"Who told you anyone needed to ask?" she says. "Or that your path has to make sense?"

They arrive together into a hallway that feels, above all else, controlled. The walls do not lean here, and the lamps do not flicker. Even the floorboards seem to breathe in unison, as if to say, We are smoother here, as if this is a space that has already passed judgment and had its paperwork filed away.

The air, too, is subdued, less eager than before. It carries the faint scent of pressed linen and dried flowers, something polite and preserved, like stepping into a very old book that no longer expects to be read. Or perhaps like entering the home of a grandparent who long ago stopped expecting visits, unless they made the effort themselves.

It is a sentiment Eileen finds herself settling into, just a little, as if the stillness here, curated and deliberate. Is its own kind of kindness, the kind that resembles rest when one has been moving for too long.

She exhales slowly, smoothing the edge of her shawl with one thumb, idly tracing a corner that has begun to fray. She keeps at it until the corridor gently reveals its pattern, and the doors begin to line both sides of the hall in quiet rhythm. Xozo lifts her head, eyes drawn forward.

"Oh good, doors," she says, as if that solves something important. She doesn't move at first. Instead, she stands still, adjusting her sleeves like she's preparing for a task that requires ceremony. "Okay," she murmurs, to herself or maybe to the hallway. It's hard to tell, but the air responds as though disturbed to be spoken to.

Xozo turns, half looking at Eileen, half scanning the doors that stretch before them. "I've been here," she says, trying to sound casual. "Plenty of times. My family comes often. So, naturally, I come often too." Her tone holds a thread of reassurance, one she's weaving mostly for herself. As she steps forward, her eyes flick back for that particular kind of approval only the elderly can give, an instinctive glance toward someone who knows how to stand still in large, important places.

"So one of these has to be my mother's salon," she mutters, tapping her lip in thought. "Maybe the one with the emerald frame? Dark wood was her style once." She reaches for the handle. Locked. "Ahh, maybe the one with the little curl at the top?" Second door. Also locked. She tries a third with velvet trim. "This one is chic. Velvet, I think. That was in last year, right?" The door clicks open slightly and releases a puff of warm, glitter-scented wind into her face. She slams it shut with a sharp intake of breath.

"Nope, not that one. That's... that's a different kind of design language. Avant-garde. Or maybe it was breathing?" She doesn't linger on the thought. She just moves on to the next.

Eileen watches her gently, the way one might observe a bird testing branches. She doesn't hurry to catch up. Instead, she drifts down the corridor at her own pace, hands folded behind her back, eyes roaming. Her fingers brush against a brass sconce on the wall, shaped like a half melted hourglass. It is warm, unexpectedly so. It feels like the kind of warmth you only get from a child's hug, the kind offered simply and completely, without condition or thought.

It reminds her, unexpectedly, of Thompton. Not the whole city, but instead a little shop tucked beside a cider brewery where the windows always fogged in the early hours and the floorboards insisted on creaking in the same place no matter how lightly one stepped. The shopkeep there, Keith, never asked if you were staying long. He only ever wanted to know whether you liked the shades drawn up or down next to the spot you sat in. Taking your answer with a quiet nod and never pressing conversation further then you allowed...

"Locked," Xozo calls from further down, her voice interrupting the memory. Eileen left to linger by the sconce, so she watches the girl move from door to door with growing urgency, as though the act of searching is more important than what she expects to find. The next door is a rich walnut panel, polished and unmarked, except for a name that begins to disappear as Xozo approaches. She scowls and tries the handle. It does not open.

"Also locked," she says with a sigh that barely disguises her irritation. Then her voice takes on a strange rhythm, like she is reciting something she does not entirely believe. "It's always the seventh. Or the greenest. Or the one furthest from the shadow." It is a confident sound shaped from remembered phrases, like folklore rehearsed for an audience that never showed up. She laughs then, lightly, to the hallway itself, but the sound falters halfway through and disappears without a trace.

She tries another door, and another, and then she begins to move faster. She does not seem to notice that she is no longer waiting to see whether the doors are meant to be opened. Her hands grasp at handles, her steps more hurried now, the fabric of her cloak brushing the stone floor with increasing speed. There is a flicker of something raw in the motion, a searching without certainty.

Eileen, meanwhile, has come to a stop a second time. The door before her does not shine or hum or call attention to itself. It is plain wood, soft in tone, unmarked and quiet. There is no handle of precious metal, no carving in its frame, only a simple nob and a gentle curve in the grain that makes the wood seem as though it has spent a great deal of time being lent against by someone on the other side of the door.

