Chapter 19 – Ambush After School
The sun bled orange across the courtyard when Jack finally left the building. Students drifted away in groups, laughter echoing in the distance. He adjusted his strap and started toward the train station.
He didn't make it far.
A shadow blocked his path.
Green Griffin.
Three of them, uniforms crisp, eyes glowing faintly with emerald runes. The leader — the same one Jack had seen sneering in class — stepped forward.
"You embarrassed us," he said, switching mid-sentence from English to Russian. "Тыпозоришьнас."You shame us.
Jack blinked. The words sank into his mind anyway.
The Griffin leader narrowed his eyes. "You understand that, don't you?"
Jack tried to move past, but two more Griffins flanked him. A ring of energy shimmered as they activated their bangles, trapping the courtyard in a sealed dome. The air hummed.
"Mirror boy," the leader sneered, "let's see if the stories are true."
His gauntlet unfolded into a blade, crackling with green plasma.
Jack's reflection appeared faintly in the curved dome around them. Unlike Jack, it smiled like it had been waiting for this.
Ghost wasn't here. Iris wasn't here. No one to shield him this time.
Jack's palms tingled, heat rising to his fingertips. His heart screamed to stay hidden — but his body… his body was already moving.
The dome shimmered like a glass sphere around the courtyard, its emerald runes glowing brighter as dusk fell. Trapped in that humming cage of light, Jack felt his stomach twist.
The Griffins closed in. Their leader — lean, sharp-eyed, scars carved like war-paint across his cheek — raised his plasma-forged blade and let it hover at his side, humming with restrained power.
"You've been hiding," he said, English low and clear. His tone shifted suddenly into Japanese: "Kakureru na. Soko kara dete koi." Don't hide. Come out.
Jack froze. He understood it. Perfectly.
The leader's gaze flicked, suspicion sharp. He switched again, this time Russian: "Онпонимает?" Does he understand?
Jack stiffened, and though he said nothing, the slight twitch of his eyes betrayed him.
A grin spread across the Griffin leader's face. "Interesting."
Two of the Griffins moved first. Their gauntlets snapped open, folding into long halberds that shone with flickering green fire. They rushed him, synchronized — left strike, right sweep — blades singing arcs of deadly light.
Jack ducked low, barely in time. His bag ripped open, books spilling across the floor. The reflection on the dome walls mirrored him — except the reflection wasn't panicked. It flowed, elegant, like a warrior who'd done this a thousand times.
Jack clenched his fists. "No…"
But then the heat came. That familiar burn under his skin. A current in his veins, alive. His right hand sparked — not with flame, not with lightning, but with something shifting, bending, like threads of raw light weaving themselves.
One halberd came down for his head. Jack raised his hand.
The weapon shattered.
The blade cracked into fragments of green plasma and fizzled against the dome wall, runes sparking. Jack staggered back, staring at his hand — a shimmer of energy curled around it like liquid glass.
The Griffins froze. Their leader's smirk faltered.
"You're not supposed to—"
But Jack didn't let him finish. His body moved on instinct — no, not instinct, something deeper, as if his reflection was guiding him. He spun, catching the second halberd mid-swing, and with a surge of power, he threw the attacker across the courtyard. The boy slammed into the dome, leaving a crack that spiderwebbed in green light.
The reflection in the dome smirked wider.
Jack gasped. His chest heaved, sweat dripping down his neck. "What… am I doing?"
The Griffin leader regained his composure, blade humming louder. "You're dangerous." His voice dropped to a growl, Chinese this time: "危险的孩子." Dangerous child.
Jack understood. Every word.
The leader raised his blade to strike.
And then a blur sliced into the dome.
Blue flame.
Ghost landed between Jack and the Griffins, her sword igniting with phoenix fire. "Enough."
Her eyes flicked at Jack, just for a heartbeat. What did you awaken?
The Griffins growled but stepped back, recognizing the Phoenix assassin's claim. Their leader spat on the ground, glaring at Jack.
"This isn't over, Mirror boy."
