The Garden of Riddles left us hollow.
No one spoke as we walked. The silence wasn't just around us anymore — it was in us. Like the orchard had taken something and wasn't giving it back.
We followed the narrow path as it wound down through stone-carved ridges and under a canopy of hanging roots. Light dimmed to grey. The trees thinned.
And then suddenly… there was nothing.
No trees. No path.
Just a cliff.
And beyond it — an ocean.
But not an ocean made of water.
It stretched out in endless waves of glassy, shifting memory. The surface rippled, but not with wind. It was faces that moved across it — a thousand of them, some blurred, some clear, floating just beneath. Not real people. Not ghosts.
Reflections.
Arisa stepped to the edge. "The ocean of masks."
"How do we cross?" James asked, his voice rough.
Alice pointed.
There, stretching across the water, was a bridge. It was narrow — just wide enough for one person at a time — and made from twisted roots and pale bones woven together like rope. It arched across the endless expanse like a forgotten nerve.
"It only holds if you mean your steps," Alice said. "Lie to yourself, and you fall."
She didn't follow us.
The bridge groaned under our feet.
I went first.
Each step made the masks below shimmer. They turned as I moved — eyes watching from beneath the waves, mouths murmuring things I couldn't hear.
Then, halfway across, the water changed.
It started rising.
Just a ripple at first.
Then a swell.
Then three figures pulled themselves from the water.
And I felt my blood go cold.
They were us.
Perfect, exact — but wrong.
Twisted.
Reflections not made in water, but in something crueler.
My mirror-self stepped toward me, barefoot on the glass-like sea. His smile was sharp and slow, and his eyes gleamed like broken gold.
"You're afraid," he said, voice identical to mine. "Not of dying. Of being seen."
Behind me, I heard Arisa gasp — her double had surfaced too. She looked the same, except colder. Empty. Her hair was slicked down and her eyes were flat as mirrors.
James's reflection walked beside his real self like a shadow, grinning too wide.
We didn't run.
We couldn't.
The bridge sealed behind us.
My double circled me. "You pretend to lead because it's the only way to forget what you did."
I clenched my fists. "You're not me."
He laughed. "I'm what you won't say out loud. I'm the part of you that never stopped enjoying the darkness."
"You don't get to define me."
"Then prove it."
The reflection lunged — but didn't strike.
Instead, he spoke. He whispered truths I wasn't ready to hear, spinning doubts like blades. Every failure. Every lie I told myself to keep going.
The fight wasn't physical.
It was worse.
It was memory.
It was pain.
The only weapon I had was truth.
"I'm scared of becoming what I was," I said aloud. "I'm scared that everything I've done is just a prettier mask over something rotten."
The double paused.
I kept going.
"But I'm still here. And that means something."
Cracks formed in his chest. Light pushed through.
He stepped back, smiling no longer.
Then — he shattered.
Arisa's voice rang out next.
"I feel everything," she said, shouting over the soundless ocean. "I see too much and I care too hard and I still keep walking. That's not weakness. That's strength."
Her mirror self crumbled like glass, dissolving into the sea.
James trembled — then said quietly, "I'm not the hero. I've failed more times than I can count. But I still choose to stand beside them. That's enough."
And his double vanished too.
The bridge lit beneath our feet.
The path continued.
We stepped onto the far side, breathless, raw, scraped down to the core of who we were. None of us spoke, but something had changed. Not just the silence between us — but the way we held it.
We had passed the ocean.
And waiting on the other side, tucked in a stone alcove carved with whispering runes, sat a small, perfect object.
The second stone.
The Mask of Mimicite.
It didn't gleam like treasure. It didn't hum like the Aurumglass.
It was quiet.
Flat black.
But when I lifted it, I felt everything.
All the falsehoods we wear. All the truths we hide. It pulsed like a second heart in my hand.
I didn't put it on.
Not yet.
We weren't done.
Behind us, the ocean was still. Silent. Waiting for whoever came next.