part of The Mirror erupted upward in a spiral of fractured forms – Chloe's face, Dan's voice, Liz's laugh – a tendril smashed into the hallway ceiling before slipping through the cracks like vapor. Not running. Escaping.

Alyssa turned, too fast—

Too late.

And that's when it struck her.

The feedback hit her like a silent explosion – a ripple of psychic noise that blew straight through her skull. She collapsed mid-breath, her eyes rolling back. A thin stream of blood ran from her nose and ears as she crumpled to the floor, unmoving.

"Alyssa!" Dan shouted, lunging to catch her.

She hit the metal with a sickening thud, her body twitching once before going slack. Her pulse was weak but present. Her chest moved, barely.

Across the chamber, the lights strobed, then steadied – not from a power surge, but from a psychic discharge so dense it warped electricity.

Dan knelt over Alyssa, hands glowing faintly gold. His fingers hovered, then pressed over her sternum as he began to channel every ounce of light he could muster. Her skin felt like ice.

Across the room, wedged between a console and the bulkhead – Dr. Adisa winced. She was propped against a half-collapsed console, one leg bent at the wrong angle and her coat dark with blood. Her left wrist was clearly broken, twisted with bone swelling against the skin.

She grit her teeth and hissed, "It's destabilizing."

Dan didn't answer. He was too focused. His palms glowed brighter.

The Mirror thrashed again inside the prism. Not violently – cleverly. Every movement was now calculated, precisely measured against the failing glyphs. One face flickered into view – Chloe. Then Ferron. Max. Liz. Each one distorted at the edges, like memory turned hostile.

A single syllable rang out from within the prism: "See—"

A nearby monitor exploded.

Dan flinched.

Another crack raced up the soulglass. The room hummed like the moment before a building collapses.

And then footsteps echoed down the hall.

Dr. Grimm stepped into view.

He moved calmly but briskly, flanked by Alpha and Omega. His coat was open, revealing layered soulsteel plates underneath. A sheaf of containment runes hovered in one hand. His expression was focused – not afraid. Calculating.

The Mirror flickered once – just once – when it sensed him.

Adisa looked up, wincing. "Containment's failing."

"I know," Grimm said.

Dan shot him a glare. "Then help!"

Grimm didn't stop moving. "The Mirror is breaching upward. It's bypassing standard containment. This level is lost. I'm initiating fallback protocols. Site B will activate."

Adisa spat blood. "You're evacuating?"

"I'm repositioning," Grimm said firmly. "We're not losing the Institute. But if this reaches the surface—"

Dan growled, "Alyssa's dying!"

Grimm looked at her for one breath. Then nodded once.

"You stay," he said. "You're the best shot she has."

Dan blinked.

Adisa's voice cracked. "You're not abandoning us?"

Grimm's gaze snapped to her. Cold. Sharp.

"I never abandon assets," he said. "I preserve them."

Alpha stepped to the door, scanning.

Omega waited behind Grimm like a loaded hammer.

Grimm turned to Dan.

"Keep her alive. Containment's breached, but The Mirror hasn't escaped yet. If it hits the launch bay—" He didn't finish.

Dan nodded tightly. "I'll handle it."

Grimm turned to Alpha and Omega. "Initiate Site B fallback. I want the secondary command node online in five."

They vanished into the corridor.

…………………

The corridor was chaos.

Glass fragments littered the floor like powdered starlight. Warning klaxons screamed across the Burrow's upper levels. The reinforced hallway where The Mirror's transport pod had ruptured was already sealed behind heavy blast doors, but Chloe wasn't behind them.

She was ahead of it.

The moment she felt the pressure shift – the instant the air turned metallic and the glyphs on the floor began flickering – she ran.

Or rather, she moved.

Chloe didn't crash through the door. She stepped through it, her body flickering as her molecules lost interest in solidity. The walls of the Burrow, dense with rune-circuitry and layered alloys, offered no resistance to her phasing stride. She passed through steel and concrete like a ghost through fog.

Her hand drifted to her hip – to the blade Ferron had forged for her, bound to her intent. Tensō. It shifted with her thoughts, a shape-changer, a soul-bound weapon. She hadn't drawn it since the training chamber.

But this wasn't training anymore.

Behind her, The Mirror screamed.

Not out loud but across surfaces. A psychic pulse that brushed everything with horror. Faces appeared in shattered consoles, eyes wide with madness. The containment alarms began to fail one by one, blinking into null values. The Institute's defences were reacting too slow – half a second behind a demon that had adapted.

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But Chloe wasn't behind.

She could feel it.

Not The Mirror itself, but the gap in the world it left behind. The pressure drop in the hallway. The flicker of its shadow in a camera lens. It wasn't fleeing randomly – it was heading up.

Toward the surface.

Toward the hangar bay.

Chloe grit her teeth and phased again – leaping forward through a junction wall into the lower flight deck corridor. Her boots hit the floor in a sprint. Her shadow warped behind her, half-phased, flickering with instability. But her resolve didn't waver.

She was the only one who could keep up.

Dan was with Alyssa. Adisa was out. Grimm was gone.

That left her.