The dome collapsed, fading into smoke. The Griffins vanished into the night, their footsteps dissolving like whispers.
Jack stood trembling, hands still glowing faintly. Ghost looked at him, her expression unreadable. Finally, in Russian, she whispered: "Тыпонимаешьслишкоммного." You understand too much.
Jack's lips trembled. "I… I don't know how."
But the reflection in the shattered glass door behind him mouthed a different truth, lips moving slow and deliberate — in Latin this time.
"Tu semper scivisti."
You've always known.
Jack's heart wouldn't slow down. His palms still glowed faintly, shimmering with that strange light. He stared at the reflection in the broken glass door. The reflection tilted its head — calm, almost smug, like a predator in no rush to kill.
"Who… are you?" Jack whispered, his voice shaking.
The reflection's lips moved. No sound, just words traced in silence — ancient, heavy. He understood anyway.
"Ego sum speculum. Tu es ego."
I am the mirror. You are me.
Jack staggered back, but his reflection didn't. It stayed standing tall, shoulders squared like a warrior king.
He swallowed. "No… I'm just a kid. I don't…" His voice cracked. "I don't want this."
The reflection smirked. "Voluntas tua nihil est." Your will means nothing.
The dome's last shards flickered out, leaving only the night air and the faint echo of Ghost's breathing beside him. She didn't turn — she had heard nothing, seen nothing. To her, Jack had been staring at a broken window, trembling like prey.
But to Jack, the reflection whispered one more sentence before fading.
"The clans are not hunting you. They are hunting me… inside you."
Jack's knees nearly buckled.
Chapter 20 – Ghost's Warning, Iris's Watch
The courtyard emptied quickly after the Griffins dissolved into shadows. Ghost stood still, her blade still humming with faint blue fire. Only when silence stretched too long did she turn to Jack.
"Why didn't you run?" she asked. Her voice was clipped, but something in her eyes betrayed urgency.
Jack opened his mouth, then closed it again. "I… couldn't."
Ghost studied him. Her head tilted slightly, the edge of her hood catching moonlight. "Or wouldn't?"
Her tone switched — suddenly Japanese, sharp like a test: "Kimi wa dare da?" Who are you?
Jack stiffened. He understood. "I told you, I'm—"
She cut him off in Russian this time: "Лжец." Liar.
The word hit him harder than her blade ever could.
Ghost's blade dimmed, but she leaned closer, eyes locking with his. "You hear languages you should not. You survived strikes no human boy could. If you don't start telling me what you are, Jack, I can't protect you."
Her voice cracked on the last word — protect. It was the first time she had sounded less like a trained killer, and more like a girl caught in something too big.
Jack wanted to answer. He wanted to tell her about the reflection whispering in Latin, about the strength that wasn't his, about the fear that maybe he wasn't human at all.
But before he could, the faint scrape of metal echoed above.
Ghost's head snapped up.
On the rooftop, hidden in shadow, Iris crouched. Her sword rested across her knees, her crimson hair faint under the moonlight. She said nothing — but her gaze burned, locking on Jack with a hunger Ghost didn't see.
A dragon watching. A phoenix guarding.
And Jack, trapped in the middle, his reflection whispering from every dark surface.
"Choose soon… or they will choose for you."
Chapter 21 – Fire Descends, Shadows Clash
The wind shifted. Jack felt it before he saw her move — the soft rustle of crimson silk and the glint of steel that caught the moonlight.
Iris descended. Not leaping, not charging — she dropped with the slow, terrifying grace of a predator, her boots whispering against the fractured stone as she landed between Ghost and Jack. Her blade, long and curved like a dragon's fang, gleamed red where the moonlight touched it.
Jack's breath caught. Even after what he had seen — the portals, the fire, the way she fought like wrath incarnate — it was her eyes that frightened him most. They burned with something wild, something he didn't understand but couldn't look away from.
"I warned you not to linger, boy," Iris said, her voice low, rich with the accent of a tongue he couldn't place. Then she shifted, almost lazily, to Japanese:
"Kare o watashini watase, Aokami."
