Liora I The City That Polished Its Mirrors

After the hearings, the world did not collapse.

It merely grew brighter.

Liora first noticed the light.

It shimmered from the towers at dawn and glinted along the avenues at dusk. Every building in the city had been fitted with mirrors — tall, seamless panels of perfect reflection. They lined the streets, covered the plazas, and rose in silver columns that caught and multiplied every gesture.

The citizens were proud of their city. They called it The Clarion. Nothing was hidden there. Every action could be seen. Every declaration was recorded in the glass. They believed that transparency had purified them.

In the mornings, people walked carefully.

They adjusted their posture before passing the mirrored colonnades. They practised expressions that signalled composure, kindness, conviction. Some rehearsed concern. Others rehearsed resolve. Many rehearsed joy.

The mirrors never slept.

At first, Liora admired the brightness. There was a sense of order. No shadow lingered long enough to cause suspicion. The citizens spoke often of integrity — how visible it had become, how measurable, how confirmable.

“It is good,” they would say, gesturing to their reflections. “Now everyone can see who we are.”

Liora began to wonder.

She stood one afternoon before a vast mirrored wall that overlooked the central square. Hundreds of faces flickered in its surface — earnest, determined, compassionate, indignant. Each face seemed to know exactly how it ought to appear.

A child nearby was trying to laugh, but kept glancing sideways to see how the laughter looked.

A man offered bread to a stranger, then subtly shifted his stance so the gesture caught the light.

Two women argued passionately about justice, their voices rising, but their eyes never left the glass.

Liora searched for something unscripted — a moment when someone forgot the reflection.

She did not find it.

The city had become expert at polishing its surfaces. Entire guilds were devoted to maintaining clarity. “Distortion,” they warned, “is the root of corruption.” And so the glass was cleaned hourly, the angles perfected, the reflections sharpened until they revealed every line and gesture.

But something had changed.

One evening, when the square was empty and the light had softened, Liora stood alone before the largest mirror in the city — a towering sheet that faced the horizon.

She looked at herself.

Her image returned flawlessly.

And yet — it felt thin.

She tilted her head, raised her hand, watched the movements echo back to her with obedient precision. She smiled experimentally. The mirror smiled. She frowned. It frowned.

The surface was perfect.

But she felt no depth behind it.

On impulse, she stepped closer and placed her palm against the glass.

It was cool, immaculate, and impenetrable.

There was no passage through.

The next morning, she walked beyond the central avenues, where the mirrors thinned and the light fractured. In a narrow alley, she found an old, tarnished panel leaning against a brick wall. Its surface was clouded. It did not return her image cleanly. Parts of her face blurred. The edges dissolved into shadow.

She stared into it for a long time.

Something stirred — not clarity, but interiority. The blurred surface did not demand performance. It did not reward posture. It did not sharpen expression into signal.

It simply held her.

A woman passed by and glanced at the tarnished mirror with discomfort.

“It doesn’t reflect properly,” she said. “You can’t tell what you look like.”

Liora nodded.

“Yes,” she replied softly. “That is why I am here.”

In the weeks that followed, she began to move differently through the city.

She no longer adjusted her expression before the great mirrored corridors. She did not rehearse her gestures. When she spoke, she did not check how conviction appeared in the glass. When she helped someone, she did not look to see whether the act shone.

At first, no one noticed.

Then they did.

Her image began to disturb the symmetry of the avenues. She seemed less luminous. Less precise. Some called it carelessness. Others whispered that she had grown opaque.

But occasionally, when someone passed her and felt the absence of calculation in her gaze, a strange sensation arose — like stepping briefly into shade on a hot day.

The mirrors still shone. The city remained bright.

But in quiet corners, a few tarnished panels began to appear. No guild polished them. No citizen boasted of them. They did not sharpen or magnify.

They allowed imperfection.

They permitted depth.

And in those dimmer reflections, something returned that the city had almost forgotten:

A face not arranged for approval.

A gesture not composed for witness.

A self that existed even when unseen.

The Clarion continued to polish its surfaces.

But Liora had discovered a different kind of light — one that did not depend on reflection at all.