They walked until dawn bled violet across the treetops.
Neither spoke much. Words felt too small after what the spring had shown them. The bond thread between them was quiet now, but it carried a new weight—like a rope that had once been silk and was slowly turning to steel.
Elara's legs moved on autopilot. Every step jarred loose another shard of the memory that wasn't hers: Elyra Valdris laughing with companions whose names tasted like ash on her tongue; Elyra Valdris weeping alone as she forged the blade from her own ribs; Elyra Valdris whispering "Forgive me" to someone whose face the memory refused to show.
She kept seeing the chains.
Golden. Endless. Wrapped around the world like a promise and a curse.
Thorne finally broke the silence when the path widened into a small clearing ringed by pale-barked trees. Their leaves glowed faintly, casting soft green light that made his scar look less angry.
"We rest here." He dropped his pack, movements precise despite obvious exhaustion. "The glade will not attack again until nightfall. The wards need time to reset."
Elara sank onto a fallen log. The moss was warm, almost alive. She pressed her palms against it and tried to breathe.
Thorne knelt, unstopped a waterskin, and offered it. "Drink. The spring's gift is… heavy. Your body is still adjusting."
She drank. The water tasted of pine and starlight. When she lowered the skin, Thorne was watching her—not with the guarded suspicion of their first meeting, but with something closer to recognition.
"You carry her face," he said quietly, "but not her eyes. Not yet."
Elara laughed, a cracked sound. "Give it time. Apparently, I'm on a thirteen-thousand-year redemption arc."
He didn't smile. "Redemption is a luxury. Survival is not."
He reached into an inner pocket of his cloak and drew out a small object wrapped in soft leather. When he unfolded the cloth, a palm-sized mirror lay inside—antique silver frame, glass faintly clouded, edges worn smooth by centuries of handling.
Thorne turned it over. On the back was etched a single sigil: a bird in mid-flight, trailing broken chains.
"I was told to give this to the next Veilbound who passed the spring's trial," he said. "My mother carried it. Her mother before her. We were… caretakers."
Elara stared. The moment her gaze touched the mirror, her system flared.
Item Detected – Resonance 100%
Eternal Pocket Mirror
Grade: Relic (Fragmented)
Description: One of thirteen keys forged by Elyra Valdris to hide the truths she dared not speak aloud.
Current Function: Stores one veiled memory per owner. Activates only for those who bear the Echo.
Warning: Each viewing permanently alters the holder.
Thorne's scar pulsed gold again. "It has been dark since my mother's death. Until now."
He held it out.
Elara took it with shaking fingers. The metal was warm—too warm. The instant it touched her skin, the glass cleared like breath wiped from a window.
Her reflection appeared.
Only it wasn't her.
It was Elyra Valdris—older, eyes hollow with grief, blood crusted at the corners of her mouth. Behind her stood twelve figures, faces blurred as if underwater. One of them—a tall elf with storm-gray eyes and a fresh, bleeding scar—held the dying woman upright.
The reflection spoke with Elara's mouth.
"Entry Five," she rasped.
"If you're hearing this… the cage is failing.
The Unbinder is waking.
I lied to all of them. There was another way—but I was too afraid to take it.
Find the Twelve Truths.
Find the man who loved me enough to let me damn the world.
Tell him I'm sorry.
Tell him the bird was never caged—it chose the chains."
The image rippled. For one heartbeat, the scarred elf in the memory lifted his head and looked straight out of the mirror—straight at Thorne.
Then the glass went black.
Elara dropped the mirror as it burned. It landed face down in the moss and did not break.
Thorne was on his knees. The color had drained from his face entirely.
"That… was my mother's voice," he whispered. "But the face—the elf holding her—"
He couldn't finish.
Elara understood before he did.
The scarred elf in the memory had been young. Maybe twenty summers. The same bone structure. The same storm-gray eyes.
Thorne's hands went to his own scar, tracing it as if it were suddenly foreign.
"No," he said. "Impossible. That was thirteen thousand years ago."
Elara's voice was gentle. "You're elven. How old are you, Thorne?"
He didn't answer for a long time.
"Two hundred and ninety-three," he said at last. "My mother died when I was twelve. She told me the scar was a punishment for standing too close to the First Binder's ritual. That it would never heal until the cage broke."
He looked up at the sky, as if expecting answers from the violet dawn.
"I was born after the Unbinding. Everyone was."
Elara knelt in front of him, picked up the mirror, and carefully pressed it into his shaking hand.
"Then maybe," she said softly, "we're both echoes."
The bond thread between them flared gold and silver, twisting together like vines. A new notification bloomed in both their visions at once.
Bond Evolution Triggered
Thorne Silverleaf → Eternal Companion Candidate
Condition: Mutual acceptance of shared fate.
Accept? Y/N
Neither of them moved to answer.
Above them, unseen, the caged bird landed on a branch directly overhead. It opened its beak and dropped something small and glittering into Thorne's outstretched palm without either of them noticing.
A single golden feather, still wet with fresh blood.
The mirror in Thorne's hand cracked—hairline fractures spreading from the center like a breaking heart.
Somewhere beneath the glade, the thing that had opened one eye now opened a second.
And far away, in a realm that did not yet exist on any map Elara possessed, a second mirror—twin to the one in Thorne's hand began to glow for the first time in thirteen thousand years.
[To be continued]