Wards and Warnings

Episode 2: “Wards and Warnings”

Morning in Solveil brought artificial sunlight, perfectly timed birdsong, and sterilized air. But none of the seven felt safe.

They gathered at an abandoned observatory near the city’s edge—one of the few places left untouched by the Ministry of Order. The glass dome above them was cracked, and the telescopes rusted. It suited them.

Cassia stood at the center, arms folded, eyes flint-hard. “We need to destroy what’s left of that shard. Now. Before someone else finds it.”

“But there’s nothing left to destroy,” Elira said. “It turned to ash.”

Nyra leaned against the railing, spinning a dagger between her fingers. “Ash that gave us a shared vision of the city burning? That’s not normal.”

“It was a warning,” Lys said quietly. Her eyes were distant, as if staring beyond the walls of the world. “The stars are shifting. I don’t know how to explain it, but they’re… agitated.”

Vael, who had said little since they returned, finally spoke. “I don’t think it was a warning.”

Everyone turned to look at him.

“I think it was a memory.”

He pulled a small device from his belt. It looked like a compass but spun wildly without direction. “This was calibrated to detect etheric instability. When the shard exploded, it went off the charts. Like time bent around us. Like we weren’t just seeing the future—we were remembering something.”

Thorne, unusually pale, flipped open his journal. “That would explain the entry. The one I didn’t write.”

Nyra frowned. “You think this is some kind of cycle?”

Thorne hesitated. “I’ve been having dreams. Not just of Solveil burning. Dreams of myself. Writing. Dying. Over and over.”

Cassia looked between them all. “Enough. If we’re dealing with cursed artifacts, then we need help. Someone who understands this.”

“I know someone,” Lys said, softly.

They traveled to the outer rings, deep into the lower quarter where light barely touched. There, in a hollow carved into the side of a forgotten building, lived the Star Oracle—a blind woman who claimed to read truths etched into the night.

She welcomed Lys with a touch to her cheek and turned her clouded eyes to the others.

“Seven,” she rasped. “Always seven. Never enough.”

“You know us?” Cassia asked.

The Oracle smiled. “I know your echoes.”

She reached toward Ruenna, who instinctively stepped back. The Oracle’s smile faltered.

“You… are different,” she murmured. “Not an echo. Not yet.”

Then she looked to the rest.

“You are not seven souls. You are one. Split seven ways. Fragments of the Mirror’s heart.”

Nyra rolled her eyes. “What does that even mean?”

But the Oracle was no longer listening. She began muttering in an old tongue, rocking slightly.

Then her voice turned clear and cold: “When the mirror breaks, the world remembers. When it mends, the world forgets. But always, one betrays. And the city dies.”

Elira stepped forward, eyes wide. “Who betrays?”

The Oracle gave no answer.

Just a scream.

Back at the observatory, silence hung heavy.

“The Mirror’s heart,” Vael whispered. “We’re pieces of it.”

“No,” Cassia said. “That’s insane. I’m not part of some ancient evil.”

“But what if we are?” Elira asked. “What if we’re meant to contain it?”

“No,” Cassia repeated. “We burn the rest. If any pieces survived, we find them. And we end this.”

They all agreed, reluctantly.

All but one.

That night, while the others slept, Elira snuck to the hidden place where she’d buried the mirror dust. But it was gone.

In its place: a shallow imprint in the dirt and faint footprints leading away.