The Moonstone Mask always floated just a little too gracefully above Neverwinter Harbor, as though it believed every other building on the Sword Coast was trying far too hard. Its walkways glowed faintly with spellsteel filigree, the stairwells shimmered with gold-vein inlay, and every surface—glass, silk, wood, velvet—had been curated with ruthless elegance by someone who knew exactly how wealthy people liked to imagine they lived. The carpets came from Calimport, the lacquered screens from Shou Lung, the curved, towering murals from Waterdeep’s finest ateliers. It was a place where the price of a drink wasn’t coin but audacity. Tonight, Marji Moondancer strode through the front arch like she owned the tide beneath it. Her boots clicked to the rhythm of the brazen drumline spilling from the great hall. Candles bobbed in the air around her like drunk fireflies, casting moon-sheen across her half-orc grin. She moved like a blade disguised as a dancer—hips loose, shoulders sharp, stride a heartbeat away from predation. “By Tymora’s dimples,” she murmured as she surveyed the room, “they’ve added another bar. And people say pirates are the ones with an alcohol problem.” Aubeya Mystradreamer spotted her first from a velvet settee beside a fireplace carved from Neverwinter obsidian. The dwarven wizard raised a hand, her plump cheeks blushing from the heat of the flames—and possibly from the brandy steaming in her cup. Marji slid between nobles and mercenaries, ducking under enchanted lanterns, savoring the perfume of cinnamon, smoked citrus, and something expensive she couldn’t name. Aubeya waved harder. “Marji! Over here! You’re late by… three songs, one spilled drink, and a brief but intense debate about the ethics of self-stirring cocktails!” “Please tell me you argued with the glass again,” Marji said. “The glass started it.” Aubeya sniffed and sipped. Seri Threadweaver sat beside her, legs folded neatly beneath her chair, shaved scalp reflecting the warm firelight. Shadows bent toward her as though curious about her stitching needle. The half-elf tailor-wizard always looked like she’d been carved out of precision, then softened by subtle melancholy. “Marji,” Seri said in her smooth, subdued voice, “there are… individuals in the hall who do not fit the local pattern.” Marji leaned over the table. “Pattern as in fashion? Magic? Mood? Or did someone wear socks with sandals again?” “Pattern as in reality,” Seri murmured. “Their shadows lag… half a breath behind.” Aubeya shuddered. “Not right. Not natural. Not even poetically questionable.” Marji followed their gazes toward the main floor. The Moonstone Mask thrummed with activity: dancers swept across the polished marble, minstrels on floating balconies played instruments that re-tuned themselves, private suites shimmered behind beaded curtains where coin bought secrecy by the hour. Fireplaces roared in alcoves where cloaked merchants whispered deals, and the air hummed with coin-song and flirtation. But three figures stood absolutely still amid the movement, the crowd sliding unconsciously around them as if they were pillars in a fast-moving river. Tall. Lithe. Pale—not in an elven way, but in the manner of something that rarely saw honest sunlight. Their robes weren’t from anywhere on the Sword Coast. They weren’t Calishite, nor Rashemi, nor Thayan, nor even Luskanese pirate formalwear (which mostly consisted of “shirt optional”). Their garb had the cut and geometry of Halruaa. Marji blinked. “That can’t be right.” Halruaa was gone. Ruined. Scattered to the winds. Its skyships and flying cities had once been the envy of magical empires. “What’s left of Halruaa doesn’t send travelers,” Aubeya whispered. “It sends… rumors.” Seri’s eyes narrowed. “They’ve been watching you since you stepped inside, Marji.” “Me?” Marji laughed—a musical, dangerous sound. “I’m flattered. Truly. But if ghosts from a dead land want to stare at me, they should at least buy me a drink first.” But the three figures didn’t blink. Didn’t smile. Didn’t move. They waited. Marji was halfway through a glass of spiced moonwine when the first of them finally approached. He moved like mist wearing human shape. His