Round 194

Jeane pulls Seraphine close as the chamber groans around them, her wings half-spread for balance. "Don't touch anything," she hisses, eyes scanning the warping shelves. "This place is wrong—everything here wants to pull you apart." The sweet rot smell intensifies, and Jeane's stomach turns. She keeps Seraphine behind her as they approach the mirror, her free hand ready to cast. "Stay close," she warns again. "One wrong step and we're both lost."

Seraphine nods tightly, her fingers twitching with magical energy she can't release without risking the binding circle Jeane maintains between them. "I see it," she says softly, pointing at the mirror's surface where Merrin's room materializes in distorted glass. "That's the room we found her in..." Her reflection stands on the other side, identical but wrong—something in the way it smiles that makes Seraphine's skin crawl.

Jeane steps forward, placing herself between Seraphine and the mirror-world. "We're not staying here," she declares, voice firm despite her racing heart. "I don't care what it offers—reflections lie." The glass ripples under her hand as she touches it, and for a moment, she sees something else—a different room entirely, familiar but wrong, like a memory distorted through water.