I tried to flee toward a section without mirrors, but the chamber would not allow it. The floating clocks spun around me, speeding up and slowing down without any visible pattern.

  “You know this is what awaits you,” that other version of me said with a cruel smile.

  The mosaic beneath my feet rippled as if I were walking across a petrified lake. The opalescent light turned colder, and for an instant I heard my breathing fracture, as if each inhale belonged to a different Maki.

  The urge to shatter the glass burned inside me, and I gave in. I set my feet apart and relaxed my shoulders.

  “Bergfaust!”

  The impact shattered the mirror in an explosion of crystal.

  The strike created a visible ring in the air, a pressure wave that warped the nearest mirrors like liquid surfaces. The mosaic cracked outward in a starburst beneath my feet.

  But my satisfaction lasted only a second.

  Each fragment transformed into a new mirror, polished, intact, expectant, as if I had struck an endless lake and every crystallized droplet wanted to return my gaze.

  The air shifted. Pressure gathered at the center of the circle, the opalescent glow was torn inward, forming a dark vortex. One of the mirrors imploded into itself and the glass turned to mud, bubbled, and rose quickly into shape: My shape.

  But it was not an obedient reflection, it was the overflow of a primal instinct…Survive.

  Jaw tight. Impatient eyes. Muscles ready to charge and in her hand was my copper watering can.

  As she swung it, it changed into a colossal hammer anchored to a short handle. The air whistled when she lifted it.

  She let it fall at her side, and the floor split open into a crater several meters wide.

  “I am the one who acts,” she roared in my fractured voice. “I don’t wait. I don’t hesitate. If I want something, I take it.”

  The clocks responded, the ticking became frantic, climbing the walls like invisible shrapnel. The mirrors multiplied her image, crowning her with halos of broken light.

  And I understood why she was dangerous, because the world often applauds that kind of violence.

  My arm tensed. I wanted to answer stone with stone.

  “Bergfestung,” I whispered through clenched teeth, letting my body turn to rock from my ankles to my neck.

  The spell settled like inner armor. It did not harden my skin—it densified my structure. I felt the weight of the mountain settle into my muscles.

  My double did not wait. She vanished before I could react and reappeared above me.

  The hammer fell like a comet.

  I raised my forearms to shield myself.

  The impact detonated another visible shockwave, a pressure ring that shook the air and sent luminous cracks racing across the mosaic. The blow drove me half a centimeter into the ground and dragged me a step backward.

  I had no time to regain my stance. The second strike came from the left, twisted through the hips, carrying the full weight of the weapon. I blocked to the side.

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  My spine creaked.A third descended straight down the center, a metallic taste flooded my mouth, but I endured.

  I endured because Eldreich had taught me never to negotiate with pain in the first seconds—when everything in you wants to run.

  My double did not relent, rage fueled her relentless barrage.

  She leapt back in a short bound, using the recoil to spin. The hammer traced a low arc toward my ribs. I lowered my elbow and absorbed the blow diagonally.

  She pivoted on her heel and brought the weapon down in a descending strike that would have split anyone else in two.

  There was elegance in her brutality, precision in her excess.

  And every time I answered with fury—every time I clenched my teeth, wanting to strike back—the hammer flared brighter.

  Its edge grew denser.

  The air around it distorted.

  The weapon devoured my anger and hurled it back at me as impact, I retreated without meaning to.

  I stumbled over a strip of mosaic greener than the others, the texture shifted beneath my foot.

  The clocks to my right accelerated as if someone had thrown fuel onto a fire. Invisible hands began chewing through seconds.

  “Don’t run,” my double said. “If you’re going to fight, then fight.”

  The hammer descended diagonally but I did not look at the weapon. I looked at the floor.

  White. Pale green. White.

  My left foot found a nearly imperceptible hexagon and I remembered the garden.

  When I loosened my grip on the watering can, the water stopped drowning the roots.

  I released my shoulder.

  The hammer grazed my forearms, the spell absorbed most of the impact and the force passed through me like a distant echo.

  My double lost her balance for a second.

  Only one.

  But that second was my missed opportunity.

  She leapt back and charged again, faster this time. The hammer spun along its axis as if tied to an invisible hurricane. In its path it shattered three mirrors, their fragments suspended midair like orbiting blades of glass.

  The ticking became deafening.

  This time, I did not block.

  I let my hands fall… I breathed, let her swim in my stillness.

  The charge came.

  I tilted my waist just slightly. The hammer brushed my collarbone and crashed into the floor and the shockwave raced around the circle and returned in a spiral.

  She was not prepared to receive her own amplified force, she staggered half a step.

  Her expression shifted to confusion. I moved forward—straight toward her.

  The hammer rose again, now wrapped in a dark green glow. If I entered that fire with fury, I would only feed it.

  I extended my hand.

  “Enough.”

  I pressed my palm against her chest.

  I felt the truth beneath the mud and violence.

  It was not only anger, was fear of not being enough. It was the urgency to exist before time left her behind.

  The hammer’s glow trembled, ot dimmed… The green of the garden climbed up through my fingers.

  “Blind strength burns its own paths,” I said.

  Her eyes changed, the rage fractured first, then her body.

  The mud became reddish sand, the sand became dust, and in the final moment, she let out a long breath.

  The hammer fell and dissolved before touching the ground.

  The clocks marked a single tick.

  Silence.

  I did not raise my arms or celebrate. I fell to my knees, exhausted.

  The cold mosaic climbed up through my legs, fatigue leaned against my back like an old animal.

  The mirrors whispered a little longer, trying to provoke me, but I did not react. I closed my eyes to process everything that had happened.

  When I opened them, they turned slowly, curious, no longer murmuring in aggression.

  Then the circle split apart and from its center emerged a different mirror.

  Tall as the vault above. A frame of liquid silver that flowed without spilling, I approached.

  I saw my face exactly as it was—sweat, dust, tangled hair and steady eyes.

  “If you want to break me, do it,” my reflection said. “If you want to run, you can. If you choose to wait… you will understand.”

  My hand rose out of habit and stopped it inches away. I felt the old impulse and smiled at it.

  Then I placed my palm gently against the surface.

  The mirror rippled like water… I saw the garden, I saw my hands learning. I saw time not as an enemy, but as a season.

  The clocks stopped in unison and the ticking vanished. There was no past not future, only the present.

  It was never about defeating time or breaking it. It was about inhabiting it, living it.

  The mirror dissolved into luminous dust, the particles floated around me like fireflies glowing after years of sleep.

  The mosaic split open into a long seam, a corridor of soft blue light.

  I looked at the passage pulling me forward, stepped toward it—but before crossing, I turned back toward the chamber.

  “Thank you,” I whispered.

  I took one step, waited a second and took another… And walked without counting the seconds.