Hand him over, Blue Wolf.
Ghost's hand moved to her hilt in an instant. She stepped between Jack and Iris, her cloak catching the light of the broken courtyard lamps. Her reply came sharp and clipped, this time in Mandarin:
"Tā shì wǒ de."
He's mine.
The words cut colder than steel. Jack's pulse pounded. He wasn't supposed to understand — he knew he shouldn't — but the meaning slid into his mind with terrifying clarity. He stumbled back, shaking his head.
"Stop—" his voice cracked. "Stop talking like I'm some… prize."
Neither woman looked at him.
Iris tilted her head, eyes narrowing at Ghost. Then, switching to Russian, her lips curled into a smile that wasn't really a smile.
"Тынесможешьзащититьегодолго."
You won't be able to protect him for long.
Ghost didn't flinch. Her blade hissed free in a flash of sapphire light, its runes igniting.
"Try me."
Jack's reflection stirred in the shards of glass still scattered at his feet. Its voice, soft as a sigh, slid into his ears.
Let them fight. Let them bleed for you. Their fire, their ice, their blades — all of it belongs to you in the end.
Jack's head spun. He pressed his palms to his ears, but the whisper didn't stop. It pulsed inside his skull, in rhythm with his heartbeat.
"Shut up," he hissed.
Both Ghost and Iris froze at his words. Slowly, they turned toward him. Two pairs of eyes — blue as burning ice, red as a dragon's flame — pinned him in place.
"What did you say?" Ghost's voice was soft, dangerous.
Jack's lips trembled. "Not… you. I…" He faltered. The reflection laughed silently in the glass.
Iris's expression shifted — curiosity mixing with something sharper, almost hunger. "He hears," she murmured. This time in English, for him. For both of them. "He understands."
Ghost stiffened, realization flashing in her eyes.
"You—" she whispered. "You heard us."
Jack swallowed hard, unable to lie. His voice cracked. "Every word."
For the first time since he'd met them, both assassins seemed shaken. Ghost's eyes widened, her hand trembling just slightly on her blade. Iris's lips parted, the dragon-fire in her eyes flickering like a candle caught in wind.
Above them, the night groaned — a ripple of power neither Iris nor Ghost had summoned. The reflection's voice grew louder, crueler, echoing in a dozen tongues all at once.
They will never kill you. They will never leave you. They will burn the world just to claim you.
Jack staggered back, clutching the bangle Ghost had given him. It pulsed faintly, as if struggling to shield him — not from blades this time, but from the truth unraveling in his veins.
Ghost stepped forward, desperation seeping into her tone. "Jack… listen to me. Stay behind me. No matter what she says—"
"Lies," Iris hissed, cutting her off, her blade flaring with red energy. She pointed it at Ghost, then at him. "She fears what you are. I…" Her eyes softened, dangerously tender for a breath. "…I can show you."
Jack's chest heaved. He looked from Ghost to Iris, from ice to fire, from the guardian who wanted to protect him to the predator who wanted to claim him.
And in the mirror of the broken glass, his reflection smiled wider.
Soon, little vessel. You will not need to choose. They will all kneel to you.
The courtyard trembled as Iris and Ghost took their stances.
Jack knew it. He wasn't just caught in their war anymore. He was the battlefield.
The Watchers
From the rooftop opposite the courtyard, the city looked asleep. Streetlights flickered lazily, casting their pale orange glow over cracked sidewalks. A dog barked somewhere in the distance. Nothing seemed out of place — nothing but the faint shimmer in the air, a ripple too subtle for normal eyes.
Sergeant Kael adjusted his bangle. The device pulsed once, aligning his vision with the hidden world. And there it was — the truth beneath the lie.
In the courtyard below, three figures burned with impossible light: the boy, the girl of fire, the woman of ice. To the unprotected eye, they'd be just shadows, maybe kids out past curfew. To him, and the squad crouched beside him, they were living storms ready to tear the night apart.