The Mirror hit the deck one level above. Chloe could feel the spatial pressure ripple across the upper corridor – like a thought made solid. It wasn't attacking anything now. It was accelerating. Cracking open bulkheads, slipping through gaps in glyph-locks, riding light like water through a pipe.

She turned sharply – and phased straight through the ceiling.

The world bled sideways for a moment as she passed into the upper tier, rising into a hangar bathed in orange emergency lighting.

And there it was.

The Mirror stood at the edge of the launch bay, body unfixed – made entirely of half-formed shapes and distorted memories. One arm stretched backward, dragging broken reflections behind it like wounded ghosts. The rest of it shimmered like someone had broken a screen mid-render.

It was trying to open the exit bay doors.

Beyond them: the surface.

Beyond that: the world.

"Hey," Chloe said aloud.

The Mirror twisted.

Hundreds of eyes snapped open across its body – every one of them hers.

"I'm still here," she said, voice low, even. "And I'm not scared of you anymore."

The Mirror lunged.

Chloe didn't phase.

She stepped forward.

Solid.

The demon hit her like a collapsing memory.

And the battle began.

…………………

The Mirror's limbs struck like broken thoughts – fast, jagged, disjointed. One came low. One came from above. A third slithered out from behind, aiming for Chloe's spine.

She phased.

Not fully. Just enough. The back of her body flickered into mist as the tendril passed through her – harmless – before she rematerialized and ducked low. Her hand caught the floor for balance. The moment her palm touched metal, she launched herself forward again.

She didn't fight like a soldier.

She fought like an interruption.

Every step was a miscalculation for The Mirror. Chloe slipped through attacks, flowed through its projections, dodged around hooks made of her own nightmares. At one point it tried to collapse the light around her, folding her in with a wave of mirrored reflections — a thousand copies of herself, each screaming. But she ran through them.

She had screamed enough.

"You don't get to be me," she spat, sliding under one of its limbs and kicking off a wall.

The Mirror lunged again. Its arm twisted into Ferron's blade. Then into Max's chain. Then into Alyssa's bleeding face.

A face flickered in the mirror. Not Max. Not Liz. Her mother – smiling through tears, mouthing something Chloe couldn't hear.

Her knee buckled. Just for a second. But it was enough to remind her who she was fighting for.

The Mirror loomed before her – no longer fleeing, but uncoiling. Its shape had ballooned into a twisted storm of distorted faces and mimicry. Liz's mouth. Max's eyes. Alyssa's scream.

And Chloe's own silhouette – hanging just behind its shifting veil, like a mockery still deciding how to wear her.

She clenched her jaw and stepped forward.

In her hand: the blade.

Ferron had called it "Tensō." Forged with her thoughts. Tempered in soulfire. Bound not to her will, but to her intent. A short sword by default, sleek and simple but with a living core that pulsed with red-black metal and shifted its edge on command. Spear. Knife. Sword.

She inhaled, then phased – ghosting ten feet to the left, dodging a tendril of reflection that carved through a crate like water through silk.

The blade lengthened as she landed, extending into a polearm. The weight shifted in her hand mid-motion – and she drove it forward.

The Mirror recoiled.

A shriek split the air – not sound, but echo – a feedback loop of every scream it had ever absorbed. Chloe's ears bled. She ghosted again.

This time behind it.

Slice.

She slashed low – not deep enough to sever, but enough to split off a piece of its shimmer. The Mirror turned, fast – too fast but she was already gone.

Another phase. Another strike.

Now the blade retracted, shrinking to a narrow dagger as she slipped between two moving limbs. She jabbed upward, aiming for the core.

She missed – barely.

The Mirror twisted mid-air, and a wave of mimicry slammed into her side. She screamed – real this time – as fractured images smashed into her mind: Alyssa's laugh, Dan's grief, her mother's smile.

But she held on.

She rolled under the wave, gritted her teeth, and let Tensō reshape into its sword form – balanced, familiar, made for this.

She fought like she trained.

Not stronger. Smarter.

She didn't try to overpower it. She outmanoeuvred it – timing each phase to match its movements, striking only when the core was exposed, and vanishing before it could trap her in its echo shell.

Phase. Lunge. Withdraw.

The blade became a spear again – arcing in a wide, spinning slash that severed one of the Mirror's projection limbs. It shrieked. Tried to envelop her.

She dropped low, knees bending as she ghosted through the floor itself, reappearing behind a cracked bulkhead.

Her heart pounded.

Don't think. Move.

The Mirror came for her in a blur of mirrored fragments.

She stepped forward to meet it — and this time, the sword in her hand sang.

She swung in a wide arc. The edge glowed crimson-black, humming with stored intent. It sliced through reflection and lie — and for a moment, Chloe saw the true shape inside:

A wound.

That's what it was.

Not a creature.

A wound wearing skin.

She screamed as she struck again – a final slash, diagonal, chest to core.

And Tensō broke through.

The Mirror cracked open – not like glass, but like memory splitting. A storm of soul-ash exploded outward, a vortex of burning fragments and mimicry shattered.

