40°22'19.6"N 49°49'45.4"E

  Building of the National Assembly

  Yasamal, Bak?

  29.05.2024 – 03.00 UTC +04.00

  My reflection slithered in the room. A windowless, steel-reinforced-walled room. The room where the head of the Shadow Domain and the Envoy of the Caspians deliberated.

  “And to whom will the ships answer then?” Ramin asked. I struggled to recognize him, standing across the room. His stubble had grown into a stylized beard, and his eyes did not look hesitant anymore, soaked in the determination of our last moments in the flight to Bak?. In a sense, I did recognize him. “You suggest baring the city’s defenses, and trust you?”

  “The Caspians do not value trust. We do logic,” a woman’s voice, dragging the consonants through a peculiar syntax, responded almost too fast, as if she had rehearsed this dialogue. I turned to her, on the other side of the room: Züleyka ?lizad? Kaspi, Caspian’s Vice Admiral and their Republic’s Envoy. She looked better than in her pictures. But also so simple, lacking all the ceremonial jewels and intricacies of her outfit from the pictures I had seen. Her clothes, a combination of leather and linen, looked outdated. As if she had stepped out of another century. “And the logic is sound. It is a matter of patience; she will use the Second. She will rip everything apart before we can pierce her.”

  “All these claims for Starling, I have seen her chaos, her resolve. But I have never spoken to her. Maybe this is an element of diplomacy,” Ramin said.

  “Here is your diplomacy.”

  A man dressed in Caspian armor stepped forward from Züleyka’s side and poured a basket full of documents onto the table. Ramin stepped, curious, and shuffled through them.

  “What are those supposed to be?”

  Züleyka took a moment before she responded. Ramin scoured through the documents. I stayed in the middle of the room, hesitant to walk closer to Ramin, although I was curious to see what he saw in that pile.

  “Mockeries,” Züleyka said eventually, “every letter, every demand, every official document or message sent to her, every attempt to reason. A Starling would drop it back, littered with darkened doodles and vague threats.”

  I felt my fingers turning colder. Starling, threatening the Caspians? What for? Ramin turned, and for a moment our gaze crossed. I had to remind myself: they could not perceive me.

  “What for?”

  “Dramatic effect? Who knows. She has grown insane, ?sg?rov. And she has the bow now.”

  The bow… My time in the orchards of O?uz – I was there to guard their flanks. We now hold the bow was what the whisper had said that night before R??id attacked me.

  “I have heard your plan, Envoy, and if your claims are true, I am willing to consider it. But what I have yet to see is proof of your claims of this Second,” Ramin said, his voice shifting from determination to anger.

  “I will show you then, if what it takes is breaking oaths, I will show you,” Züleyka said, “but you would wish I wouldn’t.”

  The cold climbed up from my fingers to my elbows, freezing my arms. Was my Farsight hex ending? I closed my eyes, only to see myself sitting, infinite reflections mirroring endlessly in my room in Qara?uxur. I opened my eyes again, straining to do so.

  I was back in the room, having missed only a second or two.

  “…behold then,” Züleyka said, silver glitterdust hovering in the air.

  Ramin’s mouth almost opened, about to say something.

  It reminds me of her, a whisper in his voice flew past, carrying a thought. Was he thinking of me?

  The glitterdust sparkled and moved. I had no time to interpret; I could only watch.

  “Calamity passes Second. The Bow is needed to unleash it,” Züleyka said. I shivered at the word Calamity. It rang dangerously true. The silver glitterdust formed a valley, a silver vision hovering among us in the room. A valley with houses of ivory, towers of silver reaching the sky, roads far and wide, and commerce of the kingdom. I did not recognize it, “they have all passed before. But my people know of Calamity best.”

  Shooting stars appeared in the sky. Flying through the cloudless silver void, Züleyka’s enchanted dust formed. The shooting stars ignited, and where meteor met earth, civilization crumbled. Annihilation.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “Calamity,” Ramin said.

  “And after Calamity, the sea came in, drowning everything. We are not born of the sea, as your traditions claim,” Züleyka said, “we are progeny of those who survived.”

  The chill crept up from my shoulders into my neck and started spreading into my sternum. My hex was ending, and so was my time spying. But I had to hold on. This was not a simple revelation; these claims were unheard of.

