The sub-zero wind that swept across the infinite silver plane of the Mirror’s Heart was laced with the scent of frozen gall-ink, dried willow-ash, and old brass filings. In the center of that vast, glowing expanse, the two versions of Ren Vale stood ten paces apart. He was separated only by the hairline stress-fracture running through the glassy floorboards. The physical structures of the upper sanctum had fully dissolved. That left no pillars, no gallery arches, and no stone barriers to break the line of sight between the apprentice and the headsman.
The Man Who Returned didn’t raise his shard-blade into an aggressive lunge. He held the gold-silver metal handle with both hands, the weapon pointed downward at a forty-five-degree angle. Its edge reflected the faint, pulsing violet light of Mira’s quartz arm. His scarred face—shattered cheekbone, silver fluid dried into pewter scabs, and pupil-less mirrored eyes—bore the terrible, calm weight of a court judge about to sign a summary writ of execution.
‘There are no more summons in the vault, Ren,’ the Man Who Returned said, his voice flat, dry. Then he hollowed out by four hundred years of solitude. ‘You have burned the soldiers, the thieves, the scholars, the emperors, and the monks. You have exhausted the twenty-four frames of time slack that Chrono-Scribe bought with his heart’s blood. Your bones are cracked in eleven places. Your blood-flow system is fifty percent soaked with toxic iron-gall burning acid. And reality beyond this glass has closed over your absence…