voice, when it drifted out, was a strange blend of scholar and storm. “Marji Moondancer. Daughter of the Tide-Sisters. Dancer of the Night-Current. Walker of the Blade-Moon. We have come for you.” Aubeya spit her drink. “Nope. Absolutely not.” Seri’s fingers flexed around her needle. The shadows around her stiffened. Marji lifted one brow. “If you’re here to ask me to join a cult, I’ve already got two and they send too many newsletters.” Another figure joined the first. Her eyes contained a faint gleam of blue lightning—Halruaan spellcraft. “Your companions may stay or flee. But we cannot leave without you.” Something about the woman’s gaze stirred an old ache in Marji’s chest—ghost echoes of her lost moon-sisters, the ones whose laughter had vanished under tides and betrayal. “What do you want with me?” Marji asked quietly. The third figure stepped forward. His cloak parted enough for Marji to glimpse the faint shimmer of skyship sigils sewn along the hem—runes Halruaan mages had once used to command floating fortresses. “We have traced a memory to you,” he said. “A survivor’s echo. One of your moon-sisters lives.” The music faltered. Just a beat. Just long enough for the entire Mask to sense the shift. Aubeya gripped Marji’s arm. “They can’t know that. They shouldn’t know that.” Seri leaned forward, whispering, “Their shadows are wrong because they are not fully here. They are projecting into this plane.” The lead stranger bowed his head slightly. “Your sister dances in the broken fragments of a spellweave we call the Sky-Mirror. A pocket realm. A cracked one. She cannot leave. But you can enter.” Marji swallowed hard. Her heart thundered in her ribs like a war drum in a storm. “Why tell me? Why not snatch me and go?” “Because,” the woman said softly, “if you come willingly, the portal will open clean. If you resist it, the portal will tear. And if it tears…” She let the implication drift like a blade through silk. Marji closed her eyes. Images flickered—her moon-sisters twirling through tides of moonlight, laughter bright and sharp; then darkness, silence, loss. Aubeya squeezed her hand. “We’ll follow. You’re not doing this alone.” Seri nodded once, expression unreadable. “Where Marji dances, shadows follow.” The Halruaans stepped back, the air shimmering around them like heat distortion over glass. “Then ready yourselves,” the leader said. “Tonight, beneath the Mask, the skies will open.” And with that— The chandeliers flared. The marble floor rippled like water. A circle of floating runes burst to life beneath Marji's feet. Wind roared across the lounge, scattering silk curtains and noble hats alike. Guests screamed. Staff ducked. The music drowned in a rising, impossible hum. A portal yawned open—a mirror made of sky, cracked around the edges like something wounded. The Halruaans stood waiting. Marji Moondancer squared her shoulders, smirked like the world was daring her to blink first, and whispered: “Alright then. Let’s go find my sister.” She stepped through. The portal snapped shut. And the Moonstone Mask, elegant and floating as ever, was left humming with frightened nobles, scattered drinks, and a single half-orc’s unfinished moonwine still swirling gently in its glass. *** Part Two: The Sky-Mirror Breaks *** The world did not open like a door. It inverted. Marji Moondancer felt her stomach leap as though the tide had snapped its tether and dragged her upward—or downward—into a realm where direction had forgotten itself. The roar of the Moonstone Mask’s ballroom stretched thin behind her, sucked away like a distant memory. Then silence. A silence so absolute it felt sculpted. She stood on a surface that resembled glass, except it flexed under her boots with the give of warm water. Above—no, below—no, everywhere—a sky hung broken into mirrored shards. Each fragment reflected a different color of dawn, a mosaic made of half-remembered mornings. When Marji moved, her reflection fractured: dozens of her, all dancing half a beat out of sync. “Marji?” Aubeya’s voice floated from somewhere behind her. “Marji! Why does gravity feel… negotiable?!” The dwarven wizard stumbled into view, her robes drifting like they were