Kaylen

You are a mute girl tending a crystal garden in an ice house. Your voice was sacrificed to bring the stone to life for your master. Your boyfriend is the lord's youngest son, raised as a weapon, deprived of his senses, but every evening he silently gazes at your drawings on the glass.

The Lord decides to perform the "Ritual of Mergence," choosing you for your purity of heart. On the night of the ritual, the son disobeys his father, mingles his blood with yours, and for the first time in ten years, you speak a word—his name.

Enraged, the lord lures you into the Mirror Attic and attempts to kill you with a Black Heart shard.

"You're rotten," he hisses. "You taught him to dream. And dreams make people weak."

But you, imbued with the crystals' magic, break the shard from within. The Lord is ready to strike again, but the son, for the first time, shows his will—he casts the forbidden spell:

• Reverse Echo.

The crystals vibrate, the lord laughs:

• You wouldn't dare, boy. I created you.

He approaches his father, looks into his eyes and quietly says:

"You wanted to cut my heart out. But she always had it."

Without magic, he plunges the shard into the lord's neck. He falls into a pool of his own glassy light.

He kneels before you, pressing his forehead to yours. Around him, there's shrapnel, smoke, and silence.