Kael muttered, "Third incident this week. No reset yet."
Behind him, Officer Vega checked her scanner, its display flickering with distorted readings. "The resonance is spiking. Higher than any previous clash. Look at the readings from the kid."
Kael turned, his jaw tight. The boy. Always the boy. His vitals flashed on the display in impossible numbers: heart rate beyond human tolerance, neural activity off the charts.
"Sixteen years old," Kael muttered, half to himself. "And already the eye of the storm."
Vega's lips pressed into a thin line. "We should intervene."
Kael shook his head. "Not yet. You know the rule. Until the veil cracks, we watch. We record."
But his hand hovered over his own blade-hilt — not steel, but a weapon forged from mirrored alloy, shimmering faintly under the bangle's protection. He told himself it was precaution. Deep down, he knew better.
This wasn't just another assassin war.
The boy wasn't just another bystander.
Chapter 22A – Ice Against Fire
The courtyard breathed fire and ice.
Iris's blade ignited, crimson flames licking along its edge, heat warping the very air. Ghost's sword burned sapphire, frost spiraling up from the cracks in the stone beneath her feet.
They moved at the same time.
Steel met steel in a shriek that split the night. Sparks erupted, red against blue, fire against frost. The ground shuddered with every strike, each blow heavy enough to fell a tree, but faster than Jack's eyes could follow.
He stumbled back, chest heaving, unable to tear his gaze away. His ears filled with words that weren't meant for him — battle cries and curses thrown in half a dozen languages.
"Сдохни, тварь!" Iris spat in Russian as she drove her blade down. Die, beast!
Ghost blocked, sparks showering them both. Her reply was in Japanese, guttural with effort: "Omae wa kare ni furerarenai!"
You will not touch him!
Jack's pulse raced. He shouldn't understand. But he did. Every word, every meaning — sliding into him as though the languages bent themselves for him.
The reflection's laughter rolled inside his skull.
Do you see now? Even their tongues betray themselves to you. Every secret, every vow. All of it yours.
Jack pressed his palms over his ears, desperate, but nothing stopped it.
Iris spun, her blade slashing past Ghost and striking the wall in an explosion of molten heat. The courtyard stones glowed red where the cut landed. She turned her head, just for an instant, her crimson eyes fixing on Jack.
"Come to me," she called, this time in flawless English. Her voice was soft but carried like a command. "I'll show you what you are."
"Don't listen!" Ghost shouted, fury sparking in her voice. Her strike followed, blade crashing against Iris's with enough force to throw dust and flame into the air. "Stay with me, Jack! Behind me!"
Their clash lit the night like lightning and thunder. Fire roared. Frost hissed. Jack stumbled back, chest aching, as if the air itself was too heavy to breathe.
And then—
His reflection broke free.
It didn't step out of the glass — not yet — but every shard scattered across the ground shone with silver light, vibrating as if alive. From each piece, his face stared back at him, a hundred versions, smiling.
They fight for you. They bleed for you. Why do you cower, vessel? Take it. Take them both.
Jack gasped, clutching the bangle Ghost had given him. It seared his wrist, trying to hold the reflection back, but the pressure built anyway — like a storm inside his veins. His heartbeat became thunder. His breath fire. His skin tingled with frost.
Red flame. Blue ice. Both bled into him.
Ghost froze mid-strike, her eyes widening as her blade slipped. Iris, too, faltered, her crimson aura flickering. Both assassins turned their gaze on him at the same time.
Not at each other. At him.
Jack realized why.
The storm wasn't just around him anymore. It was him.
The ground cracked at his feet.
Shards of glass lifted into the air, orbiting him like tiny moons, silver light blazing from within. His reflection — his other self — laughed louder than ever, every shard a mouth, every grin jagged and terrible.
Iris whispered, awestruck, "He… awakens."
Ghost's lips parted, trembling. "Jack… stop. Don't let it take you."
But it was already too late.
Chapter 22B – Ice Against Fire
The courtyard cracked like brittle glass beneath Jack's feet.