Giving the impression of a back rested there over many years, someone waiting not because they were told to, but because they had chosen to remain in duty. For she knows the shape of that kind of presence and she recognizes it in herself, the ache of long held responsibility and the quiet devotion of remaining even when there is no one left to notice.

But she does not open it right away, the moment doesn't feel right. Instead, she pauses to adjust her shawl, smooth a corner, and inspect a line. Only then does she feel she can open it while honoring the intentions of its internal guardian.

The door swings open with the kind of ease only time can earn. The room beyond is wide and circular, the air heavier, but not stifling. It has a density like silence held in reverence. So she steps through just as another door across the room clicks shut, "Must have left in a hurry, be nice to meet them" she murmurs to herself.

"Xozo," she says without raising her voice too much. "Can you come here for a minute?" Her tone is the kind used for tea poured slowly, for memories that require gentleness to unfold.

Her calling for Xozo wraps the scent of dried roses around her almost immediately. Not the sweetness of fresh bloom, but of something older, curled at the edges, like letters left in drawers and read again only during storms. It fills her, not with nostalgia exactly, but with recognition... of Daniel.

Xozo arrives seconds later and stumbles to a halt in the doorway. Her breath catches audibly. "Oh, my. Wow." Her voice cracks up the register, one note shy of panic. "How...?" She cannot complete the question. The words stammer out of her mouth, soft and unsure, falling apart before they reach Eileen.

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

It takes her longer than usual to find meaning in what she sees. "How are we in this salon?" she finally manages. "My grandmother hasn't even been here. No one in my family ever has. None of us have ever been this important." She almost pulls back her hood, then hesitates, clutching the edge with both hands instead. Her whole body vibrates with uncertainty, the kind that has nowhere to settle.

"I don't even know if Countess Whisperbane has stood in this place," she murmurs, awe tinged with disbelief. "And yet I'm here. With you. I'm on a first name basis with someone who has access to this?"

Eileen hums softly in response as she walks further into the salon, her steps slow, unhurried, as though letting the room unfold itself rather than attempting to cross it. Her gaze is drawn toward a mirror that rises far beyond what the ceiling should allow. It stretches upward into the curve of the space, its frame wrapped in rose gold that glows gently without casting light. The filigree along its edges is impossibly fine, not made to be noticed directly, but instead to be remembered later, as if in a dream that lingers half formed.

But it is not the mirror's size that holds her. Nor the way it disappears into architecture that does not belong to this floor or this room or even perhaps this moment. What draws her is something beneath the beauty. A tension within, the flaws, the whispers within the glass which does not move but still speaks. Her eyes settling not on the height or the shimmer or the impossible grace, but on the cracks. They are thin and subtle, tucked just beneath the gold edge, almost hidden but not truly concealed. The kind of cracks that come not from violence, but from age, from pressure, from holding too much too long without complaint.

There is something else in the room now, not a sound or a movement, but a kind of presence instead. Eileen feels it in her breath, in the way her shawl shifts against her shoulders without wind. She lifts her head slightly and speaks without turning. "Why do you think Countess Whisperbane has never visited this place, dear?"

Xozo exhales sharply through her nose, almost a scoff, though not unkind. "Please. She would tell us. She tells everyone everything." The words come faster now, rising from nerves rather than calm. "Sure, technically, she has that obscenely distant cosmic relative. Duchess Inomé. But even that familial connection wouldn't get her in here. This is direct bloodline level access. Orrynthal level bloodline access. The kind of place that isn't written down, level access. And trust me the family's so bloated, so mythically tangled over the eons of its survival, she probably isn't even a footnote of a footnote. She's noise in the margins of a record no one reads anymore, not even the Ebony Quills. We all are of course."

She pauses for a breath, then lifts her chin, voice regaining a familiar cadence, part sales pitch, part daydream. "So yes. She would give anything to set foot in this salon. And as your downline distributor, I'm going to do everything to help you secure your first deal."

Eileen looks up suddenly, something in Xozo's voice drawing her attention back to the conversation happening in front of her. Eileen finds in her hands a tea cup and saucer along with an entire tea set that she had begun rearranging. The cups sitting askew all over the place, one plate placed upside down. Why am I doing this? she finds herself asking herself.