Not fire but sound and soul. A psychic detonation, raw and unfiltered. The glyphs around the launch bay shattered like eggshells. The wall behind Chloe fractured outward – a spiderweb of broken alloy and crumbling sigils.

The containment shield snapped offline.

The far hangar doors ruptured.

A pressure wave burst out across the room, flattening crates, hurling debris like shrapnel. Chloe was thrown backward – mid-phase – and slammed into the far wall, her body half-stuck in solid steel for half a second before she dropped to the floor in a heap.

The launch bay exploded.

Light spilled upward – not daylight, but soullight. A dying demon's scream.

Visible from space.

Chloe hit the ground hard – smoke and fragments spinning around her like confetti made of pain. Her fingers clawed at the floor. Her lungs struggled for breath.

Her vision pulsed. Her arms wouldn't respond.

Her breath came in ragged gasps, like her lungs were remembering how to expand.

Something was broken – maybe her ribs. Maybe everything.

But she was alive.

And inside her—

Something pulsed.

A flicker. Then a glow. Not alien. Not demonic.

Hers.

A piece of what she'd just destroyed. A piece of what she'd just survived.

The Mirror hadn't corrupted her. It hadn't won.

It had left something behind.

And for the first time since this nightmare began, Chloe felt not like a survivor—

But like a threat.

And as she passed out – broken but alive – a faint grey shimmer rippled through her chest. The Mirror's death had left a residue – a burn across her soul. Not corruption. Not poison.

Potential.

Overhead, the reinforced bulkhead above the hangar bay – the one that had kept the Grimm Institute hidden for years – finished crumpling.

And the sky poured in.

Sunlight struck the Burrow for the first time in decades.

The Grimm Institute's secrets were no longer secrets.

And above them all, far away, a presence stirred.

Watching.

Measuring.

Approaching.

…………………

Sirens wailed.

Not digital. Not elegant. Old-fashioned klaxons — analogue, red-lit, and angry – shuddering against the bunker walls as the automated fail-safes kicked in. Emergency bulkheads tried to slam down over doors that no longer existed. Fire suppression systems coughed steam into rooms that no longer had floors.

The Burrow was collapsing in slow motion.

And at its heart, Dr. Helmut Grimm stood still.

He was halfway down a scorched hallway, eyes fixed on the overhead camera feed piping raw images from the launch bay. The containment field was gone. The hangar doors had been breached. The glyph array that had masked the Institute from satellites – from the world – had collapsed into flickering ash.

The Grimm Institute was no longer hidden.

"...No," Grimm whispered.

Behind him, Alpha was already moving. "We need to go. Now."

Omega loomed behind them both, scanning the corridor with narrowed eyes, his knuckles cracked and twitching, already half-shifted into combat posture.

Grimm didn't respond immediately. His jaw clenched. The screen showed Chloe, still in the hangar, crumpled but alive. He noted the faint aura around her – wild like a grey wind – a ripple of energy left behind by the Mirror's destruction. The explosion had enhanced her.

He hadn't expected that.

But it wasn't what chilled him.

It was the air.

The pressure beyond the broken launch bay doors.

Something had felt the breach.

Something old.

Grimm swallowed hard and muttered, "Not yet. Not now."

Alpha stepped in front of him. "We're out of time. Site B fallback has already initiated. Extraction protocol was triggered the moment the Mirror hit Phase 3 instability. If we delay—"

"I know the protocol," Grimm snapped.

Alpha didn't blink.

Grimm ran a hand through his silvering hair. The glyph-stamped badge at his chest flickered – outdated, cracked at the edge.

"I thought we had more time," he said, softer now.

Omega spoke for the first time. His voice was gravel under pressure. "You always think that. And they always come sooner."

That stopped Grimm.

He looked at Omega.

Then turned slowly toward the elevator shaft at the far end of the hall. Its doors were half open – damaged, but still functional.

He hesitated just once more.

Then he turned back to the monitors and whispered:

"He'll come now. He'll feel the breach. I can't stay here."

It wasn't paranoia. It was experience.

You didn't survive this long in the demon world without knowing which names not to say aloud.

And Grimm had said that name once.

He would never say it again.

Alpha said nothing. She didn't need to.

Grimm tapped a code into his wrist plate. A small injector hissed into his neck. His breath slowed.

"Site B," he said.

Alpha moved instantly, pulling a side panel open to reveal the emergency shaft. Omega pushed the elevator doors fully apart and dropped down the rail tunnel like a descending comet.

Just before Grimm stepped in, he paused at the threshold and glanced once more toward the launch bay feed. The camera was failing – static and white flickers across Chloe's collapsed form. But behind her… the sky. Open. Blazing. Watching.

"God help me," Grimm muttered.

And then he was gone.

The shaft sealed behind them with a hiss of steam and a glyph-lock that pulsed red.

Two floors below, the Burrow trembled.

And far beyond the clouds – beyond satellites, sensors, and shields – something opened its eyes.

It saw the breach. The glyphs broken. The sky unveiled.

And it saw her.

A flickering red soul. Buried in light. Sealed in a pod.

The girl with the fragment.

The account was visible now.

Marked for collection.

And in a remote farmhouse on the other side of the world, Mammon smiled.

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