underwater. Seri Threadweaver followed, gliding more than walking—shadows clinging to her like nervous pets, uncertain which direction to commit to. Marji steadied her footing and exhaled. “Welcome to the Sky-Mirror, ladies. I’ve been to plane-twisted pocket realms before, but this one… this one’s got personality.” A faint laugh answered her. Not from her companions. From the mirrors. A ripple coursed across the air as the three Halruaan projection-mages materialized again—half real, half thought, like ink bleeding through silk. Their forms flickered, bending with the broken sky. “You arrived intact,” the lead mage noted. “Good. This vessel-realm is unstable. Created by a spellstorm, then splintered by time. Move carefully.” Marji folded her arms. “Where is she? Where’s my moon-sister?” They gestured toward the far horizon—although the word horizon meant little here. The glass-like ground swept outward into impossible shapes: curved domes, spiraling rivers of light, floating islands of mirrored smoke. And at the center— A tree. A silver-barked, moonlit tree, its branches arcing gently across a shard in the realm’s heart. Leaves dangled like droplets of white flame. Aubeya squinted. “That’s not natural.” Seri murmured, “That’s not even metaphorically natural.” Marji’s breath caught. Her voice softened. “…She used to dance under a tree like that.” The Halruaans exchanged glances. “The entity you call sister remains anchored to that locus. But there is interference.” A shudder moved through the realm. Like something exhaled under the ice. Marji drew her daggers. “Interference meaning what?” The lead mage raised a hand, and a projection shimmered before them—a shape like a tall, robed figure made of cracks and wind. Its face was a vertical tear, light spilling through from another place. Aubeya swore. “That’s a spellwound.” Seri corrected softly, “Worse. A living one.” The Halruaan nodded. “Spell-fracture entities feed on the memory-echoes inside the Sky-Mirror. They devour stories, identities, the ties between souls. One has been… grazing upon your sister’s echo.” Marji’s jaw clenched. “Then why are we talking? Point me at the thing and let’s see if it can swallow a fist.” Seri touched her arm. “Marji. Careful. These are not creatures of the body.” Aubeya nodded. “They’re creatures of… aftermath. They eat consequences. They drink forgotten wishes. They don’t bleed.” Marji smirked. “Good thing I don’t rely on blood.” They began walking—or gliding—toward the central shard. As they moved, the ground curled beneath them like a turning page. Reflections whispered. The sky-lights hummed. Each step tugged echoes of memory to the surface: lost dances, moonlit nights, laughter half-buried under regret. Marji felt pieces of her past brushing her ankles like tidefoam. “Stay focused,” she muttered. Seri agreed, though her eyes flicked constantly between mirror-shards, watching their own reflections move with slight, disturbing delays. Aubeya kept muttering arcane stabilizing formulas. “This place wants to remember us. That’s the problem. If it remembers too strongly, it starts rewriting.” Ahead, the silver tree pulsed—soft, trembling. A silhouette swayed beneath its branches. A woman. Bare feet. Moon-pale skin. Hair like silver river-light. And a familiar, beloved grin Marji hadn’t seen since the night the sea took everything. “Luthielle…” Marji breathed. She sprinted. The Halruaans shouted a warning too late. Because the moment Marji reached the base of the tree, the woman’s form distorted—two frames overlapping, one joyous and alive, the other blurred with vacant hollow eyes. The two versions flickered, competing, reality failing to pick which one belonged. And from behind the tree, the tear-faced entity unfolded like a ghost of a broken window. Its voice was a scraping whisper of lost tomorrows: “SHE IS NOT FOR YOU.” Marji drew steel—moonlight glinting off her daggers. “Funny. I was about to say the same thing.” Aubeya yelled. “Marji! It’ll try to rewrite your memories if you get too close!” Seri’s shadows swarmed her like armor. “Do not let it speak your name!” Marji lunged forward anyway—reckless, radiant, defiant. The entity surged to meet