56: The Mirror Archive

“I am the Eternal Mirror… the key that links the mirrored world to the real one.
I was created by the sages of old.”

Her dignified voice overlapped with a second, crystalline one, echoing in unison.
With a faint gesture, she guided Tom into a vast, sacred space filled with floating books.

“I’m kind of getting the hang of drifting through this place,” Tom joked, paddling through the air like a frog in a pool.

He showed off his exaggerated swim strokes, hoping for a reaction—but Rena didn’t respond like she usually would.
Disappointed, he let his arms fall.

Some of the books floated aimlessly in midair, while others sat neatly arranged on shelves like in a grand library.
A cobblestone path stretched beneath them like a makeshift floor, but in this weightless space, it was more decorative than functional.

Here, it wasn’t sunlight that illuminated the space—but the radiant glow emanating from the towering mirror itself.
Not that the sun had any place in a realm like this, Tom thought to himself.

With Rena’s guidance, Tom wandered through the mirror archive, focusing inward—on his own presence, his consciousness.
Book by book, he stirred fragments of memory buried in ancient texts, combining each thread of information to uncover something deeper.
Through this process, he sought to understand how he had arrived in this realm of knowledge, and how his fate had become bound to the Eternal Mirror.

He traced the memory back: the pond in the park where he had once searched for Rena.
She had been there already—along with another version of herself, still a child.
Their dimensions had overlapped, two iterations of the same person existing in the same place at the same time.

“The young Rena by the pond… she suddenly started drowning.
I was being controlled by another me, but I gave a signal to help her.
And Rena—she jumped in to save that child version of herself.
I think I came back to my senses just in time… and then I jumped in after her.
Maybe that’s how I crossed into another world… and ended up here?”

His mind worked overtime, still wired like a nervous high schooler with a love for books, trying to process it all.
At the same time, his mental pathways—those of someone who had traveled countless parallel worlds—began to strain.

Rena noticed his struggle and, sensing his confusion, allowed the Eternal Mirror to speak through her lips.

“…We exist across many dimensions.
The confusion you feel now is because versions of you from different worlds are existing simultaneously.
The choices you’ve made in each world are influencing one another.”

Her explanation filled the gaps in his memory.
She turned her gaze toward the nearby mirror and continued.

“The Sages of Time… they vowed to protect the existence of this mirror, to ensure its powers would never be misused.
From the knowledge and power drawn from the mirror world, they quietly supported human progress.
But over time, there were those who sought to monopolize that power.”

As Tom’s fragmented memories slowly stitched themselves back together, a voice from the past returned to him—Dan’s voice:

(That reflex… as if you’ve journeyed through countless parallel worlds.
And that book—what is it, exactly?)

“Tom Hawthorne… we’ve detected your ‘shadow’ among the ranks of the Forbidden Ones.
While you’ve been serving as my guardian… your shadow took form on its own.”

“My… shadow? It generated itself?”

Tom tried to wrap his head around it.

“Dan Kubrick—the Supreme Commander of the Rebellion.
He once stood beside me, sharing authority.
But he turned against the mirror realm and the real world, seeking to sever the connection and claim its wisdom for himself.
Thus was born ‘NEDD I BROF’—the Forbidden Ones.”

The chase after Rena.
The picture book world.
His encounter with Dan.
The mirror world.
His own identity…

Tom mentally sorted each piece, threading together the tangled causality woven through his journey across parallel realities.
And yet—he still felt like he was forgetting something crucial.

“…Who am I, really?”

It was the same question Dan had thrown at him.
And now, it echoed within himself more than ever.

“To fully recover your memories, we must first undo the effects of Dan’s ability.
Before you entered this mirror world, you were still a child—and he stole that part of your memory.”

Rena’s words sparked something in him. A flicker of recognition.

“…That’s right! Big sis Rena told me… she was going to protect us!”

The words spilled out before he realized it—his voice had shifted to that of a child.
He hurriedly pulled himself back to the present, regaining control of his tone.

Suddenly, the mirror before them shimmered and revealed a different world.
Within it, Rena—wearing her school uniform—and a younger Tom stood side by side, staring silently at the pond.

Rena’s expression was one of unshakable resolve, as if she were silently declaring: This fate must be changed, no matter what.

“That’s her… and that’s me—when I was a child!”

Something about the vision made Tom tense.
He stared into the deep, shifting light of the mirror, feeling as though it might pull him in.