Liora had never seen a place like it. She stepped through a door that had appeared at the edge of her garden — though she was certain there had been nothing there a moment before — and found herself in a vast hall.
The walls were mirrors, but not as she knew them. Each reflection moved independently: when she raised her hand, one mirrored version waved, another clutched at the air, and a third seemed to look through her entirely. Stairs climbed at impossible angles: some floated upside down, some folded into themselves, and some led into other staircases that appeared only when she wasn’t looking directly at them.
Above, chandeliers made of sparkling jewels rotated slowly, casting refracted light into patterns that rearranged the hall with each shift of perspective. The floor under her feet trembled with kaleidoscopic motion, as if the tiles themselves were deciding what direction gravity should point.
A voice, neither near nor far, whispered:
“To walk is to choose, to choose is to move, to move is to become lost — and to be lost is the first step.”
Liora took a careful step. Immediately, a new staircase arched overhead, leading to a mirrored platform where her reflection stood, smiling in a way she had never smiled herself. She realised that every step she took changed the hall: the mirrors reconfigured, the tiles shimmered differently, the staircases rearranged. Nothing was fixed; everything was alive with possibility.
She paused at a landing. Below, a kaleidoscope of doors flickered open and closed, each showing a different version of the hall: some upside down, some sideways, some full of sparkling corridors lined with jewels. She sensed a challenge: to move forward, she would have to trust her own sense of orientation, even as the world refused to settle.
Remembering the lantern from her dreams, she closed her eyes and imagined its soft, steady glow filling the hall. When she opened them, the staircases still twisted in impossible ways, but the jewels above caught her light, creating faint threads — paths she could follow. Step by step, Liora learned to walk with attention rather than certainty, to navigate by shimmer rather than gravity, to let her reflection guide her without confusing her.
And as she climbed, she noticed something magical: the hall responded. Mirrors bent to show hidden routes, tiles rotated to form new landings, and the voice whispered again:
“Every choice is a window. Every reflection is a map. Every jewel is a compass. Keep moving, and you will find what you did not know you sought.”
Liora smiled. Though she did not yet know the end of the hall, she had taken the first step of the journey, and that was enough.
The adventure had begun.
No comments:
Post a Comment