Page 33 of Beasts of Shadows #1

“Cody’s right, you’re fucking insane,” Cat hisses, once we’re out of earshot. Kilronan and Nikolai have already split off to search for the mirror. “I hear trolls have massive cocks. And I’m tiny—there’s no way that thing will—.”

“Shut up and listen,” I snap, robbing the OPORD from her fingers. “I’m going to force a vision. One that shows me where to find the mirror.”

Cat crosses her arms over her chest.

“And then what? This whole night is basically a game of keep away.”

“Let’s just see where it is, first, and we’ll go from there.”

I reach into my jacket, pull out the OPORD.

The paper hums faintly in my fingers—Percy’s iron ink, the wax seal, the charred edges. Intent woven into parchment. A command from above. Orders soaked in tradition, expectation, blood.

I press it flat against the tree and lay my hand over it, fingers splayed wide. Close my eyes.

Reach.

There’s always a cost when I force it. The future doesn’t like being pulled by the hair.

The ink prickles against my palm. The world sharpens and then distorts—like being yanked through a keyhole lined with knives.

Sound falls away. My breath disappears. My pulse roars.

When I open my eyes, I’m not in the forest anymore.

I’m standing in a vast hall of light and silence.

The air smells like heat and parchment and old oil. Dust dances in golden shafts spilling through a cracked oculus high above. Towering shelves rise like columns around me, stacked with scrolls, tomes, blades, bones.

Βιβλιοθ?κη τη? Αλεξ?νδρεια?.

The Library of Alexandria.

The mirror sits on a pedestal of obsidian and bone, rippling faintly like disturbed water. It doesn’t reflect my body. It reflects something deeper. Darker. A hunger I don’t name.

I take a step closer.

The floor groans.

Veins of black spread beneath the stone, spidering out from the pedestal. Cracks. Or maybe roots. Or maybe something reaching up.

Whispers scrape the edges of my hearing.

Don’t take it.

Not yet.

She’ll see you.

A sudden image flashes—silver eyes opening in the dark. Wide. Smiling.

Calea.

And then it’s gone.

The vision snaps like a wire pulled too tight.

I lurch back into myself, breath ragged. My nose is bleeding. My teeth ache.

Cat steadies me by the arm. “Nari. Hey. You good?”

I nod. Lie. “Yeah. Fine.”

She doesn’t look convinced. “Did you see it?”

“The Library,” I rasp. “The mirror’s in the Library of Alexandria.”

Cat lets out a low whistle. “No pressure.”

I don’t mention the cracks. Or the whisper. Or the grin with silver eyes.

I fold the OPORD and tuck it away.

Let them come.

#

We reach the entrance just before midnight.

The forest breaks away to reveal a staircase, half-swallowed by roots and time, leading down into the earth. The air changes as we descend—cooler, drier, thin with dust and old breath.

The ruins aren’t above ground. They’re buried. Preserved like a secret.

The corridor opens into a sunken chamber—pillars rise like petrified trees, and the walls are carved with ancient scripts in languages I don’t recognize.

The stone glows faintly, lit by strips of moss that pulse with silver-blue light.

Scrolls and tomes rot quietly on collapsed shelves, some fused to the stone itself like the bones of old gods.

It’s dead silent, until Cat’s voice cuts through it. “Well, this explains the world’s worst custody battle.”

I glance over. She’s wandered toward one of the walls, her fingers brushing a crumbling tapestry still clinging to the stone.

“Come again?”

She tilts her head, smirking. “Calea binding Thantos. Or seducing him. Kinda hard to tell with all the writhing and smoke. Gods and incest, it’s a wonder none of them aren’t more jacked up.”

I join her.

The fabric’s rotted in places, but what remains is startlingly vivid. Red thread for blood. Gold for divine sigils. Black for shadow. A god—tall, wreathed in smoke—is being ripped apart and shackled with three glowing chains. A crowned woman looms above him. Calea.

Below, blocky script sprawls unevenly across the bottom:

He who swallows death shall rise again, when the seals are undone—

—when first, the true heir is born of God blood,

—then, the cursed Raven is loosed from his eternal chain,

—finally, when the Winter Queen is slain by the hand of his bride.

Cat whistles low. “Romantic, isn’t it? Whoever sewed this was clearly on something strong.” She’s not smiling anymore. In fact, she has her arms curled across her form like she’s cold. “You think it’s legit?”

“We’re not here for prophecy,” I mutter, tearing my gaze away. But the words echo anyway. Rise again. Born of god blood. Slain by the hand of his bride.

I shake it off. There’s only one thing I came for.

The mirror sits on a pedestal in the center of the atrium—encased in a sprawl of curling obsidian roots, as though the earth tried to choke it out but failed. There are other sacred objects. Other curses, but this is the one we came for.

Gothel’s looking glass.

It doesn’t shimmer. It breathes. The surface is fluid and slow, a glass lake untouched by wind.

“‘Gothel’s looking glass is a wretched, horrible thing,’” Cat reads from the tag on it.

I glance at the hand mirror—not three inches away. It’s small. Almost delicate. The kind of thing someone might keep tucked in a drawer beside perfume bottles and pressed flowers.

But I can feel the weight of it in the air. Like it’s watching me. Like it already knows.

“‘It looks into the hidden desires of my soul. The things I never breathed a word of—the things I’m too frightened to even think. And it showed me truths I was not ready to know.’ Well. That’s definitely not safe viewing for the family.”

I reach for it—then stop.

My hand hovers just above the handle. Just touching it could be enough.

And I know I shouldn’t. I know .

Whatever I see, I won’t be able to unsee. Whatever it shows me, I’ll have to live with.

But gods, I’m so tired of not knowing who I am. Of being half-shaped. Half-seen.

What if this is the only way to find out?

What if the part of me I’m afraid of… is the only part strong enough to survive this place?

The hum of the mirror grows louder, matching the pace of my pulse.

I close my fingers around the handle.

The mirror is still face-down, cool and ornate in my palm.

I don’t flip it right away. My grip tightens. My pulse hammers.

And then, finally, I turn it over.

The image shifts instantly.

I see a throne made of bone and antler, shrouded in mist. I see a woman rising from a sea of blood, her hands dripping, her eyes wrong—mine, but not. And I see them:

Ravi at my right. Nikolai at my left.

Both silent. Both shadowed.

The forest burns behind them. The sky splits open.

And at our feet lies Calea, silver eyes wide, mouth parted in a silent scream.

I jerk back before I can see what I do next.

My nose is bleeding. My lungs burn. The taste of power is thick on my tongue.

And gods help me, I want it.

Not just the throne. Not just the power.

I want the world to kneel.