Rejected by the Alpha, Chosen by the Moon

It showed who you were beneath titles, beneath wounds, beneath lies.

It revealed the self even you might not recognize.

The self the Moon Goddess saw, when she looked too deep.

Only those touched by Her hand, whether by blessing or curse, could awaken the mirror's truth.

And once it was seen, it could never be unseen.

Around the sanctum, the Alphas stood in solemn stillness.

Not one stirred. Not one whispered.

Because what would be spoken here would echo for generations.

Then Alpha Galen stepped forward, his voice ringing through the cold air like a bell struck deep in stone:

"Let the first step forth."

The Mirror pulsed.

The crystal veins flared.

The obsidian shimmered.

Truth was waking.

And it was hungry.

Kael moved.

Not with humility, not with hesitation, but with the calculated poise of a man used to being watched.

Each footfall was a performance: slow, measured, deliberate, like the echo of a coronation march only he could hear.

His shoulders, squared like armor, bore the illusion of strength.

His jaw set like carved obsidian, chiseled in pride.

The silence of the chamber drank in his presence, but gave him no warmth in return.

He walked not like one meeting truth, but like one pretending he had already mastered it.

When he stopped before the Mirror of Essyn, it did not greet him.

There was no reflection.

Only blackness, slick and depthless, like oil pulled taut over a still lake.

Then, a tremor.

A pulse slid across the obsidian surface, like a breath across glass.

Darkness rippled outward, slow, viscous, as if blood had dropped into ink.

And then the mirror froze, solid as ice kissed by moonlight.

An image began to take shape.

Kael.

As he saw himself.

His spine impossibly straight, wrapped in the pelts of conquered Alphas, their runes faded into obscurity.

A cloak fell from his shoulders, stitched from the banners of fallen packs, fraying at the edges but heavy with silent boasting.

On his head, a jagged crown of wolfbone and twisted gold, snarling in a mimicry of reverence.

His smile was all gleam, conquest worn like cologne, dazzling, practiced, insatiable.

A god-king, standing tall on the bones of history.

But the Mirror was not finished.

It shuddered.

Hairline fractures veined the reflection.

The gold of the crown melted, slow and serpentine, sliding down his temples like molten venom.

The liquid reformed, curving, hardening, into a ring of fangs, snapping around his skull like a muzzle of domination.

His radiant smile curled, warped, until it became something else entirely.

A predator's sneer, full of cruelty and rot, stretched too wide across a face grown hungry with power.

The triumph in his eyes bled to smoke, swirling with the sediment of greed, fear, decay.

And behind him, a throne rose.

But not of gold.

Not even of stone.

A throne of ash, crumbling under its own weight.

Every time he shifted in it, it shed dust, falling away like time he could no longer command.

At his feet, a thousand wolves knelt.

But they had no faces.

Only blurred, hollow masks, bowed not in loyalty…

but in submission.

In terror.

In silence.

Their eyes were blank sockets, heads low, not in reverence, but in the shame of those who have no choice left.

Kael's expression, real Kael, began to change.

His jaw clenched.

The muscle ticked beneath his skin.

His breath came faster, too shallow.

His chest rose and fell with irregular urgency, as if the chamber had grown smaller.

As if the mirror's vision had touched something he could no longer command.

He took a step back.

Not by choice.

But because the image would not stop.

The crown-fangs gleamed.

The faceless wolves moaned in silence.

And the throne cracked further, a slow collapse, inevitable.

Kael's reflection looked out at him, and grinned.

Not in victory.

But in mockery.

And somewhere in that silent mirror,

Kael saw the shape of the man he had become, and the Alpha he would never truly be.

His echoes were met with the kind of silence that judges, not forgets.

Then, Lyra stepped forward.

And the entire chamber exhaled, like stone lungs releasing a breath held for centuries.

She did not stride. She approached, quiet, barefoot, as if carried by something more ancient than gravity.

Her steps were nearly silent against the cold ancestral stone, but with each one, something in the air seemed to tremble.

As though the ground remembered her.

As though the Mirror did too.

She came with no crown.

No weapon.

No demand.

Only presence, calm and relentless, like tide against rock.

She stopped before the obsidian monolith.

Then slowly, without fanfare, her hand rose, unadorned, no ring, no sigil, only skin and intention, and pressed gently to the Mirror's surface.

For a heartbeat, there was nothing.

Then, the Mirror of Essyn blazed to life, not with fire, but with silver light, pure and wild.

It burst outward in rippling waves, pulsing like the Moon's own heartbeat, racing across the stone like spilled starlight.

The floor trembled, dust rained from the ceiling, the walls humming like a waking beast.

And then, the image formed.

But it was not an illusion.

Not a projection.

Not a fantasy spun of want.

It was a fusion.

Lyra. As she truly was.

Barefoot. Windswept.

Her cloak in tatters, edges frayed from battle, weather, and the long road walked alone.

She wore no armor but pain.

No diadem but grief.

Yet, her spine was unbroken.

Her jaw was set.

Her posture spoke not of dominance, but endurance.

And her eyes, gods, her eyes didn't gleam with triumph.

They burned with conviction.

Wounds visible. Strength undeniable.

Around her, the image pulsed again.

And from that pulse, fire bloomed.

But not red. Not ruinous.

Silver fire.

It crowned her like a storm halo, wild and circling, curling through her hair like strands of moonlight set ablaze.

And behind her, figures stirred.

Ghosts.

But not specters of fear.

They were ancestral spirits, half-made of stardust and memory, their eyes bright with recognition.

They did not tower over her like guardians.

They stood with her.

Shoulder to shoulder.

One with her.

Constellations bloomed.

Not stars as mortals knew them, but shapes carved in the heavens, ageless and watching.

Wolves. Warriors. Mothers. Oracles. Outcasts.

Each constellation stirred above the Mirror, suspended in its obsidian depths like ancient spirits inked across eternity.

They circled her, not as stars orbit a sun, but as kin return to their center.

She stood not on a pedestal.

Not on a throne.