But before she can take action she finds herself moving the saucers again, nudging the teapot as though alignment could give her clarity. If she were being honest, she might admit the room feels like a waste. All this embroidery, all this curated stillness, and for what? The chairs are plush enough to make a point, but they did nothing to invite familiarity.

Yes the sigils on the wall gleam with history, but no one is here to name them. The whole place too, is too composed, too formal, too full of things that want to be noticed but not touched. It bothers her in a way she cannot quite explain. Her frustration surfaces not in her words but in her fingers, in the haphazard placement of the sugar bowl, in the soft clink of ceramic against polished wood.

There were children at the entrance to this dungeon too, she thinks, children who didn't even have clean bandages. The memory from a few days ago appearing uncertainly and different like a smudge left on glass that you forgot about. Her hands pause again, why did it feel like something was waiting for her... Xozo?!

"Do I need to sign something dear?" Eileen asks more out of reaction then genuine motion, her voice soft and warm, not urgent. It is a question given space to wander, like steam rising from a forgotten cup. Meant to help Eileen bridge a conversation that she feels she has momentarily forgotten.

Xozo doesn't answer, not at first. Instead, she begins to pace. Her boots whispering against the floor as she walks in slow, uneven circles, each lap tighter than the last. Her hands flutter around her like thoughts she hasn't caught yet. "Oh my gods. Oh my gods," she repeats under her breath, then louder, with more certainty, "Oh my gods, this changes everything."

She turns then quickly, cloak swirling behind her, nearly catching the edge of a polished vase that stands on a low pedestal. She doesn't notice the near accident, her eyes are too wide now, her thoughts too fast, all slipping over each other to be first. "Once they see us come out of here, once she sees me, sees me with you, she'll have to recognize me. She'll have to listen."

She stops pacing, plants her feet firmly. "I have ideas," Xozo says, lifting her chin. Then she corrects herself. "No. I have great ideas. Excellent ideas." The words more a shield then a signal. She says them with the pride of someone trying to cast belief into shape. She does not notice the stillness deepening behind her or the way Eileen finds herself drawn back towards the tea set.

Xozo turns then towards the far door, the one that closed when they arrived, her movement slow now. Her hands hovering for a moment at her side she speaks without facing Eileen. "Stay here." Her voice carries a thread of hesitation and worry like she is having the conversation with unfinished logic.

"Don't move. Don't touch anything else. I'll be right back."

Xozo then disappears through the far door before Eileen can answer. The salon remains.

It breathes.

And it listens.

Until something shifts. It is not sound, nor light. Nothing blinks, nothing chimes. For it is the mirror that shifts in one single certain moment.

And along with it comes a thought that does not rise from memory nor come with logic. It blooms instead, quietly, deeply.

The mirror is whole.

The thought stirs beneath her ribs, not in fear but in clarity. It is not sudden, and it is not loud. It is simply there. New and unmistakable and it carries the weight of a decision of fact that has already been decided, and not by her. That certainty, quiet and unwelcome, is enough to make her step backward now from the tea set, her feet moving not out of curiosity, but out of the need to witness, to confirm a truth.

The mirror has indeed changed. The cracks are gone. Not faded or fixed or healed. Gone. As though they never were and therefore could never have been. The absence of the cracks making the room feel loud.

Once, those fine fractures had mattered, they told a story. They marked the mirror as something lived through, as a record of wear and holding and surviving. They were honest too, a truth carried in imperfection, worn without apology. The mirror had posture too, a kind of presence to it that if it could have spoken, it would have done so with gentleness. With the kind of voice shaped by effort and softened by the remediation of countless failures.

Now, it gleams, too much. The kind of gleam that demands reverence instead of reflection. The kind polished by forgetting.

It looks like grief rewritten for ceremony. Like pain shaped into a monument and cleaned until only beauty remains. A column, smooth and cold, called noble not because of what it bore, but because someone chose to erase what had been asked of it.

Eileen breathes out through her nose, once. She feels a tug as another memory pours in, this one she doesn't recognize and it feels like a letter from a war that ended too quietly, still sealed, still waiting to be read by someone who no longer feels committed to checking the mail of the soldier who sends it.

The mirror is whole.

Another pulse, not a warning, not an alarm, more a signal to her. The same hush that tells her when to refill a cup, when to close a door gently behind her, when a story should end without being finished. She feels the room adjust and the air tightens, not with menace but with gravity. The space leans inward and so she walks. Not to flee, but to arrive somewhere else, at some point else. Her stomach settling with each step, as if the moment too had been waiting for her all along.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.