The Forgotten Pulse of the Bond-Chapter 30: The Girl in the Mirror

Camille didn’t sleep after the incident at the lake.

Even after Elara placed six wards around her quarters. Even after Magnolia sat beside her until dawn. Something had shifted. Not in the bond, not in the seal but in her.

And it was no longer silent.

She dressed slowly after sunrise, eyes hollow, fingers trembling as they laced the cords of her blouse. She didn’t know what she’d find in the mirror. And still, she couldn’t stay away.

The western corridor was empty when she stepped into it.

The others were likely preparing for the council briefing, or pretending the camp hadn’t begun fracturing around her.

She passed by the sealed archives, the old chapel, and the bloodline chamber before reaching the unused observatory chamber tucked behind the scriptorium.

It hadn’t been opened in years.

She touched the rusted iron handle.

And the door unlatched on its own.

Inside, the dust was thick, but the air was clear.

No cobwebs.

No decay.

Only stillness.

And in the corner half-covered by a velvet drape stood the mirror.

Tall.

Wide.

Old as any relic in the Keep.

Camille had seen it once before, as a child, when she’d been too young to understand the way it breathed.

Because it did breathe.

Now she knew.

And yet she crossed the room anyway.

Drawn.

Her fingers trembled as she pulled the cloth back.

The glass didn’t reflect her.

It reflected only smoke.

At first.

Then it cleared.

And there she was.

Almost.

The girl in the mirror wore her face.

But her eyes were wrong too black, too wide. The whites of them were gray. Her lips were red. Not painted. Blooded.

She didn’t blink.

Didn’t move.

Until Camille whispered, "Who are you?"

Then the girl smiled.

"I’m the part you left behind."

Camille swallowed. "Where?"

The voice came from inside the glass, but the sound echoed in her head.

"In the water. In the fire. In the blood you never spilled."

"You’re not me."

"I’m more you than what you are now."

Camille stepped back.

The girl stepped forward.

Exactly mirroring her.

"You’re a ghost," Camille hissed.

"No," said the girl. "You are."

Camille turned to flee.

But the door was gone.

Stone replaced it.

As if the room had sealed her in.

The mirror pulsed.

The girl’s face twisted.

"She’ll choose him," she said. "And he’ll choose her."

"Who?"

"You already know."

Camille closed her eyes.

"No."

"He kissed her."

Her eyes snapped open.

The reflection grinned.

"While you were dreaming."

"No."

"While you were sinking."

"No!"

The mirror cracked.

Camille dropped to her knees.

Her breath came fast.

The reflection faded.

And the glass turned to black.

The door opened behind her again quietly.

Magnolia stood in the threshold.

She had heard the shout.

But what she saw made her freeze.

Camille, kneeling before the mirror, trembling, the glass spiderwebbed with fine lines, light pulsing at the center like a heartbeat.

Magnolia stepped inside.

"Camille?"

Camille turned slowly.

And said, "She knows."

"Who?"

"The girl in the mirror."

"She’s not real."

"She is now."

He unfolded it with callused fingers.

Four words.

"Where she was made."

That was all.

No explanation. No threat.

And yet his heart thudded once deep and sharp because he knew what it meant.

Not where Camille had been born.

Where she had been altered.

He was out the door within minutes.

The Keep’s outer circle bled into old forestland.

Not the sacred woods with their sunlit paths and remembered hunts but the other side. The dead hills. The bone thickets. Where root systems grew wrong and whispers sometimes stirred the moss.

Rhett rode alone, cutting west through the Vale’s borderlands, following a map no one had updated in two decades. He passed broken markers. Overgrown fences. Relics of the old wolf villages before the council centralized power.

He found the well just before sundown.

Tucked between two leaning stones, partially caved in, covered in ivy and ash.

He dismounted.

And waited.

The silence felt heavy.

He dropped the parchment into the well.

It vanished.

Then

A click.

A pulse beneath the earth.

And the ground split.

He dropped six feet into darkness, landing hard on old shale.

A tunnel stretched ahead, barely tall enough for a grown man to walk upright. The air stank of rust and old binding oil. The walls were smooth deliberately carved. Old bond seals etched every few meters, most long faded, some glowing faintly under his hand.

He walked.

And walked.

Until the tunnel opened into a cavern.

Not natural.

A dome.

Rhett stopped cold.

In the center of the chamber stood four cribs.

Iron.

Each with runes carved along the base.

Only one had a name.

Caelia.

His breath caught.

His hand moved before his thoughts did.

He touched the edge.

And memory hit.

Not his.

Hers.

A flash of cold air. Screams. Light overhead too bright. The taste of something metallic. And silence, horrible and waiting, while figures moved beyond the edge of sight.

He saw a child barely walking strapped to a stone table.

A needle descending.

Elara’s voice, faint, whispering a lullaby in a language not taught anymore.

He reeled back.

The memory shattered.

And Rhett fell to his knees.

When he could breathe again, he stood.

He searched the rest of the room.

Found a ledger.

Unmarked. But inside

Dates. Symbols. Subject designations.