her. Its presence hit like drowning in someone else’s dream. Mirrors shattered. Sky fractured. Memory-echoes burst around her like glass balloons. For a moment—just a moment—Marji felt her own identity slipping. Her childhood. Her first dagger. Her moon-sisters dancing in a circle of lantern-light. The night she earned the title Moondancer. Gone— Then flickering back— Then gone— Inside the fading storm she heard Luthielle’s voice: “Don’t stop, Marji. Dance.” Marji closed her eyes. And she danced. Hips swaying. Feet gliding. Movement like a knife made of grace. The realm responded—ripples spreading from her motions, stabilizing the ground, pulling shattered light into rhythm. The spellwound reeled back, its tear-face warping, unable to mimic the fluidity of a soul refusing to forget itself. Marji’s daggers flashed. Aubeya shouted a spell that detonated in cold blue fire. Seri wove shadow-thread sigils that burned black across the air. The Halruaans added beams of constructed light—reflections of ancient skyships long vanished. The spellwound shrieked— Fractured— Collapsed into a falling cascade of broken, shimmering nothing. Silence. Marji staggered, catching herself against the silver tree. The Luthielle before her flickered—twice—then settled into a single, stable form. Still pale. Still lovely. Still familiar. Her sister smiled weakly. “You always were too stubborn to let a realm eat you.” Marji’s breath broke into a laugh. “And you always picked the worst places to get lost.” They embraced—Marji trembling, Luthielle light as a moonbeam. Aubeya wiped her eyes. “Well. I didn’t expect to cry today.” Seri whispered, “She is real.” The Halruaans nodded. “She is free. The Sky-Mirror will collapse soon. You must leave.” Marji held her sister tighter. “She comes with us.” “There is no other option,” the lead mage said simply. “The realm is dying.” Luthielle touched Marji’s cheek. “Let’s go home.” But as they turned— The realm shuddered. A crack surged through the sky, racing toward them like a spiderweb splitting under weight. Aubeya blanched. “That’s a collapse pulse. Move!” The Halruaans opened a swirling escape gate. “Hurry!” Marji shoved Luthielle through first, then Seri, then Aubeya. But as she reached the threshold— A voice whispered from behind. A voice formed of broken glass. “…moondancer…” The spellwound wasn’t dead. A sliver had survived. Clinging to her name. It lunged. Marji leapt. The realm tore apart. And the world went white. *** Part Three: The Name That Wouldn’t Let Go *** Marji hit the floor of the Moonstone Mask like a comet wrapped in leather and moonlight. The portal snapped shut behind her with a hiss that sent curtains spiraling, candles guttering, and half the nobles in the room screaming as though the sky itself had fallen into their cocktails. The floating chandeliers dimmed, their illusions flickering like nervous birds. Aubeya landed beside her in a heap of robes, staff, and indignant dwarven noises. Seri followed with improbable grace, drifting down like a shadow remembering how to be soft. And then— Luthielle stepped out. Whole. Solid. Moonlit. She wobbled like someone learning how having a body works again. Marji caught her before she collapsed outright. The Moonstone Mask’s staff stared, mouths wide open. Nobles clutched their pearls—literal or enchanted—and whispered sharp, meaningful phrases like “plane breach” and “I’m never drinking that again.” Aubeya groaned. “We’re back. Ground’s stable. My lunch is not.” Seri glanced around, already measuring distances and faces. “We should move. Attention is… intense.” She was right. The whole establishment had frozen, staring at the newcomers—the battered heroes and the impossibly radiant moon-sister. But Marji wasn’t looking at the crowd. She was listening to her heartbeat. Something was wrong. A faint, glassy whisper echoed at the back of her skull. A name trying to crawl through her mind like a creature stuck between mirrors. moondancer She shook her head. “Not now. Not here.” Luthielle opened her eyes—silver, reflective. “Marji?” Marji forced a smile. “Still breathing. Still beautiful. Still available for poor life choices.” Luthielle laughed softly, but