Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 95475 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 477(@200wpm)___ 382(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95475 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 477(@200wpm)___ 382(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
Bastien had done this before. Years ago, when distance made ordinary correspondence impossible and he’d needed to reach someone through glass. The working had cost him blood and three days of recovery. But it had functioned.
He cleared space on his desk, pushed aside the maps and notes, and stacked the legal pads carefully on the file cabinet. He needed a clean workspace. Ritual was about precision. Intention made physical through exact measurement and proper materials.
The silver powder first. He poured it into his palm, measured by weight rather than volume. Felt for the right amount—his senses extending through the particles, checking for purity, for resonance. Then he traced a circle on his desk with the powder. Perfect circumference, no gaps, no irregularities. The circle created boundaries. Defined inside from outside. Protected the working from interference.
The ink next. He opened the vial carefully—the contents were volatile, reactive to intention. Sharp scent rose from it. Metallic. Blood and rain and something else underneath, something that existed in the space where material met immaterial. He set the vial in the center of the silver circle.
Paper. He cut it to exact dimensions with a straight edge and razor blade. Five inches by three inches. The proportions mattered. Sacred geometry. The same mathematics Charlotte had used in her mirror placements, the ratios that created resonance across distance.
Ritual tools arranged around the circle. Candles at cardinal points—north, south, east, west. He lit them with matches, not magic. Flame born from friction, not conjuring. More honest that way. Less likely to attract attention from entities that watched for power being used carelessly.
The incantation came from memory. Old French, pre-revolutionary, the kind spoken in Louisiana when it was still colony rather than state. But older meanings layered beneath the words. Latin roots. Greek influences. Languages that pre-dated Christianity but got folded into its symbolism.
He spoke the words quietly. Precisely. Each syllable enunciated the way Charlotte had written them, with accent marks indicating which vowels to hold, which consonants to soften.
The candle flames steadied. Stopped flickering. Burned straight up despite the air movement from the open window.
Bastien dipped his pen into the ink. A tool from the same era as the mirror—steel nib, wooden handle worn smooth by decades of use. He’d bought it at an estate sale, felt the residual energy in it from whoever had used it for correspondence across a lifetime.
He wrote on the paper in careful script. Charlotte’s handwriting style—he’d studied it long enough to replicate the specific curves, the way she connected letters, the pressure she applied to thick and thin strokes:
I know what you’re doing. It won’t work.
Direct statement. No flourish. No philosophy. Just tactical assessment delivered as fact.
Then he held the paper up to the mirror Gideon had sent. The one still sitting on his desk, surface still faintly fogged. He focused his will through the paper. Through the ink. Through the glass. Felt for the connection he knew existed—the network Gideon had activated, the channels that now linked every reflective surface in range.
The connection caught. He felt it like a hook setting. Like a door opening in space that shouldn’t have doors.
Power flowed through him. Not his power. The network’s. Gideon’s infrastructure, accepting his message because Bastien was using the right protocols. The right magical grammar. Charlotte’s techniques that Gideon had inherited or stolen or reconstructed.
The paper glowed. Heat built in Bastien’s fingertips where he held it. The ink activated, absorbed the message, and prepared to transmit it through the mirror network to wherever Gideon was monitoring from.
Then the paper burned. Not fire. Pure energy consumption. The physical substrate destroyed as the message transferred to immaterial medium. Ash drifted down onto his desk, pale gray against dark wood.
Message sent through the mirror network.
Bastien set the pen down. His hand was steady. It always was. But the working had cost him—he felt the depletion, energy drawn from reserves he’d need to replenish later. Mirror-forged ink didn’t run on ambient power. It ran on intent. On will. On the practitioner’s life force translated through sympathetic magic into communication across distance.
He waited, counting seconds in his head. If Gideon was monitoring the channel—and he had to be—the response would come immediately. Delays meant thinking. Immediate response meant preparation. It would indicate Gideon had anticipated this move and already composed his reply.
The mirror’s surface rippled.
Words appeared. Not in fog this time. Etched directly into the reflection, glowing faintly:
You still believe in choice?
But the words were backward. Inverted. As if Bastien was reading them from the wrong side.
The implication settled cold in his stomach. Everything he did, Gideon had predicted. Every response, every tactical decision, already accounted for. The illusion of agency in a system that permitted only predetermined outcomes.
His anger rose. He controlled it. Didn’t let it show on his face, didn’t let it affect his breathing. But it was there, sharp and focused.