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The sudden drop was unexpected. He wasn't sure what was going to happen when the mirror and gate finished whatever they were doing, but he still was expecting something along the lines of the demons of hell descending upon them all.

Shaking his head as he righted himself back up, he looked around to try and see if he could climb back up. They didn't really fall too far, after all. As he did this, Shun caught a glimpse of the mirror. At first, he just saw himself, but then, he realized something wasn't right. Quickly, he doubled back to peer back at the reflective surface.

He saw himself. But it wasn't just that. No. It was far from being a normal reflection, to say in the least. A great battle had apparently been waged. Several arrows protruded from his form as he laid on the ground, alone. Slowly bleeding out. Standing further off, he could see the figures of several knights. Despite the fact that he wasn't too far off, they made no move to help him. Instead, they were laughing at his demise. He could see himself reaching out to the group, trying to crawl closer, and pleading for help. He was badly wounded, but maybe something could be done in the least. Shun had not seen who his attackers were in the fray, though he soon realized that a few of them were carrying bows. Between that and the actions they were taking, it quickly dawned upon him as to what this all meant.

They were the ones that killed him in the first place.

Slowly, one of the distant figures raised his bow and nocked an arrow. From where he stood on the other side of the mirror, the knight-apprentice could see a wicked grin.

Shun recoiled, placing a hand over his face. What sorcery was this?

She stared at the mirror, unable to look away. She could see herself. She could see so much more than that, too.

It was her, yes. Dirt and blood clung to her, the color of her clothing lost under it all. Her hands were nearly black, fingers cracked and bleeding. Her hair was a tangle of knots pulled back in a hurry. Pale flesh showed through on her face in the places where the tears had washed the dirt away.

Sherry froze, staring at the image.

She saw herself drop something, a bandage perhaps. The her in the mirror turned, looking all about her. She could see the bodies lying in neat rows. Some were in piles. They’d run out of cloth to cover them up long ago. The floor was looked to be black and red, but she knew most of it was blood.

Dead. All dead. Everyone dead and gone. She’d saved no one, not a single one. She’d helped no one.

Failed. They’d failed. All of their efforts for naught. For this was their destiny. Their attempts, all of it, had been in vain.

Sherry blinked, and the image shifted. She knelt, blood in her hands- dark red and fresh. Hers. Something in the shadows grinned at her.

All for naught. She’d saved no one, and there was no one left to save.

Sherry blinked again, stepping back and willing herself to be calm. Willing herself to stop shaking.

The crack as the mirror and gate fell certainly drew his attention, and Arrakis rushed over to check on it and the people near it, making sure to keep careful attention on his surroundings as he did so, lest he get attacked. But he wanted to make sure that no one caught nearby when it happened had been injured. He was still torn about what to do about the great knights fighting, but spared them only a backwards glance as he looked towards the mirror. His mouth was open to ask if anyone needed a hand, but Arrakis didn't finish his sentence. His words trailed off before he'd even finished the first one, ending softly.

The image in the mirror had seemed normal at first, but as his head had turned from side to side he'd realised that something was distinctly off about it. Nothing overtly obvious, but... wrong, all the same. Something in his eyes, the set of his jaw.

Something behind him.

Something red, mangled.

A splash of blood on his skin, too little to be his, too bright not to be fresh.

He watched himself turn, walk to the form on the ground. Watched himself kneel, run a hand over the bleeding mass. Saw the shudder of revulsion, watched what fight was left in them be devoted to trying to shrink away.

Watched himself pull their head back.

Watched his sword flash in the light, more red staining his clothing and the ground as the fight left their body entirely. He dropped them unceremoniously into the dirt and, standing, shoved them away with a heel. There was a look of fierce joy on his face, he realised, a wicked grin with far too many teeth. He watched his face tilt towards the sky, heard the laugh even though his reflection made no sound.

Arrakis jerked back, stomach roiling and chest tight.

No. Never.

Kitty could barely remember how it all happened. When they Great Knights had begun fighting one another, she struggled to come up with a plan of action. Her leaders not in agreement, she was a sheep without a shepherd, or even a flock. People were fighting each other, fighting the knights, and chaos was supreme.

Was this the way of the world? The true world? Darkness, and no sense of order.

Something cracked, and she felt herself get dragged deep into a slow, oozing darkness. Her vision clouded, if only to transition into what was to unfold before her.

It was the true faces of the Knights, and every apprentice. They were all creatures; their once human faces twisted and distorted. They grinned demonically, their smiles stretching unnaturally across their jaws. They attacked without concern, even as their once golden world crumbled and fell. No one cared for one another. There were no gilded halls, no hierarchies or even the simple farming villages where order and peace could be obtained. Nature was not composed of green hills and overflowing meadows. It was of oozing death and rampant violence.

