The knight met the gaze of the reflection in the water. For a moment, it was as if the colors had dried on the surface, and a rock had been flung through, causing the image to crack.

  “A life driven by paradoxical impulses is it, sir knight?” the reflection almost sounded offended.

  “...It could have been,” Kylian said. “Yet we would never know. The person and the illusion were never the same.”

  Ever since he’d met the resurrected Ailn on that fateful day in the courtyard, Kylian had given up on the idea that the world was simple. He woke each morning braced for whatever surprises the day had in store, and yet the nature of a surprise meant he could never truly be prepared.

  Instead of attempting to reduce life and its mysteries, he tried to embrace the strangeness. And when he failed to do that, he still stood in quiet admiration of the things he didn’t know.

  This illusion was no different.

  What was its nature? What sort of magic underlay it—and what did that imply of its creator, Elenira Lirathel? Even if Kylian could not lift the veil, that did not stop him from listening to the voice underneath.

  Oftentimes, Kylian had to take the words of Ailn on good faith. He couldn’t bring himself to accept what he said unquestioned—but he could always give it credence, and due consideration.

  “If Noué Areygni truly starved to death in this cave…” Kylian started. “...then I believe she was attempting to leave a message. Not merely an instance of truth, but a definition of it, one that was highly personal and even uncertain.”

  “This reflection in the water, I believe, was a trap.” Raising his thumb, Kylian gestured up in the direction of the painted corridor they’d recently left. “The topic we’ve discussed least upon entering is her art.” He extended his arm toward the portraits. “And in fact, the art in the antechamber isn’t even of Noué’s creation—it’s Elenira’s.”

  He gazed into the basin again, asking the reflection a sincere question. “If you’re a truly reliable proxy for the deceased Noué, and you had a genuine desire to be understood by your art… then why muddy the waters with an illusion?

  “...Why, indeed?” the reflection replied.

  But Kylian continued his explanation undeterred.

  “In this antechamber, we are seeing a concept of Noué built from Elenira’s memories. We are gauging her existence by Elenira’s portraits.” Kylian furrowed his brow. “The only conclusion I can come to is that the illusion is being presented as one notion of truth, among many.”

  “I just want to make sure all of you understand,” the reflection sounded somewhat irritated. “There is no secret fifth chamber, and the answer isn’t all of the above.”

  “I’m aware,” Kylian sighed. He wasn’t sure if he should feel silly, trying to spare the illusion’s emotions. “The tempera portrait, to my view, represents not merely mystery, but retreat. A retreat into this cave, behind a door of an obscure riddle. Noué hid behind a simulacrum of herself, stitched together from fragments, fashioned by another who perhaps didn’t ‘understand’ the true Noué herself.”

  “Isn’t that basically the same thing?” the reflection chuckled. “If you’re saying that portrait can represent anything you want—”

  “The portrait represents fear,” Kylian said. “Noué Areygni… was afraid of getting close to others.”

  The reflection went quiet, though her gaze remained steady.

  “Noué Areygni’s art is paradoxical. The grand and distant become quaint and warm. The familiar becomes alienating. And it seems to me if Elenira Lirathel truly did play such an important role in the creation of this chamber…” Kylian hesitated. “Then those closest to you were always furthest from your heart.”

  As Kylian stared into the water, he observed that he could see his own reflection—his appraising gaze now turned on himself.

  “The true illusion is that the reflection upon the water is prismatic—in the shifting light, we merely see ourselves,” Kylian said. He frowned, pulling his eyes away from the basin and turning toward the portraits again. “Noué’s last refuge was to conceal herself behind us. Our reflections.”

  Kylian walked toward the tempera portrait. He couldn’t help but want to see it as he considered Noué, the life she lived, and the legacy she wished to leave. “Fragility can be disguised for an entire lifetime. And sometimes it’s only revealed when it ends.”

  As he gazed at the portrait, with its brittle, fracturing surface, he wondered if the woman within might shatter from a single blunt blow. “This entire quest, perhaps, was her way of saying she refused to let anyone in, even in death,” Kylian said, gently. “Portraited by another’s brush, Noué wished to imitate her own art—something grand, mythic, and seemingly nearby. But never truly there.”

  “Huh?” Safi squinted, having ambled up to look at the portrait herself. “But then what if someone chooses the right portrait? Did they understand her or not?”

  “...Then they would understand that they’d never fully understand—” Kylian said.

  “Cop out!” Safi crossed her arms in an X. “She painted all that stuff in the cave! No way she was fragile. Nuh uh.”

