The mirror between worlds

Selene Virell did not sleep like others.

She drifted between realms, between time. She had since she was nine, when her first vision came in a dream laced with frost—and she awoke speaking words not yet spoken.

Now at twenty-three, Selene rarely dreamed at all.

She saw instead.

And when she saw, the world broke open.

---

That night, as the sky turned violet and stars veiled the empire, Selene sat alone before the Mirror of Threads.

It was a sacred relic passed down for generations, hidden in the observatory of the northern spire. Its surface reflected not faces, but truths—if one dared to look.

Selene dared.

Her silver-blonde hair hung loose, eyes calm but hollow. A thin ribbon of blood trailed from her right nostril—she’d already had two visions that week, and it was too soon for another.

But something had changed in the world.

She felt it in her bones.

The air trembled with threads unspooling.

> “Let me see,” she whispered. “Show me what the others refuse to feel.”

She placed her hands on the cold rim of the mirror. Its surface rippled, not like glass, but like silk soaked in moonlight.

And it began.

---

🌌 The Vision

She stood in the middle of an open sky. No ground. No horizon.

Only endless space and a figure cloaked in white, floating gently like a feather in still air.

The goddess ELARIA.

But something was wrong.

The figure flickered—divine, then human. Robed, then broken. Eyes that once glowed like galaxies now filled with tears. The goddess turned toward Selene.

> “I am not her,” she whispered.

“I didn’t ask for this body… but I will carry what she left behind.”

The voice trembled—not like a goddess, but a girl trying not to fall apart.

Selene felt the threads around her tighten, tangle, and pull.

A thousand timelines spun past her eyes:

A temple crumbling under flames.

A priestess weeping at an empty altar.

A woman cloaked in shadow, cursing the stars.

A soul—a human soul—trapped in light not her own.

And at the center of it all, the false goddess, arms outstretched.

Not running.

Not pretending.