She couldn’t remember how she got here.

The thought came to her before sight, before sound—before even pain. It floated up from the dark like a half-drowned body, incomplete and gasping. Cold stone pressed against her skin, seeping through fabric she did not recognize. When she tried to move, her limbs responded slowly, as if remembering motion was a skill she had forgotten.

Her eyes opened.

A vast circular chamber surrounded her, carved entirely from black stone that drank in the light rather than reflecting it. The floor beneath her was etched with symbols—thousands of them—spiraling outward from where she lay. They glimmered faintly, pulsing in a sick rhythm that reminded her of a heartbeat.

Not hers.

She pushed herself up on trembling hands. The moment her palm touched one of the symbols, a sharp pain lanced through her arm, and she recoiled with a cry. The rune dimmed, as though disappointed.

The air was wrong. Too thick. It smelled of iron, ash, and something older—something like bone left too long in the ground.

Then she heard it.

Breathing.

Slow. Deep. Massive.

It came from everywhere and nowhere, vibrating through the stone beneath her. Each exhale stirred the symbols into brighter life. Panic clawed up her throat as she scrambled to her feet, her back colliding with something tall and smooth.

A mirror.

It towered over her, at least twice her height, framed in twisted black metal shaped like grasping hands. Its surface was not glass but darkness—moving, rippling, alive. For one terrible moment, it reflected nothing at all.

Then it screamed.

Not aloud, but inside her head—raw, desperate, wordless agony that sent her staggering to her knees. An image burst into the mirror’s surface: her own face, pale and frantic, eyes black with terror.

The reflection slammed its hands against the inside of the glass.

“Run,” it mouthed.

The torches ignited.

Flames burst to life along the chamber walls, revealing figures standing just beyond the edge of the symbols. Tall. Hooded. Still. They had been there the entire time, watching her wake.

She screamed.

None of them moved.