The mist thickened the moment they left the ridge.
Not natural mist.
Not weather.
Something older… the kind that carried echoes instead of water.
Sol could taste it in the air, metallic like old blood being reawakened by a storm.
Ji Ming halted beside a weather-worn pine, scanning the stretch of broken forest ahead.
"Stay close," he said.
He didn't need to. Sol was already at his side, her breath sharp in her chest. The wind kept pulling her hair forward, tugging lightly, as if trying to warn her… or guide her… she couldn't tell which anymore.
Ya Zhen stepped up behind them, fan half-open. "Whatever followed the reflection-child… it's gaining."
Sol hugged her cloak tighter. "I know."
Ji Ming glanced sharply at her. "You felt it?"
She nodded.
"It wasn't a reflection," she murmured. "It was something the world remembers too well."
Mist curled low along the narrow mountain path, hiding most of the layout except what Ji Ming's trained senses could catch.
He moved first.
The path wound downward through twisted roots and half-fallen trees. The earth was soft, freshly disturbed by recent rainfall. Leaves were slick with dew, each one glistening faintly with resonance.
Not normal.
Not safe.
Sol stepped carefully, and each time her foot touched the ground, the fog shifted ever so slightly… like it recognized her weight.
Ji Ming noticed. "The mist moves for you."
"It's responding," Sol whispered. "But I don't think it knows whether to protect us… or warn us."
Ya Zhen snorted. "Much like most people in your life."
Sol couldn't argue.
A low rumble rolled across the mountains, not thunder, not resonance, but something dragging itself through the ley lines beneath the earth.
Sol stopped.
Ji Ming immediately reached for her hand. "What do you see?"
"Not see," Sol breathed. "Hear."
A second rumble followed… echoing faintly with something like a syllable.
A name.
Hers.
—Sol—
The mist shivered.
Ji Ming's grip tightened. "It's calling you."
"No," she whispered. "It's… remembering me."
Ya Zhen's fan snapped the rest of the way open. "Is that better or worse?"
"Neither," Sol murmured. "Just… truth."
She stepped forward, letting the mist brush against her skin.
And then—
Something flickered at the edge of her vision.
A movement too fast, too fluid to be human.
Ji Ming saw it in the same instant.
"Left!"
He pulled Sol back just as a dark blur streaked between the trees.
Not an animal.
Not a reflection.
A shape made of shadow and qi… tall, elongated, its limbs trailing faint wisps of fractured light. When it turned its head, Sol saw no face at all… only a smooth plane where a reflection should have lived.
Ya Zhen's breath caught. "That's—"
"A Mirror Revenant," Ji Ming said, voice low. "But it shouldn't exist."
Sol's heart hammered. "You know what it is?"
"Stories," he said. "Sky Wolf legends used to describe them, remnants of the Mirror Forge's earliest attempts at form. Not fully reflections. Not fully spirits."
The revenant twisted its head toward them.
A horrible, empty silence filled the air.
Then it moved.
Fast.
Ji Ming shoved Sol behind him and drew one blade in the same breath. "Stay back!"
Steel met shadow as he slashed.
The revenant recoiled, its form warping like disturbed water.
Ya Zhen stepped forward, drawing a sigil-laced line through the air with her fan. Red light burst from the stroke, striking the revenant and forcing it into the open.
It screeched, a broken, metallic sound that hit like a shiver straight through Sol's spine.
Ji Ming lunged again, sabers cutting through its form, but the revenant only tore apart like smoke and reformed behind him.
Ya Zhen cursed. "It doesn't die!"
"It's not meant to die," Sol whispered. "It's meant to follow."
She moved forward despite Ji Ming's warning hand.
"Sol—no."
She ignored it.
The revenant's head snapped toward her, its faceless surface rippling.
"It wants resonance," she said quietly. "It wants… a shape."
Ji Ming's voice was sharp. "It wants you."
"I know."
She lifted her hand.
The revenant paused.
Its form wavered.
"Sol—"
Ji Ming's voice was strained. "If it enters you—"
"It won't."
"How do you know?"
She swallowed.
"I don't."
And she stepped forward.
The revenant leaned close, inches from her face. Its faceless surface flickered… catching fragments of her reflection, Ji Ming's silhouette behind her, Ya Zhen's poised stance.
Then…
It whispered.
A warped echo of her own voice:
"…not… alone…"
Sol's breath caught.
"That's the reflection-child."
Ji Ming froze. "What?"
"It's the same resonance," she whispered. "Broken. Echoing. Lost."
The revenant trembled.
It reached toward her chest, not to harm, but to imitate the gesture she'd used when speaking to the reflection-child.
Sol placed her palm gently over its flickering hand.
"Remember differently," she whispered.
Light rippled.
The revenant stilled.
Then—
Its entire form collapsed inward, folding like water returning to a cup… and sank into the mist, leaving only a faint whisper behind.
"…Sol…"
Silence.
Then Ji Ming grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her sharply back.
"What were you thinking?" His voice was low, raw, trembling beneath the discipline. "If it had tried to take you—"
"It didn't," she said softly.
He exhaled hard, eyes storm-shadowed, jaw tight.
Ya Zhen stepped closer. "We should move. We've just announced exactly where we are."
Ji Ming nodded, but his gaze never left Sol.
"We're not letting anything else near you," he said.
Sol looked back at the mist, where the revenant had vanished.
"It wasn't danger," she murmured. "It was a warning."
Ya Zhen raised a brow. "From what? The Mirror? The mountain?"
Sol turned toward the ridge beyond the mist, where the ley lines pulsed faintly like veins beneath skin.
"From whatever wakes next."
The wind shifted.
Far above them, a second call echoed, deeper, heavier, unmistakably mechanical.
Mirror Division.
Ji Ming's voice sharpened. "They're close. Very close."
Sol stood straighter, the echo of the revenant's whispered word still lingering in her heartbeat.
"Then we go," she said.
Together they ran —
into the fog,
into the pulsing qi-paths of the ley lines,
into the beginning of the pursuit that would shape the rest of their fate.
The mist behind them trembled one last time.
As if whispering a name the world had waited too long to remember.