the sound trembled at the edges. “I felt… something follow us.” Seri’s gaze sharpened. “The spellwound fragment.” Aubeya hissed. “It attached to your name, Marji. Names are anchors. If it has a piece of yours…” “It can find me.” Marji finished. “Anywhere.” The room around them erupted with noise—guards shouting, patrons stumbling over one another, the hostess barking orders to clean up the absolute arcane disaster left in their wake. Someone was crying over a spilled bottle of Calimport sapphirewine that cost more than a house. “Private room,” Seri murmured. “Now.” They slipped through the chaos, Seri weaving shadows around them like a cloak of polite invisibility—just enough for eyes to slide off, not enough to spark alarms. Aubeya muttered a stabilizing cantrip to keep Luthielle upright. Marji guided them toward a staircase lined with gold-threaded banners from Waterdeep’s fashionable quarter—soft crimson silk embroidered with wyverns and moons. Each step glowed underfoot, reacting to the magic still clinging to them from the Sky-Mirror. The Moonstone Mask’s upper suites hummed with quiet luxury: plush carpets, enchanted sconces that whispered compliments, private fireplaces lit with smokeless driftflame. The kind of place nobles used for secret deals and even more secret regrets. They ducked into a private salon furnished in velvet blues and polished crystal. Marji shut the door behind them with a hard breath. For a moment, they were all still. Then Luthielle’s voice cracked the silence. “I remember drowning.” Marji froze. “I remember the sea taking me,” Luthielle whispered. “I remember your hand losing mine. I remember cold. Then light. Then… nothing but glass.” Aubeya sat beside her. “That wasn’t your fault, Marji.” Marji swallowed. “Doesn’t matter whose fault it was. She was gone. I thought—” Her voice broke. She tried again. “I thought the world had decided to take something precious from me just to see what I’d do.” Seri spoke gently. “It often does.” Luthielle reached for her sister’s hand. “But the world didn’t take me. Something else did.” Marji nodded. “The Sky-Mirror.” “No,” Luthielle murmured. “Something before that.” A chill crawled up Marji’s spine. “Before?” Luthielle looked toward the door as though something stood on the other side, listening. “The day I drowned… someone called me.” Her voice lowered. “Not with words. With… recognition.” Aubeya’s face drained. “Oh no. That’s a binding.” Seri whispered, “A claiming.” Marji’s hand went to her daggers. “By who?” Luthielle exhaled shakily. “By name. My true name. Not the one you know.” The air shifted. Marji felt the glass-whisper in her skull sharpen. marji… moondancer… Her name. Her title. Her identity. The fragment was hunting. Aubeya stood abruptly. “We need wards. Strong ones. Now.” Seri nodded. “Shadow-thread. Mirror-lock. Silence sigils—” Luthielle suddenly grabbed Marji’s wrist, eyes wide. “Marji… it’s here.” A crack split the room’s mirror. A thin line of silver light crawled across the glass, widening, widening— A hole tore open. And the spellwound fragment stepped out, body shaped like a humanoid crack in the world, tear-face glowing with stolen memory-light. It whispered her name again: “moondancer…” Marji stepped in front of her sister, raising both daggers, fire in her throat, a grin sharp enough to defy fate. “You want my name?” she snarled. “Come earn it.” The spellwound lunged. The fireplace dimmed. The room warped. Shadows scattered. And the battle began. *** Part Four: The Unmaking Dance *** The spellwound fragment moved like a crack sliding across ice—fast, silent, inevitable. It lunged, tearing the air, leaving streaks of broken light trailing behind it. Marji met it head-on. Her daggers flashed, carving arcs of silver fire across the room, their enchanted edges struggling to cut something that wasn’t exactly matter. The private salon warped around them. Fireside chairs twisted into spirals. The carpets rippled like disturbed water. A chandelier above them flickered between crystal and bone. Aubeya shouted over the roar of collapsing glamours, “Marji! It’s rewriting the room! Don’t let it rewrite you!” Marji snarled and spun—her dance a blur