  “This enchantment is the best proof I can present you, ?sg?rov. It has been passed on through my foremothers. And whether you believe it or not, Starling can cause that again.”

  “You said…” Ramin interrupted Züleyka, “the bow is needed to unleash it. And that’s what she has, the Bow? But that is not Calamity itself?”

  “What the silver skies?” Züleyka said, looking in my direction.

  Stay lit only for me, I prayed. Had my invisibility faltered? I moved around, changing position inside the room. If she had gotten a glimpse of me or my essence, I had to confuse her.

  “I thought you said this room cannot be spied upon?” Züleyka said, her voice now stiffening into a gnarl. She snapped her fingers, and the silver glitterdust forming the illusory landscape around us turned into a whirlpool of glitter. And this time, I felt it hitting me, obfuscating my vision, entering my nostrils, and making my breathing hard. I could no longer see the room, only a swirl of silver glitter dust.

  I turned inwards again. Was there a reflection of my Farsight somewhere in the room, where Züleyka could not catch me?

  “Nobody can infiltrate this place, I promise you that,” Ramin’s voice echoed through the tornado of glitter, and then I heard the sound of static, “check the mirror room, over.” Intercomms – he was warning someone.

  “Are you sure? Because I have got nobody right there,” Züleyka said, and with another snap of fingers, the tornado around me tightened. I waved my hands around, trying to push the glitterdust away from my face.

  I had to leave this place; not only was I perceived, but I was running the risk of being caught. I did not know what this woman was capable of.

  I ran around, letting my Farsight seek an exit through the silver chaos.

  “Do not worry, they are coming right away to check the security measures outside,” Ramin said.

  “Oh, I worry. They are in here,” Züleyka said, “I saw their shape where the glitterdust could not pass through.”

  I had been careless. I could not let them capture my reflection. But I had made precautions in my Farsight circle back home. Standing still, I closed my eyes, my eyes flinging back to where my body and soul were.

  I opened my eyes in the room, sitting in a circle. The mirrors no longer showed infinite reflections: they showed swirling silver glitter dust.

  “Fuck okay,” I said, as the mirrors started to shake. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  A shadow of a reflection, my reflection, struggled to breathe and move inside the mirrors. I had little time.

  I stood up and grabbed one of the candles, breaking the circle. The flames of all the candles immediately burned brighter, as if they cherished the disturbance. I lifted it and placed it in another position as I prayed.

  “Don’t stay lit anymore,” I whispered, “but burn bright to burn them all.”

  I picked up two more candles, trying to find the right positions and reshape the circle quickly. One of the mirrors cracked imperceptibly. Züleyka was breaking through.

  “Don’t stay lit anymore,” I whispered, louder then, “but burn bright to burn them all.”

  I had to rearrange the circle quickly. Explode the ward, in the most unstable, uncontrollable way.

  “Don’t stay lit anymore,” I said again and again, “but burn bright to burn them all.”

  A pair of eyes, one eye in each mirror, shaped through the silver dust. They looked right at me. They had seen me.

  I picked up the last two candles to change positions and placed them each below one mirror.

  “I said, bright to burn them all!”

  I closed my eyes, and I was back in my reflection, in the room with the silver glitterdust, Züleyka, and Ramin. I felt the heat inside me. And the light poured through my eyes and mouth, and reflecting through each grain of Züleyka’s glitterdust it multiplied inside the room.

  “Bright to burn them all!” I shouted, and the glitterdust stopped swirling for a moment, letting me find the way. I rushed through the door I had entered.

  “Catch her!” Züleyka shouted back as I sprang the doors open and stepped into the room with the deflectors.

  I looked back. I knew I was covered in brighter and brighter light. I was no longer invisible.

  Züleyka’s eyes were those of wrath, betrayed that a generational secret was revealed to spying eyes. But Ramin’s dark eyes were different. They were those of surprise.

  And a bit of yearning, maybe.

  “Ni-,” he tried to say my name.

  I am sorry, I whispered, so he could only listen.

  I ran into the mirror room, designed to thwart detection by revealing, not designed to withstand the shine of being explosively existing.

  Everything exploded in light.