Ren's breath ghosted into the cold air as he stared into the cradle's still surface. It no longer showed his reflection — only a dark tunnel beneath the liquid silver, flickering with shadows that shifted like slow smoke.
Lyria's hand was warm on his shoulder. Veluria stood at his side, her eyes half-lidded, that dangerous smile curved across her dark lips.
"You did well, mirror walker," Veluria murmured, her voice velvet-smooth. "Most who taste the cradle's silver drown in its hunger before they even breathe its secrets."
Ren swallowed. His throat still burned where her kiss had pressed the silver into him. Beneath the buzz of desire still coiled low in his belly, something darker pulsed — a slow ache that wasn't quite pain or pleasure, but something in between.
"What's on the other side?" he asked, voice hoarse.
Veluria's gloved fingers brushed under his chin, tilting his face toward hers. Her violet eyes glowed faintly in the cradle's light. "A garden older than the forest above. Where every sin ever whispered to the mirror first bloomed."
She leaned in, her lips ghosting his ear. "And you, sweet Ren, get to walk it — as your reward."
Lyria's laugh was soft, low, almost pitying. "A reward… or a promise of what you'll lose, if you don't learn to want it enough."
Before he could answer, Veluria's fingers slid to his chest — pressing flat over the mark the cradle left beating under his skin. A shiver raced through him, tearing a gasp from his lips.
"Step forward," she whispered. "Taste what waits for you."
He had no choice. His body moved — or maybe the cradle pulled him. His bare feet dipped into the liquid silver — cold at first, then warm, then gone altogether as it sucked him through like a sigh swallowed by deep water.
---
He stumbled out the other side into light — soft, golden, and impossibly warm after the cradle's cold breath. Ren's eyes widened.
A vast garden sprawled out before him — a labyrinth of white marble paths winding through blossoms that glowed with faint inner light. Flowers bloomed on impossible vines that coiled around pale statues — figures of men and women caught in poses of rapture and ruin. Some were half-buried, some half-broken — all impossibly lifelike, as if frozen mid-pleasure or mid-prayer.
A hush hung over the garden. Somewhere distant, water trickled in gentle streams, but there were no birds, no wind — only the sigh of petals drifting down like snow.
Veluria stepped from the cradle's gateway behind him, her silk gown whispering across marble. She watched him, her smile unreadable.
"This is the Garden of Forgotten Sins," she said softly. "Where every secret bargain once made through the mirror took root… and where the souls who broke their bargains rest forever."
Ren's heart hammered. He stepped closer to one of the statues — a young man, his face frozen in a look of blissful surrender, his arms outstretched as if offering himself to something unseen.
He flinched when he saw the faint crack at the statue's throat — from it, silver light pulsed, beating slow like a dying heart.
"They were like you once," Veluria murmured, drifting closer until her breath tickled his neck. "Hungry. Lost. Innocent enough to taste. Foolish enough to believe they could touch power and walk away unburned."
Her hands slipped around his waist — silk gloves gliding over his bare skin. "But you, Ren… you could be different."
She pressed her lips to his shoulder, biting just enough to drag a gasp from him. "You could own this garden. Claim the sins buried here… as fuel for your own."
Lyria appeared from the drifting blossoms, her bare feet silent on marble. She knelt before him, fingers trailing along his thigh. "Or you could end like them — sweet marble, forever frozen mid-moan, your secrets feeding the cradle until the forest grows fat on your innocence."
Ren's pulse thundered. The garden's warmth tangled with the heat Veluria's touch sparked in his veins. The statues seemed to watch him — a thousand pairs of stone eyes, each one a mirror for what he could become.
Veluria's voice curled around him like smoke. "This is your reward, mirror walker — a glimpse of what's possible. If you want more… you must give more."
Her lips grazed his ear, soft and terrible. "Will you?"
Ren's voice trembled. But as Lyria's warm palm slid higher on his thigh, as Veluria's mouth trailed heat up his neck, the word slipped out before he could cage it:
"…Yes."
Ren's whisper — that single, trembling "Yes" — vanished into the hush of the marble garden like a prayer swallowed by the petals drifting around them.
Veluria's smile curved sharp and dark. Lyria's fingers, warm on his thigh, traced a slow path upward — the promise of pleasure merging with the garden's silence until Ren couldn't tell which was real.
Veluria circled behind him. Her silk-draped form pressed close, gloved hands slipping up his chest to rest over the mark that pulsed above his heart — the cradle's brand, still faintly silver beneath his skin.
"You offered the cradle your truth," she whispered, her breath tasting his ear. "Now let the garden taste your lies."
Ren's breath hitched. "My lies…?"
Lyria giggled low, pressing her lips to his stomach — hot, soft. "All the wants you pretend you don't want. All the forbidden things you bury when you stare at your mirror alone."
Veluria's fingers pressed harder to his chest — and suddenly the runes carved into the marble beneath his feet flickered to life, threading out in delicate spirals that pulsed brighter with every racing beat of his heart.
She guided him down, kneeling until cold stone kissed his knees. Lyria crawled closer, her hair brushing his thighs, her breath already making his skin burn.
Veluria's voice dropped low and dark — no longer teasing, but chanting.
"Cradle of glass. Cradle of sin.
Unseal his secrets. Let the bloom begin."
The garden seemed to breathe. Blossoms opened around the statues, petals unfurling like mouths. The air filled with a heavy, dizzying perfume that made Ren's head swim — half-drunk on scent and want and the warmth of Lyria's lips brushing lower, lower.
He shuddered as Veluria's nails traced the mark on his chest — each pass lighting a spark behind his ribs.
"You want to know the mirror's truth?" she murmured.