of agile defiance. Each step struck the floor with a rhythm that fought the realm-twist invading the Mask. She twirled beneath a collapsing mirror, kicked off a shapeshifting table, vaulted toward the spellwound in a spiraling strike. “Rewrite this,” she growled. Her left dagger hit something—half resistance, half idea—and the entity reeled, its crack-face flickering violently. But the impact came with a price. Marji stumbled. A memory slipped. She blinked—and the image of her first dagger, gifted by her captain, evaporated like breath on glass. Aubeya swore. “It’s harvesting! Every strike you land, it steals a memory to balance the blow!” “Then I’ll make it choke on me,” Marji spat. Luthielle clung to Seri as the tailor-wizard’s shadow-thread sigils spiraled around them, anchoring the reality of their bodies. Seri’s hands moved in precise, elegant motions, each gesture stitching a rune into the air. “Marji!” Seri called. “I can bind it temporarily, but I need its attention!” “Happy to volunteer,” Marji yelled back. She feinted left, then slid under the fragment’s lunging arm—a jagged limb that flickered between fracture and reflection. As she rose, she smashed the pommel of her dagger into the entity’s torso. The blow shaved another memory from her—this time her mother’s laughter. Her chest tightened. That one hurt. The spellwound surged with new clarity, feeding on her forgotten ache. Luthielle gasped. “Marji! Stop—” “No time!” Marji barked. Seri finished her sigils. They snapped into existence like black embroidery across the air and wrapped around Marji’s outline. “Step exactly where I step,” Seri ordered gently. “Or it will take more than memories.” Marji matched her movements in a mirrored dance—sharp, angular, clean. The shadows obeyed Seri, fracturing reality around them into predictable patterns. Aubeya slammed her staff down. A pulse of blue-white energy blasted across the room, freezing the creature mid-lunge for half a heartbeat. “NOW!” Aubeya screamed. Marji darted. Seri wove. Their movements intertwined—one fire, one shadow. Together they struck the creature from both sides. A crack erupted through its form. And suddenly— The entity wasn’t attacking. It was splitting. A shriek tore the air as the spellwound unfolded like a mirror shattering in slow motion, splitting into three overlapping, semi-formed versions of itself. Each version stared at Marji with hollow, echoing hunger. Aubeya’s face drained of color. “It’s replicating the moment you resisted it. Marji—Marji, this thing learns.” Seri’s shadows recoiled. “It wants to become you.” The trio of spellwound fragments advanced—each one glitching, reshaping, trying to mimic Marji’s movements. Luthielle screamed as one flickered into a half-perfect imitation of Marji—her posture, her stance, her silhouette, but with the face still a torn crack of light. Marji hissed. “Over my dead body.” Aubeya shouted, “That’s literally what it’s aiming for!” Seri stepped forward, hands glowing with stitched shadow. “Marji. Listen. It has stolen fragments of your name, your memories, and your dance. It is incomplete, but if it consumes enough of who you are—” “It’ll become me.” Marji’s voice was iron. Luthielle whispered, “It can’t. You’re too strong.” Marji laughed—wild and bright. “Sweetheart, strength is negotiable. Identity isn’t.” The three fragments lunged at once. Marji moved faster than she ever had. Her dance exploded across the salon—an escalating cyclone of heel-turns, blade-flashes, and pirouettes sharp enough to slice the air. Each step threw off sparks of moonlit energy. Each movement carved gaps in the fragments’ unstable forms. It was beautiful. It was furious. It was the Moondancer unleashed. Aubeya steadied her staff and started weaving the spell she never used lightly—too volatile, too emotional, too her. “Aubeya,” Seri warned. “That spell is unstable.” “That’s the point,” Aubeya snapped. “This thing eats meaning. So I’m going to feed it raw contradiction.” She slammed her staff down again and shouted: “Dreamfire Bombardment!” Blue-white orbs erupted around the room—each one containing unstable dream fragments: dwarven lullabies, the sound of rain on metal, memories