Test entries on essence migration.

Seal failure. Mind fracture. Memory grafting.

Camille’s name appeared fourteen times.

Each line colder than the last.

"Subject Caelia shows resilience to memory flooding. Proceed with controlled bond exposure under lunar restraints."

"Elara authorized emotional suppression override. Result: partial rejection."

"Subject survived trial. Sealed. Transferred."

Rhett closed the book.

His hands trembled.

They hadn’t just protected her.

They’d used her.

Built her.

Bound her.

And sent her into the world without warning.

He climbed back up in silence.

The sky was darker now.

The stars sharper.

But Rhett didn’t ride back immediately.

He stood at the edge of the clearing.

And whispered, "I’m so sorry."

Because whatever she became

They had made it happen.

Not her.

Them.

The ink was still damp.

He picked it up, unfolded it.

Four words.

Where she was made.

He stood frozen in the dim light, the words bleeding into the parchment like old blood. No seal. No name. But every part of him knew this was no prank, no trick.

It was truth.

And someone wanted him to see it.

He left within the hour.

No attendants. No second horse. No Elara.

The north woods bled into the deadland paths quickly once you crossed the warding line. Trees became less familiar. The moss lost its color. And the silence grew heavier with every mile.

Only wolves dared tread this far without armor or blessing.

And only fools returned from it whole.

He rode hard, reins gripped, jaw clenched, his mind flashing not with maps or warnings but with her Camille’s voice in the dark, the tremor beneath her smile, the shadow in her blood that no one could name. Not even her.

She had said once, long ago, "I feel like I’m someone else’s memory."

Now Rhett wondered if that was literal.

At sunset, he found the well.

Tucked between two crumbling boundary stones, half-swallowed by frostroot and silence. It had no name, no marker, nothing to suggest its significance except the way the air around it hummed.

He dismounted.

Waited.

The world remained still.

Then he dropped the parchment into the well.

The air shivered.

And the ground cracked open.

The tunnel was narrow, just enough for his shoulders, and sloped deep into the bones of the earth.

Rhett struck flame to flint and lit a torch. The walls bore markings old sigils long outlawed, etched in sharp, burning runes that pulsed faintly under firelight. Bloodline symbols. Moon phase codes. Modified gate seals.

He walked for what felt like hours.

And then it opened.

A cavern.

Artificial.

Deliberate.

A lab.

His breath caught.

Not because of what he saw.

But because of what he felt.

The walls hummed with suppressed grief.

The floor bore sigils of restraint and suppression. Chains hung from iron loops along the edges, not for prisoners for infants.

Four cribs stood in the center.

Iron-wrought.

Runed.

Only one had a plaque.

Caelia.

His fingers trembled.

He stepped closer.

Each bar of the cradle was engraved in languages he barely recognized ancient forms of protection, mental silencing, memory siphoning.

This wasn’t a place of birth.

It was a forge.

For something not quite human.

He touched the edge of the crib.

And the vision took him.

It wasn’t his.

It wasn’t entirely hers either.

But it was real.

The room filled with screams Elara’s voice chanting in the background, Sterling’s shadow looming, a blade dipped in moon-essence touching a child’s wrist.

There was crying.

Not from fear.

From pain that didn’t yet know its name.

The mark burned.

The seal flared.

And a voice whispered: "Subject 34-C stabilized. Begin phase two."

Rhett tore his hand away, falling back against the cold stone.

His breathing came fast. Sharp.

But the memory remained.

Etched into his ribs.

He found the journal in a locked glass case.

It was unlabeled, the leather cracked but intact.

Inside everything.

Every test.

Every violation.

Every phase Camille had survived without knowing she had.

"Subject Caelia shows exceptional resistance to soul compression. Unexpected results during artificial bond replication."

"Transference successful. Elara assigned to raise within protected memory web. Access restricted."

"Sterling refuses to terminate. Recommends seal implantation under cover of bond assignment."

"Camille Voss designated. Memory wipe incomplete. Proceed with caution."

Rhett dropped the book.

His stomach turned.

It was all a lie.

Her name.

Her bond.

Her fate.

All forged in this tomb.

He sat there, knees drawn up, torchlight flickering over his face as rage slowly replaced the horror.

Camille had never been a choice.

She’d been built.

Bred.

Altered.

And no one told her.

The world had let her grow up inside a cage she couldn’t see, and when she started hearing voices, they called it madness.

When all along it was memory trying to claw its way back.

And now she was breaking because the people who should’ve told her never did.

Elara.

Sterling.

The Council.

And him.

Because he suspected.

He always had.

He just hadn’t wanted it to be true.

He took one last look at the crib.

Ran his fingers over the name again.

Not Camille.

Not truly.

But she made that name her own.

He wasn’t sure how he would ever tell her what he found.

He wasn’t sure he had the right.

But she had the right to know.

So he took the journal.

He climbed out of the cave.

Mounted his horse.

And rode back through the dark.

Not to save her.

Not to pity her.

But to fight beside her for the first time, knowing exactly what they were up against.