Chapter 33: The Mirror Tide
Perspective: Third-Person (Velkaris & the World)
The air inside the Reflecting Spire shimmered with layered illusions.
A stillness, sacred and suffocating, hovered in the mirror-lit sanctum where truth dared not enter.
Before the silver altar, Velkaris stood, cloaked in black and gold, the Sefirah: The Mask of Reflection pulsating faintly behind him.
Opposite him floated the Mother of Mirrors—a being of shifting glass, veiled in radiant twilight, her face a kaleidoscope of forgotten selves.
"They'll begin to notice soon," Velkaris said. "The world is... fraying. We can't risk delay."
The Mother of Mirrors tilted her head, refracted light warping the ceiling into a web of fractured reality.
"Speak your command, My Faceless Sovereign," she whispered. Her voice echoed not in the air—but in reflection, rippling from every surface.
Velkaris stepped closer. The shrine lights danced across his robes, but cast no shadow—he had long since ceased to have one.
"Anyone who enters the island," he began, "must forget everything. Who they are. Why they came. What they feared."
"In return, they will remember only me."
He raised one hand, as if sculpting the very fabric of existence.
"And for those who remember too much… who dare resist? Shatter them. Drag them into the Mirrorwell. Offer their souls to the System."
"Their sacrifice will count toward the price."
The Mother of Mirrors bowed her head in reverence.
"And the surrounding lands?"
"Corrupt them slowly," Velkaris instructed. "Begin with Ravenholt and Ivren's Rest. Fray memory, stir longing. Bleed dreams with half-truths until their very names dissolve."
"Let them believe they are fading. Because they are."
The veiled angel's form trembled—not with fear, but with anticipation.
She vanished into the altar pool, the silver waters rippling outward like a lie accepted.
The Effect Unleashed
Ten days since the veil had been drawn.
Now the ripples were no longer subtle.
Trade ships diverted from the southeast without knowing why.
Mariners whispered of a region that felt "wrong."
Compasses spun. Reflections lied.
"There's something... off beyond the Tervan Gulf."
"Fog thicker than nightmares."
"No word from Isla Tervan. They just… vanished."
Conversion Through Forgetting
A merchant vessel, Sable Marlin, strayed too near.
Sailors reported feeling calm. Detached. As if someone else was dreaming through them.
When they docked on the island?
They forgot their cargo.
Then their names.
Then their gods.
But they remembered Velkaris.
They kneeled at the mirror shrines, whispering false prayers as if they'd always done so.
The world adjusted quietly. Their names vanished from registries. Birth records crumbled into nonsense.
History rewrote itself without permission.
Punishment for Awareness
An agent of the Church of Storms arrived, posing as a fisherman.
He made landfall.
He remembered.
"This place isn't real," he muttered. "This is a constructed godscape—a blasphemous patch stitched into our world."
The moment he spoke truth, the Mirrorwell exploded upward, like a scream made of light.
The Mother of Mirrors descended, arms wide, veils whipping like winds of glass.
"Truth is not yours to carry," she said.
The man barely cried out before his reflection dragged him down—not into the pool, but into the mirror of the sky itself.
Sacrificed.
System Update:
Payment Requirement: 10,000 sacrifices annually
Current Progress: 48
Days Remaining: 355
Expansion: The First Fading Islands
The lie pressed outward.
On Ravenholt, people began forgetting where they lived.
Maps changed overnight. Fishing boats swerved to avoid the "phantom coast."
In Ivren's Rest, villagers stared at their reflections… which no longer moved with them.
Children began calling to a "Faceless Star Father."
No one remembered teaching them that name.
Both islands were vanishing—but not physically.
Historically. Existentially.
Velkaris, Watching
Atop the Spire, Velkaris stood at the edge of the Mirrorwell.
No reflection dared form beneath him.
His cloak fluttered, but only the Mother of Mirrors cast a visible echo across the silver floor.
He looked skyward, beyond the sea, where the Gray Fog churned faintly in some other plane.
"The Fool hasn't awakened yet…"
"But fate is listening."
System Alert:
"Main Story Thread Awakens in 20 Days."
"Quest: Establish Divinity Through Belief must be completed before narrative convergence."
Velkaris exhaled, though he no longer needed breath.
"Just a little more," he whispered.
"And the lie will become a truth… that never needed to be proven."
End of Chapter 33: The Mirror Tide