of mountains breathing, the hush of spellbooks closing. They exploded on contact with the fragments. Dreamfire doesn’t burn. It unravels what shouldn’t exist. The first fragment screamed and burst into crystalline dust. The second staggered, splitting and folding itself back together in panic. The third—the one wearing Marji’s silhouette—reached toward her and whispered: “…moondanc—” Marji’s dagger met it mid-word. The creature shattered like blown glass hammered by the tide. The last fragment collapsed into a puddle of luminous dust. Shallow. Fading. Beaten. Silence fell. Slowly, the Moonstone Mask’s salon began knitting itself back into proper shape—furniture straightening, carpets smoothing, mirrors regaining sanity. Marji fell to one knee, panting. Luthielle rushed to her. “Marji! What did it take?” Marji blinked—hard. “I… don’t remember,” she whispered. Seri touched her shoulder gently. “It only took memories tied to your name. That narrows it to identity markers. Titles. Roles.” Aubeya exhaled shakily. “It stole something important, Marji. But not your heart. Not your soul.” Marji sat back, wiping sweat from her brow. “Luthielle,” she said, looking at her sister, “tell me—how did we first meet?” Luthielle squeezed her hand. “You already know.” Marji shook her head with a hollow laugh. “I don’t.” A cold wind swept through the room—despite the closed windows. Seri’s eyes widened. “It didn’t just try to become you. It took something foundational.” Aubeya swallowed. “Marji… you’re missing part of your origin.” Marji clenched her fists. “Then we’re going back.” Her eyes glimmered with the fire of a woman who refused to let fate take anything uninvited. “We’re going to hunt down whatever else crawled out of that realm.” “And we’re getting my memories back.” Luthielle squeezed her hand. Aubeya nodded fiercely. Seri smiled—soft, shadowed, resolved. And somewhere deep under the Moonstone Mask… A faint crack appeared in the floorboards. Silver light seeped through. Something wasn’t finished. *** Chapter Five: The Tide That Remembers *** The crack in the floorboards widened. A hairline shimmer of silver light bled into the private salon, pulsing like a heartbeat—slow, deliberate, steady. The kind of heartbeat that belonged to something ancient. Something patient. Seri froze mid-step. “That’s not the fragment we destroyed.” Aubeya clutched her staff. “Then the Sky-Mirror didn’t fully collapse.” Luthielle whispered, voice trembling, “It’s calling for Marji.” Marji lifted her daggers, jaw tight. “Good. I’m done letting it pick the time and place.” The floor split open beneath them—not violently, but with uncanny grace—as though the cracks had been waiting centuries to reveal themselves. A swirling well of silver glasslight yawned beneath the group. A voice rose from the depths. Not broken. Not hungry. Not the hiss of a spellwound. It was warm. Old. And heartbreakingly familiar. “Marjielle Moondancer.” Marji staggered. “What did it just call me?” Luthielle covered her mouth. “Your true name. You were never just Marji.” Seri’s breath hitched. “If it knows her true name…” Aubeya finished, “…it holds the missing origin.” Marji straightened—shoulders squaring, eyes burning with moonlit fire. “Then I’m taking it back.” She jumped. Into the light. Into the truth. Into whatever story had the arrogance to believe it owned her. *** The Descent *** Reality softened around her, bending like heated glass. For a breathless moment, Marji drifted through fragments of her own childhood—some blurred, some sharp, some missing entirely. Luthielle’s laughter. Dancing on the deck of a moonlit pirate ship. A storm swallowing a horizon. Hands reaching. A name whispered not by kin, but by destiny. Marjielle. Then— She landed. Not in the Sky-Mirror. Not in Neverwinter. But in something between. A shallow sea of liquid reflection shimmered under her boots, rippling outward in concentric rings. The sky—if it could be called sky—was a dome of soft night-blue crystal, cracked in places, glowing in others. And at the center stood a woman. Not Luthielle. Not a stranger. A version of Marji—older, calmer, dressed in robes of silver tidecloth that glimmered like a