The fire alarm rings just before dawn.
Haera jolts awake, her roommate already gone. Smoke doesn't fill the room, but her heart does — with dread. She rushes outside with the others, but pauses mid-step at the sight of the East Wing ablaze.
But no one else sees it.
She blinks.
The fire is gone. In its place: a mirror, freestanding, right where the flames had danced seconds ago. Tall, ornate, the kind you'd find in cursed fairytales.
She steps toward it, unsure.
Cairos grabs her wrist.
"Don't."
"I thought it was fire," she whispers.
"It was meant to look like it. This is worse."
In the reflection, they're not themselves. Her hair is longer, blackened by soot. His hands are bloody. Behind them: rows of bodies in a ballroom.
It flickers.
Then a different scene — this time, they're older. She's wearing a crown of thorns. He's kneeling. Crying. Saying goodbye.
And then the final vision:
Haera, dressed in Asterley's uniform, laying still in a coffin of glass.
The mirror cracks. One long line down the middle. Cairos pulls her back.
"Who showed you this?" he growls.
She stares at the shards. "No one."
But a whisper curls in her ear — not from him:
"Tell him nothing. He broke the mirror last time, too."
---
This is the beginning of an obsessive, otherworldly connection — one that spans across lifetimes, secrets, and blood.
Haera doesn't yet know she's died before. But Cairos does. And he's never once let her go.