"Then give it yours — in moans and shivers, in every secret tremble your voice has never spoken."
Lyria's mouth finally closed around him — heat and silk and wicked softness that made Ren's back arch, a broken sound escaping his lips. His hands clutched at the marble, the cold stone grounding him even as the garden's scent dragged him further into its haze.
The runes flared brighter — silver and violet weaving around him like chains. Veluria's hand pressed firm over his heart, her whisper a blade against the rush of pleasure that threatened to drown him.
"See it," she breathed. "Look — beneath the roots."
His vision blurred — the statues, the flowers, Lyria's head moving between his thighs — all of it melted into the spiral light that poured from the runes. And within it, something moved.
He saw — for an instant — beneath the marble paths, beneath the petals. Tangled roots, slick and black as oil, pulsing with hidden veins. Within them, faces drifted — pale, half-formed, mouthing silent screams that no wind carried away. Some still looked like the statues above — lovers frozen in stone, now trapped in endless bloom.
Ren's body bucked — pleasure crashing through him so hard it threatened to break his mind apart. Lyria's mouth coaxed every secret from him, every moan feeding the roots that writhed below. And the roots… fed something deeper.
A single eye opened in the dark beneath the garden — vast, glistening, blind and yet watching. It turned toward him, drinking his pleasure, his fear, his surrender.
Veluria's voice twisted inside his skull. "All who feed the cradle feed it — the seed at the heart of the Mirror World. Give it more, Ren. Or break."
He couldn't stop — Lyria's mouth pulled the last breath from him, his vision fracturing like shattered glass. The runes burned white-hot.
He gave it everything — a moan lost to marble, petals, and the trembling hum of a garden that bloomed wide to swallow every drop.
---
When the runes finally dimmed, he collapsed forward into Lyria's waiting arms — trembling, dazed, the taste of the garden's secrets clinging to the inside of his skull like poison and honey mixed as one.
Veluria knelt before him, her silk-clad fingers brushing sweat-damp hair from his forehead. Her smile was soft now — but her eyes glowed with dark triumph.
"You've bloomed your first sin, Ren Amakawa," she murmured.
"And the cradle is hungry for the next."
Ren's pulse still thundered in his veins like an echo of the pleasure that left him trembling in Lyria's arms. She cradled him against her chest, soft and warm, humming a wordless tune that curled through the hush of marble paths and drifting petals.
Veluria circled them, her gown trailing over runes that still glowed faintly where Ren's secrets had fed the garden's roots. She watched him with a predator's calm — violet eyes glimmering beneath the pale blooms overhead.
"Do you feel it, Ren?" she murmured at last, her voice almost gentle now. "The garden tasted your want. In return, it leaves you a gift."
Ren's lips parted. His throat was dry — every breath tasted faintly of flowers and the heavy sweetness that clung to his skin like silk. He felt… hollow and full all at once, every nerve still alive with the ritual's residue.
"A… gift?" he rasped.
Veluria's smile curved dark and soft. She extended a gloved hand — palm up, waiting. "Come. Stand."
Lyria coaxed him up, her fingers tracing his spine as she helped him to his feet. The world seemed to pulse around him — petals drifting in slow spirals, statues half-watching, half-weeping stone tears that vanished before they touched the marble floor.
Veluria led him forward, deeper into the maze of pillars and vines. They stopped before a wall of flowering stone — at its center, a tall archway choked with ancient roots and thorned blossoms that pulsed with faint silver light.
"This is the Garden's Gate," Veluria said. Her gloved hand brushed the thorny curtain — not tearing it aside, but coaxing the blooms open with a whisper Ren couldn't hear.
Beyond the veil, darkness waited — but not empty darkness. Flickers of shifting mirrors hovered in the void, showing glimpses of other places: a vast library of black glass, a hall of chained queens, a snowy plain where a single throne sat empty under a blood-red sky.
Ren's breath caught. His heart thundered like the runes beneath his feet.
"What is that…?" he asked, voice small, almost afraid to hear the answer.
Veluria's fingers traced his chest, her touch cool and possessive. "The truth buried in the Mirror World's roots. Fragments of realms tied together by desire and ruin. Each mirror is a seed… each seed feeds the next."
Her hand slid up to cup his chin, forcing him to meet her eyes. "You stand at the edge of freedom, Ren Amakawa. But freedom here is no gift — it is won. Paid for in secrets, in sins… in surrender."
Behind him, Lyria pressed close — her breath at his ear, warm and soft. "If you wish to know more — if you want to open the next mirror — you must claim the key hidden inside this gate."
Ren's gaze flicked between the shifting shards inside the archway. A voice — soft as silk, cold as iron — seemed to whisper from the flickers themselves:
> "What blooms once, feeds twice.
What feeds twice, breaks thrice.
Who breaks thrice… inherits the mirror's voice."
The riddle coiled through his mind like a living thing — burrowing deep under the cradle's brand still pulsing on his chest.
He swayed, breath shallow. "What… what does it mean?"
Veluria leaned closer — her lips brushed his ear, her voice an intimate dagger. "It means you must break again. And again. And again — until you are no longer a boy clinging to innocence… but a king who owns the cradle's hunger."
She pressed a single silver thorn into his palm — the bloom pulsing like a tiny heartbeat. "Prick your skin. Feed the gate. Step through."
Lyria's fingers threaded with his — steadying him as the garden's perfume thickened, drowning the last edge of his fear in honeyed heat.
Ren stared at the thorn. At the shifting mirrors. At the statues frozen behind him, their stone eyes pleading in silent warning.
His breath trembled — but the word that slipped past his lips was the only one the cradle truly wanted.
"Yes…"