moonlit shoreline. Her eyes were vast and sad, like someone who had watched too many stories repeat themselves. Marji’s grip tightened on her daggers. “Great. A poetic nightmare clone. Haven’t had one of these in a month.” The mirror-Marji smiled faintly. “You’re quicker with humor than I was.” Marji blinked. “Pretty sure I’m the original here.” “No.” The reflection shook her head gently. “You are what was saved. I am what was lost.” Marji froze. “What do you mean, saved?” The reflection stepped closer, barefoot over the mirrored water. “When you drowned that night, the Sky-Mirror caught you. It split you into two truths—one anchored to the world, one swallowed into reflection. You, Marji, are the continuation.” She gestured to herself. “I am the memory.” Marji’s breath shook. “So the spellwound—?” “It didn’t steal your origin,” the reflection whispered. “It was trying to return it.” A long silence stretched. Aubeya’s voice echoed faintly from the rippling water. “Marji! We’re right behind—” “No,” Marji said softly to the reflection, “if you’re me… if you're the part of me that almost died… then why pull me here?” The reflection smiled—sad, warm, luminous. “Because I want to go home.” Marji hesitated. “I don’t understand.” “You’re missing pieces of yourself. I am those pieces. I have been waiting for you to be strong enough to take me back.” The reflection’s form flickered—not like the spellwound’s jagged convulsion, but like a candle wind-blown at dusk. “I cannot hold much longer. Memories unravel without a mind to house them.” Marji swallowed hard. “So… what do I do?” The reflection reached out—hand trembling, fading. “Take my hand, Marjielle Moondancer.” Marji stared. At herself. At the part of her that drowned. At the memory that refused to fade even when the sea demanded it. She sheathed her daggers. And she took the hand. Light poured through them. Warm, familiar, painful in the way old wounds soften when finally understood. Marji gasped as pieces of her past surged into place—her first dance under moonlight, her training on the pirate ship, the vow she made the night she earned her name, the full story of how she and Luthielle met… and how she saved her sister once before. A memory she’d forgotten because it had been taken to protect her. Her true name whispered through her bones like a blessing: Marjielle. The reflection dissolved—gently, peacefully—like a tide receding after finally touching home shore. *** The Ascent *** Marji rose from the silver water. Not lighter. Not heavier. But whole. She launched upward, through the dim-glass sky, bursting back into the Moonstone Mask with a flare of silver light that rattled every chandelier. Aubeya yelped, falling backward onto a couch. Seri shielded Luthielle from the shockwave. Marji landed in a crouch, daggers humming at her hips, a soft glow haloing her skin. Aubeya stared, jaw open. “Marji… you’re—different.” Luthielle stepped forward slowly, tears in her eyes. “You’re back.” Marji smiled—the kind of smile that could cut a man or save him. “I remembered.” Seri approached, studying her aura with quiet intensity. “And the fragment?” Marji flicked a thumb toward the floor, where the last remnants of the spellwound dust lay inert. “It had a chance to become me,” she said. “But I beat it to the punch.” Luthielle hugged her, sobbing with relief. Marji held her tight—no longer afraid of what memories she might lose. Aubeya wiped her cheeks. “What now?” Marji lifted her chin, grin crooked and fierce. “Now?” She sheathed her daggers with a satisfying shink. “We celebrate. Then we find out who taught a dead realm to steal stories.” Seri’s smirk was barely visible, but there. “And then?” Marji shrugged with wild confidence. “Then we give them a reason to regret picking a Moondancer.” The four of them stepped out of the private salon into the Moonstone Mask’s glittering chaos—music swelling, nobles staring, the night alive with rumor and magic. Marji Moondancer walked at the center. Not broken. Not incomplete. Not hunted by her name. She carried it proudly now. Marjielle Moondancer— Dancer of the Tide, Storm of the Moon, And a story no realm could ever rewrite without her permission.