Second Canto 4

 

Canto IV: The Betrayal of Light

In an age of glass and gold, when scholars built towers that touched the clouds, there lived a man who sought to master the language of light.

He was called Merin of the Silver Hall, a magician whose craft could turn sunlight into shapes, music into mirrors, and words into living flame. He studied not to serve the gods, nor the people, but to command the world itself—to unweave the silence between knowledge and divinity.

Yet all his power left him hollow. For in every gleam of his craft, he saw only reflections—never truth.

Then one night, as the moon hung low over the Mirror Lake, he heard her song.

It was faint, like water remembering rain. He fell to his knees upon the shore, trembling, for he knew at once it was her—the Lady whose name had passed into myth, whose voice had once bound kings and calmed storms.

And Merin, the clever and the faithless, thought: If I could capture that sound, I would hold eternity in my hand.

He forged a mirror of flawless silver, cooling it in moonlight for seven nights and sealing it with words no mortal tongue should speak. When he raised it toward the lake, the water rose to meet it, and the Lady’s reflection appeared—pale, luminous, and still.

“Who calls my shadow?” she asked.

“I seek only to learn your song,” he said.

“Then listen,” said the Lady. “But do not command.”

She sang once, and the mirror shimmered. The song passed through him like fire through glass—beautiful, unbearable. But when the sound began to fade, greed stirred in his heart. He spoke the binding word, the one no human voice should utter.

The mirror obeyed.

The Lady’s image froze within it, her mouth open in silence, her eyes filled with sorrow deeper than the lake itself. Then the mirror shattered—not into shards, but into light, a thousand fragments that fled into the air like birds.

Merin cried out, for the brilliance seared his eyes. When he awoke, he was blind.

He wandered for many years, staff in hand, hearing songs that no one else could hear. Children followed him through the villages, laughing at his stories of light that burned and voices that forgave. But when he died, they say his eyes were clear again—and reflected the moon.

And sometimes, in the quiet between storms, the Mirror Lake hums faintly, as though remembering the song that once tried to cage it.

What is freely given cannot be taken without cost.