The embers had dimmed, casting only a faint red glow across the forest clearing. Sylen was asleep, her back to the fire, breath steady but shallow. Daelen sat alone, knees pulled close, eyes flicking to every shifting leaf, every creaking branch.
He hadn't slept.
Couldn't.
The Mirror hadn't chosen him.
It had acknowledged him.
And that was far worse.
A gust of wind brushed the trees, and he stiffened. It wasn't cold—but it carried something else. A scent. Burnt sage... iron... and something older. Like dust and ink, smeared across a page long forgotten.
Daelen rose quietly, stepping away from the fire. Just enough to peer through the gaps in the trees.
There was nothing.
And yet—something watched.
He felt it in his bones, like a second spine trembling beneath the surface of his skin. Not killing intent. Not even malice.
Expectation.
His hand drifted to the dagger at his waist—one of Sylen's spares. He hated how natural it felt. Like his body remembered a story he was never meant to be part of.
Then—
A whisper.
No voice. No breath. Just… knowledge, scraped against his thoughts like flint against stone.
"You refused your place."
He spun—nothing behind him.
"And now you walk where only fools bleed."
The Mirror didn't appear.
But he knew.
It was watching.
From the ashes of the fire, the smoke curled into shapes. Long-limbed things. Bent necks and twisted jaws. They danced, pulsed—and vanished the moment his gaze settled on them.
Hallucinations?
Maybe.
Or maybe—
"Daelen?" Sylen's voice, groggy and low.
He turned, and the visions scattered like insects beneath light.
"Can't sleep?" she mumbled, rubbing her eyes.
He hesitated, then nodded.
"Yeah. Just... the forest feels wrong."
Sylen sat up, frowning. "This place is cursed. Has been since the border wars. We're near the Ashline Ridge—entire battalions vanished here."
Of course they did.
Daelen's gaze drifted back to the treetops, still trembling with unseen weight.
"Go back to sleep," he muttered. "I'll take watch."
She didn't argue. Just pulled her cloak tighter and turned over.
But as Daelen sat back down, he felt it again—that pressure behind his eyes. Like something was about to break through his skull.
And in the silence, the name came to him unbidden.
The Hero of the Black Spiral.
The original protagonist.
The supposed savior of this doomed world.
Daelen's breath hitched.
He remembered now.
The story he read. The reviews. The ending that soured everything.
The failure.
He wasn't supposed to be here. He was just a reader. Someone who watched that story spiral out of control.
And now?
Now he was inside it.
A nobody.
A filler.
A corpse that was supposed to die by Chapter Three.
So why... was the world still watching him?