The path to the mirror was not marked by steps, but by regrets.
Echo followed the thread gifted to him by the Finisher – a sliver of thought, glowing faintly, wrapped in unfinished tension. It did not pull him forward. It suggested. And the world around him obeyed suggestion more than gravity.
He walked through a forest that hummed with hesitation. The trees here were made of layered drafts – each ring a record of something nearly written. Their bark bore half-formed runes, and their leaves whispered what-ifs. Occasionally, one fell in front of him, landing softly with the weight of a decision never made.
The wind smelled of waxed paper and time left unused.
After what felt like a revision cycle, Echo reached a clearing carved into the spine of the world. The air shimmered, not with light, but with possibility held too long in stasis. The entrance ahead rippled like feedback. Not a door, but a glitch in logic.
Inside, silence waited.
At the center of the chamber stood the Mirror.
Tall, thin, and embedded in myth-ore, it had no reflection – only resonance. Its frame was bound in annotation ribbons. Glyphs coiled like vines at the corners, marking it as older than most stories, and less forgiving.
When Echo approached, the mirror shimmered. It did not show his face.
It showed versions of him.
One was smaller, wearing scholar's robes. A version of Echo who had ignored the redacted page in the glade. He lived a quiet life of study, footnotes, and predictable endings. He died in peace. He was never remembered.
Another version shimmered to the surface. This Echo had taken the ink into himself but used it selfishly. He rewrote a past event – saved someone who was meant to be lost. In return, the myth devoured his name. He became a shadow in another's tale.
Another version appeared.
A tyrant. Crowned in glyphs. Obsessed with rewriting. Every sentence bent to his control until his world broke under the pressure of his revisions.
Echo stumbled back.
The mirror pulsed.
"You see them," came a voice. Gentle. Neither masculine nor feminine. It came from the mirror itself, vibrating through the chamber like memory.
"They are not possibilities. They are remainders."
Echo stared at the figures.
"Versions I could have become?"
"Versions you already were," the voice corrected. "Choices you discarded before they knew they were chosen. The first edits."
The mirror shifted again.
Now it showed people – some familiar, some not. A girl with ash-coloured eyes smiled like she remembered him. A child recoiled in fear. A figure with a red pen for a spine wrote his name over and over until it smudged into illegibility.
"I don't understand," Echo said.
The voice softened.
"You are a myth in motion. But the Canon does not appreciate movement without outline. You are unresolved. Soon, it will send one of its own."
Echo's breath caught.
"The Compiler?"
"No. That is later. First comes the suggestion. Then comes the revision."
The mirror quivered.
From its center, a shape emerged.
A robed figure in silver. No face – only a smooth pane. In one hand, it carried a quill that gleamed like a blade. In the other, a seal pressed with finality.
It did not move.
It simply existed. Unavoidable. Undeniable.
"The Compiler comes to resolve contradictions," the voice said. "It does not destroy. It condenses. You will not be erased. You will be compressed into something the Canon can understand."
Echo stepped back. Ink flared under his skin, curling across his arms like defensive margins.
"No."
"You will not stop it with refusal," the mirror warned.
Outside the chamber, the world began to ripple.
Trees blurred. Air folded. Language bent under pressure.
"You have a choice," the mirror said. "Run. Or write."
The image of the Compiler vanished.
Echo turned from the mirror and fled the chamber.
Behind him, the Mirror whispered one last thing.
"Resolution is coming."