  “She also starved in that cave,” Kylian said. He took a deep breath, stifling his frustration. What was a ‘cop out’? “You’re glossing over the nuances of—”

  “‘Cause it’s just kinda dum—er, unintelligent,” Safi fumbled.

  Kylian grimaced. The correction was actually more insulting.

  “It would be such a lousy punchline!” Safi’s hands flew to her head. “Noué loves loves loves pranks. She loves them too much—that’s why she’s always making Renea cry!”

  “What? I didn’t… I didn’t cry, though,” Renea called out from the other side of the chamber, her voice breaking, her face wrinkling in upset. “I didn’t cry.”

  Though she was too far for Kylian to see clearly, he got the sense the accusation of tears might actually bring them on.

  Safi continued on, largely unaware. “You’re telling me that Noué would do ALL this setup, and then her final prank is haha there wasn’t a prank at all? No! If Noué was that much of a hack she would have just written poetry!”

  Kylian could guess what a ‘hack’ was from her tone. “That is astonishingly rude toward poets,” he sighed.

  Momentarily, Naomi also approached, her gait graceful yet angry. “Why would she be afraid?” she fumed. “You are making too many assumptions, no? As if reaching out with vulnerability is the proof she’s afraid—perhaps reaching out should be seen as an act of bravery!”

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “Sorry?” Kylian blinked. “...Naomi, be forthright. Are we truly still talking about Noué?”

  “...Art is nothing if life and its many vicissitudes cannot be seen in it,” Naomi said, her tone forcibly academic.

  Over on the other side of the chamber, Ailn was next to the basin, watching the increasingly heated literary debate. He started to chuckle—and that chuckle quickly became a groan.

  “I’m pretty sure Kylian invented postmodernism at one point,” Ailn said, holding his head. “Noué… you really outdid yourself.”

  “...Yep,” the reflection replied.

  Safi, hearing this exchange, seemed to think Ailn was actually giving a review. From the far side of the chamber, she gave a few cheerful claps, in spite of everything.

  “Bravo Noué!”

  Renea waited quietly next to her brother, wondering if she’d ever get a chance to talk. Truthfully, she would’ve preferred to stay far away from the basin. But she felt safest next to Ailn.

  “Your thoughts, Renea?” Ailn asked.

  “... I don’t think it was right for Safi to say I cried when I didn’t,” Renea said.

  “I meant, your thoughts on the right portrait. Which one’s the right Noué?”

  “Oh, well…” Renea looked away. She felt awkward saying this next to the basin. The whole thing just felt too surreal. “I think she was sad, personally…”

  “...Sad,” Ailn repeated the word, sounding a little surprised. “After she was that cruel to you? Why?”

  For a couple of minutes, Renea didn’t respond. A few times she parted her lips, trying to find words, but her voice caught in her throat—stuck, as if the reflection’s prank had stolen the air she needed to speak.

  “Sometimes my thoughts get so heavy they… feel like real weight,” Renea finally said, quietly. “And it feels like they’ll crush me, if I let them.”

  Her gaze dropped to the floor, and she felt her will to speak leaving her. “.... They felt heavier when I looked at Noué’s final piece. When I saw that dragon, I couldn’t help but think of Aldous. Then those shadows on the wall… made me think of everyone I’ve lost. My mother. My father. And…”

  “Ailn,” she said, in a whisper too quiet for the others to hear.

  Renea blinked a few times. Speaking was becoming painful. “I started to—the more I looked at the cave paintings—“ She swallowed, her hand moving to lightly touch her throat. “The more I thought about death. I started to hear those sounds from Cora, and they—they reminded me of what dying felt like.”

  For a few seconds, there was only the sound of Renea softly breathing. “I… I looked into the basin, and…”

  “I felt… despair,” Renea said numbly.

  Ailn didn’t respond for a while. And Renea, though she had more to say, had spent all the energy she had to say it. So, she stared at the ground, all too aware of the basin next to her, the mere presence of which filled her with anxiety.

  The reflection in the water wasn’t saying anything. It hadn’t said much at all since the debating started. But its silence bothered Renea, too.

  All of a sudden, she felt something rest softly on her head, and it was large enough to momentarily cover her eyes. Reaching up and adjusting it, she realized it was Ailn’s deerstalker hat.

  “So her art spoke to you. You thought you and Noué might be kindred spirits?” Ailn asked.

  “Um…” Renea’s heart itched a bit. It felt like there was a scab there, that always bled when she picked at it. “Not qui—”

  The hat fell over her eyes again. It really was too big. Scowling, she pulled it off and decided to just hold it close. The surprisingly soft material calmed her down a bit.