Kitty grimaced, and she was not afraid. She was disgusted. Disgusted with humanity, and the order of the laws of nature that this could be truth. She was truly alone, as the destiny she'd given herself never really existed.

This was all there was, after all. A world that knew only corruption, selfishness and evil. Hopeless.

She felt her old self fall away from her. Where she was once driven to be something great and amazing, pure and shining? Now there was just dirt, black and emptiness. Love was a foreign, and ignorant concept. Faith and dreams were destroyed. Her leaders were not true, her comrades not equals. She was to be tainted by their darkness. Everything was their fault.

As soon as Riley had run from where many had been gathered around Morgan, Yuki had rushed here. The cruel, untrue Riley had said that the woman he met was lost forever in the mirror. He didn't understand enough about magic to truly know how such things as he had witnessed in just the last several minutes could occur... He was certain that everything was wrong and while he didn't know how to fix it, the mirror seemed a step towards figuring out what was going on.

If Riley was lost in the mirror, he had to help her find her way back somehow.

The instant he approached it closely, his eyes locked onto his own reflection. Yuki was almost relieved, as he'd had no reflection before. Though something about it seemed strangely off.

As he tried to grasp what was wrong with the vision of himself, darkness closed in around his reflection and consumed him. Yuki could hear a voice echoing from the other side, inhuman and frightening as it spoke his name. It sounded, almost, like his own voice. He remembered the cruel laughter and mocking that he had heard, as he was staring at the reflection of the monster that had had her fingers around his throat.

And just as suddenly as the vision had come, it was gone. He stared, shaken.

But he had come to it for someone other than himself.

"Riley?!" Yuki shouted to the mirror, as if he were calling over a long distance.

If he had expected a response, it had only made him angry that there wasn't one.

"She doesn't belong to you!" He growled, apparently thinking that this strange thing was somehow sentient and had its own will. "You can't have her! Give her back!"

Yuki wanted to lash out, strike it, and his right hand balled into a fist and he had already drawn it back. But if his friend was trapped inside, what would become of her if it was destroyed? He couldn't risk it, not without knowing the outcome. He screamed at it in frustration and anger, stepping back from it and looking back in the direction that he had come.

He didn't know what to do. He had to find the Riley that replaced her.

With that thought and his fear for her possessing his mind, he would worry later about whether or not he had just witnessed his own demise.

Drona turned toward the mirror as it sunk, at little jarred by the sudden movement of the room and the loud shifted of all the treasure spilling out of place. She hadn't even noticed that they'd pushed the mirror and gate far enough to connect them.

She wandered closer, as many other had, to examine the effect that it had. But she was caught in her reflection. She looked younger, standing there, than she knew she was now. Her face was rounder, her hips and shoulders less angular. She was captivated by the youthful joy on her reflections face. She couldn't remember ever being that young, or that happy.

She wasn't the only one in the mirror, though. Another person, tall and willowy, stood beside her. The person had long hair that fell in dark waves around their shoulders and a thin, kind face. Drona's heart swelled. Her Jaja. This was her Jaja.

But before she could capture the memory in her mind it shifted. The sky went dark and an almost angry red. The expressions on their faces contorted into fear, and Jaja's reflection fell to the ground, hair fanning around them. Drona's reflection dropped to her knees, and though there was no sound she could hear the desperate screams.

No. Please no.

Shadows stampeded by, nearly blocking Drona's view of the reflections, but she knew what was happening. Her younger self was crying, screaming, desperately pleading. Jaja wasn't moving.

She stepped back from the mirror, almost tripping in her haste. Hot tears washed down her cheeks, even as the memory slipped away from her grasp. She was left crying at a hollow shell of what she saw. No faces, no names, she couldn't remember any of it. But she could remember that it hurt.

It wasn't real, she told herself. Nothing she saw was real. She would have remembered that pain.

Corbin was also nearby, unsuspecting and simply curious at first. The shiny object called out to him, drew him in. The chaos that raged on behind him became distant and muffled. His reflection curious but oddly hypnotizing. He drew closer and closer, eyes staring back at eyes. Suddenly he was frowning. Why was he frowning? He couldn't say why. The frowning furthered more and more, skin sagging and becoming heavy and wrinkled until with a horrified scream, he realized the flesh was pouring away. Melting. His skin giving way to muscle and cartilage and he could swear he could smell burning flesh just before nose and all else gave way to bone. He reached up to clutch his face in horror, only to find nothing but withered and burnt finger bones to comfort himself.

Finally, he staggered backwards, shrieking at the top of his lungs.

It was just a nightmare... or was it a prediction?