Chapter 116: The Mirror Realm
The world was all wrong.
Isla woke beneath a pale sky with no sun, no stars. There were just shifting shadows that mimicked trees, buildings and memories. Everything felt wrong. Her breath steamed in the cold, but the air was heavy, thick with silence.
It was as if she knew this place, and yet… not at all.
The Sombrosi had pulled her in. Not by force but by name.
Somewhere deep inside, the child curled in her womb still pulsed with life, but she could feel their presence circling, waiting and whispering. They wanted the baby. But more than that… they wanted her sense of self.
A faint chime echoed through the dreamscape and then, she saw him.
Damian stood before her, standing beside the ruins of their old village, the one that had burned when she was just a child. But… that wasn’t possible. Damian had never been there.
“Isla,” he called gently, as if coaxing a child. “You’re safe now. It’s over. Come home.”
Her heart stuttered. He looked like Damian, even sounded like him, but his eyes were wrong, too calm and too perfect. She was used to seeing hurricanes of passion and strength within his silver irises.
Overall, this Damian was too controlled.
She stepped back. “You’re not him.”
The creature in Damian’s skin smiled.
“Of course I am. I’m the version of him you most want to see. Loyal. Unquestioning. Yours.”
The illusion shattered, the face splitting open like porcelain, revealing swirling darkness beneath. It was the stuff of nightmares, it had no mouth and had long dark tendrils emanating from it, tendrils of memory and mimicking the feeling and promises of love.
Isla didn’t think twice, she ran.
Back in the waking world, chaos bloomed.
Lucia stood over Isla’s unconscious body, murmuring incantations lost to most. Rohen kept his blade unsheathed, and Damian didn’t leave Isla’s side for a second. But something was wrong with the air, a rotting sweetness, subtle and cloying.
Raven’s eyes flared open.
“There’s a Sombrosi spy here.”
Gasps followed.
Leo stepped forward. “You think one of us is already corrupted?”
“No,” Raven said. “I know one of you is.”
She reached into her robes and pulled free a vial of amber liquid, then drew a circle on the floor with silver chalk. “This reveals tampered memories. No Sombrosi can hide under its light.”
She turned her gaze toward each of them, one by one.
Then… it flicked instantly towards Brienne.
“Step forward.”
Isla struggled and stumbled through endless scenes, some were real some were not, depicting her father’s death, her first shift, the night she met Damian. But none of them were right. Each was… softened and manipulated. She could barely discern reality from fiction anymore. The tendrils of memories were interlocking and idealising. She began to fight against their control. That’s when she saw herself.
A version of her wearing white robes, holding the child in her arms, but with eyes as dark as pitch, and a mouth stitched shut. The stitched-Isla reached out. The real Isla took a step back.
“You’ve already begun to forget,” the doppleganger whispered without moving her lips. “Names, faces and choices are all yours to replay. This is how it starts.”
“No.” Isla gritted her teeth. “I remember who I am.”
The doppleganger’s smile was eerie. “Do you? Then name your betrayer.”
Back in the camp, Raven finished the ritual. The circle ignited. Brienne stood in the center, eyes wide and the light turned black.
A heartbeat passed as reached for their weapons.
“No!” Brienne gasped. “I didn’t know, I didn’t ask for this!”
But the proof burned through the air: part of her mind had been rewritten. A single conversation, implanted memory, or suggestion could have been used by the Sombrosi without her realizing it.
“She’s a vessel,” Raven said. “They haven’t fully taken her. But she was marked.”
Damian looked between them with clenched teeth. “Then we cleanse it.”
Lucia stepped forward with something that looked like bone and iron braided together. “This won’t be painless.”
Brienne didn’t move. “Do it.”
In the dream, Isla stood before a door etched with hundreds of versions of her name. The stitched-Isla reached for her once more.
“You can leave. But if you do, you’ll forget who Damian truly is. You’ll forget Brienne’s pain. You’ll forget your child’s first words when they come. You’ll be powerful, but empty.”
Isla stared at the door, then at the copy of herself and with every ounce of will, she tore it open.
Pain unlike anything she’d ever known ripped through her skull. She woke screaming. Damian caught her before she fell.
“I’m here,” he whispered. “I’m here.”
From where Brienne lay, still convulsing, the ritual burning the infection from her mind. That is when a single gasp of recognition reached out.
“Isla,” Brienne whispered. “I remember… everything.”