  “...I thought of Elenira,” Renea mumbled finally. “I thought of her waiting for Noué to turn around all those years, wondering why she wouldn’t.” Her face started to flush, because it felt like she was insulting the reflection in the basin. Would it lash out at her? “And when I thought that, Noué reminded me of my mother, I guess. Our mother.”

  She squeezed the hat against her heart.

  “I thought that maybe… the reason she never turned around was because she was struggling with something in front of her,” Renea said. “Maybe Noué and my mom were just sad, too. In their own ways. Because otherwise…”

  Renea bit her lip. “...Because otherwise I just wouldn’t be able to understand.”

  Realizing her eyes really were starting to water, she put the hat back on so no one could see. “So—so, what about you, Ani? What do you think?”

  “I think uh, hm…” Ailn fiddled with his wrist, wincing the way he always did when giving a thought extra attention. “I think the reflection owes you an apology.”

  Flinching, Renea pushed up the rim of the hat, and her eyes darted to the basin. “W-why can’t you ever not antagon—”

  “...I wouldn’t have done that to you if I knew about all your baggage.” The reflection’s voice carried over, sounding defensive, even a little sullen. “All I heard was that you scared easy. Blame the blabbermouth.”

  “...O-oh,” Renea stammered, unsure of what to say. It wasn’t exactly an apology, but… “T-thank you.”

  She felt a little lighter all of a sudden. The slightest warmth rushed into her chest, but somehow just that was overwhelming. The hat dropped fell over her eyes gently again. “That’s all I… r-really wanted to hear, you know.”

  A few tears dripped down her cheeks.

  The sunlight had already begun to dwindle in the chamber. Gaze fixed on her feet, Renea watched as it gave way to the modest glow of their lanterns, and their shadows returned.

  Ailn hadn’t said anything for a while. When Renea finally peeked at him from under the brim of the cap, she noticed he was lost in thought, his gaze distant.

  If Ailn were being honest, he thought that earnestly approaching Noué’s puzzle was, if not misguided, at least naive. He wasn’t willing to put his full faith in the finicky proposition of ‘understanding’ someone.

  The bread and butter of his work was understanding how someone behaved—that extra word made all the difference. He didn’t need to know anything about the owner of a house to find their keys; half the time they were in a potted plant.

  He’d originally intended to solve this puzzle in roughly the same way.

  But as the light winnowed inward, the area of illumination shrinking like a vanishing spotlight, something happened. Darkness surged back into the chamber, thick, almost tangible… almost forceful. And with it came an inexplicable sense of desperation.

  The feeling swept over Ailn, pushed his gaze down to the restless water. He couldn’t see Noué’s reflection anymore—he saw his own.

  But… it wasn’t Ailn eum-Creid. A tall young man with brown hair and sharp eyes stared back.

  And then that disappeared too. He couldn’t see himself. Nor could he see the reflection of Noué Areygni. There was just the dark, still surface of the water, which hid the basin’s indeterminate depths.

  Something was missing. He needed to find it. It was waiting at the bottom for him.

  He needed to dive in—

  “Ani!” Renea grabbed his wrist, jolting him back to reality. “Are you okay?”

  She was shaking, looking at him with an absolutely harrowed expression. As if she wasn’t sure of what else to do, she gently took off the deerstalker she’d been wearing, placing it back on his head. “You can talk to me too, you know…?”

  “...Yeah, of course,” Ailn said absently. He readjusted the hat, his fingers brushing through his hair, slick with cold sweat. “I’ll make sure to.”

  Despite himself Ailn was starting to realize he ‘got’ Noué more than he cared to admit. But before he could make sense of his thoughts, he heard Safi gasp from the other side of the chamber.

  The light had nearly fully vanished, and like the moment before a total eclipse, its brightness peaked, the last sliver of sun glancing off the waterfall cascading into the basin.

  “Ani…” Renea’s breath caught, as she pointed a trembling finger upward. “Look.”

  Ailn’s gaze slowly climbed the waterfall, squinting through the glare. And for a heartbeat, he swore he could see a woman sitting at the top.

  She kicked her legs lazily, the sight as dazzling as it was fleeting, then she was gone with the sunlight.

  Noué’s alleged muse Lumitheia came to mind, along with a few verses from her cheeky rendition of the Emerald Tablet.

  “Her father is the sun, her mother is gold,” Ailn said softly. “Her last lie will be shown in glory.”

  Then he looked into the basin, where Noué’s reflection smiled wistfully, a hint of serenity discernible through the fading colors. “Drown it with truth… and thus reveal her world.”

  Golden eyes stared back.