The city was not watching them.
It was remembering them.
Every shard embedded in the walls, every fractured pane of glass, every drop of rainwater trembling in the gutters, pulsed in the exact rhythm of Law's heartbeat. The cobblestones under his boots vibrated like a warning bell only he could hear.
Nysera's ears flattened. "It's breathing."
Law didn't answer. He couldn't. The name Ka'thar had crawled inside his skull the moment they crossed the outer wall, and now it was coiling tighter, tasting his pulse.
Across the narrow alley, Laura and Liora froze at the exact same heartbeat. Same tilt of the head. Same sharp inhale. Same silver fracture racing across their irises like lightning frozen mid-flash.
Zero whistled low. "Either the city's alive, or someone spent a fortune turning it into a very expensive trap. I'm hoping for the second. Traps bleed prettier."
A clatter on the rooftops.
A single shard in a broken window flared white-hot, vomiting razor fragments into the air. They hung for a heartbeat, spinning, then snapped into perfect formation, arrowheads aimed at the Five.
"Minor Beastkin scouts," Law said, voice flat. "Corrupted. Don't let them touch you."
They came in a blur of claws and wrong angles, bodies half-flesh, half-living glass. One leapt straight at Nysera; another dove for Liora's throat. Law's Echo Eye flared gold before his mind caught up, and he moved.
"Split!"
Nysera shot right, claws carving air. Zero melted left into the shadows, chains whispering. Laura and Liora separated, but their bodies fought it, muscles jerking back toward perfect mirror symmetry, like magnets forced apart.
The ground exploded.
A shard trap detonated beneath Laura's feet, white fire erupting in a perfect circle. Liora screamed something wordless and threw up a dome of mirrored light. The blast hit it and folded, reflected back into the street, shredding two Beastkin mid-leap.
Tavren Maltherin stepped onto the balcony above them, calm as winter.
"Too slow," he said, voice soft, almost kind.
"Ka'thar does not forgive hesitation."
Nysera snarled and launched. Zero matched her stride without thinking, void chains lashing out like black whips. They carved through the remaining scouts in a storm of blood and glass, but every corpse that hit the ground dissolved into shards that crawled, crawling, toward Law's boots.
He felt them trying to read him.
A second trap triggered, this one silent. The air thickened, turned to syrup. Laura's mirrored duplicate flickered into existence beside her, uncommanded, eyes bleeding silver.
"Liora, shut it down!" Laura snapped, voice cracking for the first time.
"I'm trying!" Liora's hands shook. "It's not me. The city's doing it."
Tavren smiled down at them like a proud parent watching children take their first steps.
"Welcome home, little echoes."
The mirrored Laura lunged, not at the enemy, at the real one.
Law moved without thinking. His Echo Eye split the world into golden threads, and he stepped between them, catching the mirrored blade on his forearm. Blood hit the stones. The mirrored Laura's face twisted in perfect agony, exactly matching the real Laura's.
The resonance screamed.
Liora dropped to her knees, clutching her head. "It's inside the link. It's learning how we protect each other."
Zero's chains wrapped the mirrored duplicate and crushed it into glittering dust. The dust did not fall. It hung in the air, forming a perfect outline of Laura, empty, waiting.
Tavren clapped once, softly.
"Beautiful. The city remembers old songs. And some of you… sing in keys it hasn't heard since the Fall."
Law tasted iron. His blood on the ground was moving, crawling toward the nearest shard, painting runes he almost recognized.
Nysera's growl was more wolf than girl now.
"We need to leave. Now."
"Can't," Law said. His voice sounded distant, like someone else was using his throat. "The blockade behind us just sealed. Civilians on the other side. Screaming."
He tilted his head. He could hear them. Hundreds of them. Through the stone.
Tavren turned to walk away.
"You have until the next bell to choose," he called over his shoulder. "Save the street behind you… or chase the ones who already know your names."
The empty outline of mirrored Laura tilted its head, exactly the way the real one did when she was calculating murder.
Then it smiled with Laura's mouth and spoke with Liora's voice.
"Tick, tock, little anchor.
The city's hungry.
And it's learning which one of you it wants to keep."
The outline dissolved into a thousand silver butterflies that swarmed toward Law's bleeding arm, trying to stitch themselves into his veins.
Laura stepped forward, real hand shaking, and crushed the butterflies beneath her boot. Silver blood, not red, splattered the stones.
Her voice was barely a whisper, but the entire alley heard it.
"Touch him again and I'll burn this city down to the mirrors and piss on the ashes."
The shards in the walls pulsed once.
Almost… approvingly.
Somewhere far above, a bell began to toll.
Law looked at the sealed blockade, at the civilians he could now hear dying on the other side, and at the blood on the ground that was still trying to write his real name.
He smiled. It wasn't a nice smile.
"Round one to the city," he said.
Then, louder, to the others:
"Round two starts now."
The shards in the walls flared brighter, excited.
And for the first time since entering Ka'thar, Law's Echo Eye reflected something that wasn't there yet.
A version of himself, older.
Standing alone.
Holding a broken crown made of mirrors.
The reflection smiled at him.
And the real Law smiled back.