Chapter 3: The Price of a Face

Chapter 3: The Price of a Face

The moment Lux’s smirk dissolved back into the weeping glass, the room’s fragile sanity snapped back into place. The silver tears ceased their flow, the high-pitched keening of stressed reality faded, and the mirrors once again showed only mundane, distorted reflections of a crime scene. Flint and Shimmer, looking pale and ten years older, finally got their comms to connect with a coherent voice.

"Stand down, officers," a new voice, clipped and sterile, ordered from the restaurant's entrance. "The Sanitizers are here."

Two figures in stark white, featureless jumpsuits entered, carrying silver briefcases that hummed with a low, oppressive frequency. They weren't cops; they were narrative janitors. Their job was to scrub away inconvenient events, to patch the holes in the city's official story with plausible lies and targeted memory wipes.

My desire was to escape before I became part of the cleanup. I knew the protocol. Any witness to a Class-Three breach was subject to a mandatory "re-calibration." They'd go into my head and sand down the edges of what I'd seen, leaving a vague, unsettling dream in its place. But my Lítost, my curse, was all I had left of my real past. I would rather die than let them touch it.

I slipped out a side exit while Flint was distracted giving his fragmented report, melting back into the neon-drenched rain. The city didn't care. It was a place built on convenient exits.

My apartment was a shoebox on the 47th floor of a crumbling spire, a place where the grime on the windows provided more privacy than the curtains. I walked in, dripping rainwater and metaphysical dread onto the worn floorboards. The air was wrong. It smelled of jasmine and old paper.

She was sitting in my only armchair as if she owned it, one long leg draped over the side. Lux. In her hand, she was idly flicking the little duck head of the Pez dispenser open and closed. Click. Clack. Click. Clack. The sound was an infuriating metronome counting down my patience.

"This is private property," I said, my voice low and tight. It was a pointless statement. A being who could walk out of a mirror wasn't going to be deterred by a deadbolt.

"All property is a story we agree to tell ourselves," she replied, her shifting eyes amused. "And your story is so very loud in this little room, Jack. It's clinging to the walls." She gestured with the dispenser. "Now, this little fellow. His story was almost completely silenced. Almost."

The obstacle was her, a beautiful, chaotic wall between me and my only lead. "Give it back," I said. "It's evidence."

"Evidence of what? A crime that officially never happened?" she countered, a sly smile playing on her ever-changing lips. "As of five minutes ago, Elysian Bites had a minor electrical fault that caused some holographic interference. The restaurant will be compensated for their trouble. End of story."

Of course. The Sanitizers were efficient.

"I will find you whatever it is you want," I said, trying a different tack. It felt like negotiating with a hurricane. "Information? An artifact? Just name it."

Her laughter was a soft, dangerous melody. She leaned forward, her gaze intense, her face for a moment settling into a look of profound, academic curiosity. "Oh, but I've already found what I want. It's you."

I stiffened.

"Don't flatter yourself, detective," she purred. "It's not your charming personality. It's your pain. Your Lítost. That magnificent, festering wound in your soul. I want to understand it." Her proposal came, casual and devastating. "Give me a piece of it. Just a sliver. The memory of the fire. The smell of the ash. The exact sound your reality made when it broke. Let me hold it for just a moment."

My blood ran cold. She wasn't asking for a story. She was asking for a piece of my soul, the foundational trauma that defined me. To let her in, to let her experience that moment, would be the ultimate violation. The action was to refuse, absolutely and unequivocally.

"No," I said, the word coming out like a shard of glass. "My ghosts are my own."

For the first time, her playful demeanor faltered. She looked at me, and in her eyes, I saw not mockery, but a flicker of genuine surprise, perhaps even a sliver of respect. "You'd rather hold onto your misery than trade it for a clue? Fascinating."

"It's not misery," I snarled. "It's what's left."

She stood, a fluid motion of shifting fabric and form. I braced myself, expecting a fight, a flash of power, something. Instead, the result was a surprise. She held up the Pez dispenser, then closed her fist around it.

"Very well," she said, her voice once again light and playful. "Keep your tragic backstory. The game is less fun if one of the players folds too early. But you can't play without any cards."

She tossed something at me. I caught it out of reflex. It was a piece of stone, polished and black, the size of a domino. It was cool to the touch, and it seemed to absorb the light in the room, giving nothing back. It was obsidian, but felt heavier, denser, like a collapsed star.

"What is this?" I asked, my eyes narrowed.

"The mirrors in the restaurant were weeping from a paradox," she explained, beginning to shimmer at the edges. "They show what is reflected, what is believed. But that," she gestured to the stone in my hand, "that is a sliver of a Weeping Mirror's heartwood. It doesn't reflect what appears. It shows what is."

And with that, she dissolved, not into a mirror this time, but into a swirl of shadows that smelled of jasmine and then, nothing. She was gone. And so was the Pez dispenser.

I was left with a cryptic rock and a gaping hole where my case used to be. I sank into the chair she had vacated, the faint warmth still clinging to it. I looked at the obsidian stone. What is.

I closed my eyes, focusing my will, channeling the thrumming energy of my Lítost not outward, but inward, into the stone. I didn't try to see the crime scene. I tried to see the victim. The monochrome man. Dapper Dan, I'd started calling him in my head.

The stone grew cold in my hand, a piercing, absolute zero. There was no image, no sound. There was only a feeling, a pure, distilled concept flooding my mind. It was the feeling of a long, long performance finally coming to an end. It was the weariness of holding the same smile for a century. It was the quiet, profound relief of the curtain falling for the last time. It was the feeling of a choice, freely made.

My eyes snapped open. The truth hit me with the force of a physical blow.

Dapper Dan wasn't murdered. He wasn't erased against his will. He'd gone to his executioner willingly. He had wanted to be deleted. It was a suicide. An assisted suicide of the soul.

Just as this new, impossible reality settled in my mind, a sharp, official chime cut through the silence. My ABI slate, lying on the table, lit up. A single, brutal message was displayed on the screen.

CASE REF 734-OMEGA: ANOMALOUS MANIFESTATION. RESOLVED. ARCHIVED. FURTHER INQUIRY PROHIBITED BY ORDER OF THE ARCANUM COUNCIL.

The final turning point. The system hadn't just covered it up; they had slammed the door, locked it, and thrown away the key. They were protecting someone. Someone powerful enough to command the Council itself. Someone like Glitterati.

I was officially off a case that didn't exist, chasing a victim who wanted to die, my only clue stolen by a chaos fae. I was alone, outside the system, with nothing but a truth that no one would ever believe.

And my only path forward led straight to the penthouse of a goddess.