The air cracked with power.
The second girl—Rhaella—stepped through the shattered mirror with a grace too deliberate, too rehearsed. Every movement was an echo twisted backward, like watching someone move in a dream you couldn’t wake from. She was the same height as Elowen. Same face. Same flame-shaped gown.
But everything about her was wrong.
Her smile was colder.
Her flame darker.
And her eyes—gods, those eyes—were bottomless.
Where Elowen’s gaze shimmered with tempered flame and future wisdom, Rhaella’s burned with a void. A hunger that didn’t just want to consume—it wanted to erase.
“Who is she?” I whispered, though I already knew.
The girl who shouldn’t exist.
Elowen’s twisted twin.
“She came from the same moment I did,” Elowen said, stepping between us like a flame-forged s