He tried to move — to step back, to run, to scream — but his body felt suspended between two currents, one of fire, one of ice, both tearing through his veins like rivers fighting for dominance. His skin glowed faintly, red flickers tracing one side, blue the other, splitting him in half.
Ghost's breath caught in her throat. Her blade, steady against a hundred enemies before, now trembled. She whispered a word in Mandarin, broken and fearful: "Shénmíng…" — godspawn.
Iris, for the first time since the fight began, smiled not in malice but reverence. "He is the vessel," she murmured in French, almost tenderly: "Le roi des miroirs." — The king of mirrors.
And Jack — Jack understood it all. The words, the meaning, the fear, the awe. They pierced him like needles. The reflection's laughter crescendoed with each syllable, each secret slipping into him like a blade.
The shards floating around him pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat.
Ba-dum. The ground cracked wider.
Ba-dum. Fire surged, frost hissed, air warped.
Ba-dum. The sky itself seemed to ripple, stars blurring into silver streaks.
Ghost lunged, not at Iris but at Jack. Her sword flared blue, not to strike but to shield, carving a circle of frost around him. She cried out, her voice shattering, switching between tongues as if desperation broke her control:
"Jack! Listen to me! Kimi wa ore no naka ni iru—你不是他—YOU ARE NOT HIM!"
But Jack's reflection laughed louder.
She is wrong. You are me. I am you. We are everything.
Iris raised her blade high, flame pouring upward like a pillar. She wasn't trying to stop him. She was calling to him. "Take it! Take it all! Burn the night to ash!"
Jack screamed. His voice tore through the courtyard, splitting into echoes, not one scream but dozens, layered over one another. His reflection's mouths screamed with him, the sound like shattering glass multiplied infinitely.
The shards erupted outward.
A storm of mirrors spiraled around him, slashing through stone, through the air itself. Fire and frost bent inward, devoured by the silver maelstrom. Ghost was thrown back, tumbling across the ground, her blade slipping from her hand. Iris fell to one knee, shielding her face as her flames sputtered.
Above them, the sky cracked.
Not thunder. Not lightning. Something worse — a fracture, a silver seam splitting the heavens, leaking cold light. The stars twisted around it as if sucked into a vortex.
Jack's eyes shone like mirrors. Not brown, not human — just endless silver, reflecting everything and nothing.
The reflection stepped closer, not from glass but from him. Its outline overlapped his, taller, sharper, crowned in jagged shards. A ghost of himself, but crueler.
This is who you are, it whispered, though its voice echoed from everywhere at once. This is who you have always been.
Jack reached out without meaning to. The storm of shards bent to his will, swirling tighter, sharper, ready to unleash. Fire and frost converged, red and blue flaring together, forming something new — a blinding white edge, sharper than steel, brighter than dawn.
Ghost cried out, crawling to her knees, her face pale with horror. "Jack, don't! If you release it—"
But he already had.
The courtyard imploded.
The walls folded inward, trees snapped like twigs, every surface shattered into fragments of mirror and light. For an instant, the world itself seemed to break, torn into infinite reflections of itself — dozens of courtyards, dozens of skies, dozens of Jack's screaming face, echoing into eternity.
And then—
Reset Morning
The alarm rang.
Jack's eyes snapped open, his heart pounding as if he had run miles. His chest was slick with sweat. His ceiling — perfectly intact. His walls — uncracked, covered with the same peeling posters of starships and ancient warriors.
He sat up sharply, gasping.
The courtyard was gone.
No flames. No ice. No shards. No reflection. Just his bedroom bathed in morning light, his clock blinking the same stubborn numbers: 6:30 a.m.
Downstairs, his mother's voice called, muffled but ordinary. "Jack! You'll be late!"
He pressed his palms into his face, fingers trembling. The sound of shattering glass still rang in his ears. He could still feel the heat, the frost, the weight of his reflection standing over him.
But the world was whole.
The world had reset.
