Chapter 12: The Plateau Bleeds

The plateau wasn’t solid.

It felt that way at first wide stone plain under a dead sky, wind cutting lines into our faces. But when the shadow swelled and slammed against it, the ground gave. Not a clean break. Not a collapse. More like the world exhaled and the rock softened into something that pulsed.

Stone doesn’t bleed. But this did. Dark streaks seeping up through cracks, like veins cut open underfoot. The air stank of iron.

My sister gagged, clutching my arm. Evelyn cursed under her breath, steadying her gun though it hadn’t done a damn thing yet. Max was still on the ground where I’d dropped him, jaw swollen, blood at the corner of his mouth smiling through it like a wolf waiting for the first corpse.

The mirror woman stood ahead of us, caught between shadow and bleeding stone. Same stance as me. Same tilt of the chin. She didn’t blink.

The shadow pressed closer, pulling the wind into itself, swelling like a lung filling with stolen breath. The laugh echoed again my laugh, warped and hollow. It rattled my bones like a tuning fork.

“Grace,” Evelyn snapped. “Options.”

“Run,” I said.

“To where?”

I didn’t answer.

The stone beneath us shuddered again. A low, wet groan. Cracks spreading outward in jagged lines. Every step felt like walking on a ribcage that might snap open.

The mirror woman finally spoke, her voice sharp, urgent. “It’s feeding. The ground, the air, us. If we stay”

She didn’t finish. She didn’t have to.

The shadow lunged. A surge of black swallowing half the plateau, tendrils snapping like whips. One sliced the rock between me and my sister, spraying blood from the earth. She screamed, and I yanked her back, my hands slick with the stuff.

Max staggered to his feet, coughing, grinning wide through the blood on his teeth. “Now you see it,” he said. “Now you understand. This isn’t a fight. It’s a bargain.”

“Shut up,” Evelyn growled, keeping her gun trained on him even as the ground buckled.

He didn’t. “Something that old doesn’t just kill. It takes. It trades. It shapes the debt around the ones stupid enough to look at it too long.” His eyes flicked to my sister, then back to me. “And you’ve been staring since the tanks.”

I wanted to crush his throat. But the ground gave a sick lurch beneath us, and survival pulled me back.

The mirror woman broke first. She sprinted straight at the shadow, arms wide, like she meant to be swallowed whole. My stomach clenched. My sister shouted.

“Stop!” I roared.

But she didn’t.

The shadow surged to meet her. Black jaws widening, teeth made of nothing but the memory of teeth. The wind screamed, and the plateau split under us with a sound like tearing flesh.

I ran. Not from it. Into it. Same direction as her. My legs pumped fire, lungs shredding, every step shaking under the quake of bleeding stone. My sister’s voice cracked behind me, begging me not to go, but I couldn’t let her the mirror do it alone.

The shadow hit.

Cold. Not the kind that numbs the kind that digs into marrow, that steals the rhythm from your heart and replaces it with something wrong. My skin crawled. My vision split. I saw myself from the outside, saw the shadow swallowing me whole, saw the mirror woman vanish inside it and I kept moving anyway.

I slammed into her. We hit the stone hard, bodies tangling, teeth cutting lips. She fought me like I was the enemy, fists like mine, strength like mine.

“You can’t stop it,” she hissed. Her face was inches from mine, my own eyes burning back at me. “One of us has to give.”

“Then it won’t be you,” I snarled.

The shadow’s tendrils whipped down. Evelyn fired again useless. The bullets vanished in the black. Max just watched, smiling like this was his theater. My sister sobbed my name.

I pushed the mirror woman back, shoving her behind me. Her scream tore through the air as the shadow struck.

It hit me full in the chest.

The world went white.

Not light absence. White like silence, like bone stripped of blood. My ears rang. My heart faltered. For a second, I was nowhere. No body. No thought. Just the laugh, my laugh, rolling endless.

Then impact.

The plateau threw me back like a rag doll. I hit hard, skidding across stone slick with blood. My lungs seized, gasping. My vision doubled. The shadow rippled, unsettled, like it hadn’t expected resistance.

The mirror woman crawled to me, face pale, eyes wide. She pressed her hand to my chest. My chest. Hers. Ours.

“It wants you,” she whispered.

“No,” I rasped, clutching her wrist. “It wants us.”

Behind her, the ground screamed. Cracks tore wider, blood spraying in arcs. The shadow grew taller, blotting out the sky. My sister clung to Evelyn, both of them backing toward the far edge where the plateau broke off into nothing.

Max stood in the middle, arms wide like a preacher welcoming his god. “This is it,” he called, voice rising over the roar. “The end of the plateau. The end of the debt. Choose, Grace. Yourself or your reflection.”

I dragged myself upright, chest heaving. My hands shook. The mirror woman didn’t move. She just watched me, waiting.

I thought of my sister. Her soft laugh when we were kids. The bracelet on her wrist. The look she gave the mirror when she thought I wasn’t watching.

I thought of Evelyn always calculating, never trusting, but still here. Still fighting.

I thought of Max, his hunger, his games.

And I thought of the shadow. The thing that had my laugh, my face, my heartbeat in its teeth.

I stood. Blood dripped from my palms, mixing with the stone’s.

“No bargains,” I said. My voice cracked but held.

The shadow surged again, jaws wide, hungry.

I grabbed the mirror woman’s hand and pulled her with me. Straight toward it.

Her eyes widened, my eyes, but she didn’t resist. Together we ran. Two bodies. One face. One laugh.

The plat

eau split beneath us, stone and blood roaring. The shadow swallowed the sky whole.

And we dove in.