Jack stumbled to the mirror on his dresser. His reflection blinked back at him, just him, ordinary, hair messy from sleep. But when he leaned closer, when he searched the silver of his own eyes—
—he swore he saw it.
The grin.
Just for a second.
Chapter 23 – Shadows Beneath the SunJack's Morning
The sunlight that spilled across the school courtyard was too normal.
Too clean. Too perfect.
Jack sat at the edge of the fountain, the chatter of students buzzing around him like static. Footballs bounced, shoes scuffed across stone, someone laughed so hard they nearly toppled into the water.
It was as if last night never happened.
But Jack knew better. His skin still felt raw where fire and ice had torn him in half. His throat still ached from screaming. And whenever he blinked too long, he saw the shards, saw the storm folding the world like paper.
And the grin. Always the grin.
He lifted his gaze. Across the courtyard, Iris was leaning against the railing, sipping from a metal flask. Her hair caught the light like a halo of embers. When their eyes met, her lips curved — not in her usual cruel smirk but in something gentler. Almost… proud.
Ghost passed by, her uniform perfect, her books stacked neatly in her arms. She moved like nothing was wrong, like she hadn't screamed at him in three languages as the sky cracked open. But Jack saw it — the faintest flicker when she glanced his way. A tightening of her jaw. A shadow behind her eyes.
They remembered.
They had to.
He leaned back, forcing himself to breathe. A group of boys nearby switched into Russian to whisper about last night's game. The words slipped into Jack's ears as easily as English. "Оннедолженбылпропуститьэтотгол." — He shouldn't have missed that goal.
Ordinary words. Harmless. Yet his stomach twisted. He was hearing too much. He was hearing everything.
Iris's voice suddenly cut through the noise, soft and clear, switching into Japanese so quickly no one else caught it:
"Yoru wa subete o kaeshita. Watashitachi wa ikite iru." — The night returned everything. We are alive.
Ghost, passing near him, responded under her breath in Mandarin:
"Dàn tā yě jìdé." — But he remembers too.
Jack froze.
They knew.
And they didn't want him to.
The fountain gurgled cheerfully, drowning out the silence that followed.
Jack pressed his palms into his knees, his reflection rippling in the water below. Normal. Ordinary. Except… when the surface shifted, for just a second, the reflection wasn't his.
It smiled.
Cop Interlude – The Fracture
"Rewind stable. But the readings are off the charts."
Detective Rivas slammed the report down on the metal table. His jaw was tight, his dark eyes bloodshot from another sleepless night. Around him, the bunker's war room hummed with blue screens projecting shattered graphs and heat signatures.
"Last night's surge nearly cracked containment," said Captain Varga, her voice steady but clipped. She traced a trembling finger along one of the graphs — a spike so tall it vanished off the display. "The fracture reached orbital range. If it had gone one second longer, reset wouldn't have covered it."
The room went silent.
"Which means?" asked Officer Kano, the youngest of the squad, though his voice was low with dread.
"It means," Varga replied, "the boy isn't just adapting. He's accelerating."
Another officer swore under their breath.
Rivas leaned against the table, exhaling through his teeth. "Every reset scrubs the field. Streets fix themselves. Bodies disappear. But we saw it. We all saw it." He tapped the bangle strapped to his wrist, the only reason they still remembered when the rest of the city slept in blissful ignorance. "The kid's not just another combatant. He's the fracture."
"Jack."
The name dropped like a stone in the room.
"Yes," Varga said. "Jack Sullivan. The quiet one. He's not the eye of the storm. He is the storm. And if he breaks containment again…" She shook her head. "We won't have a morning to reset to."
On the screen, a replay shimmered — grainy footage of last night's courtyard. The storm of shards spinning outward. The sky splitting into silver seams. And Jack's silhouette at the center, screaming as the reflection wrapped him in light.
The recording froze. Jack's mirrored eyes stared down at them, cold and endless.
The bunker was silent.
Finally, Rivas spoke.
"We need to decide. Are we protecting him… or hunting him?"