Word Count: 1206

Ganymede felt the ground shaking beneath her feet, though at first the only noise was that of a sober breeze through the cracks and missing panes of the windows.

The mirrored hall was quiet when she arrived, bathed in shadow in the areas where Jupiter's pale red glow could not reach. The floor was strewn with bits of rubble and glass, the clear shards of windows mingling with the reflective pieces of those mirrors that had been destroyed. Others remained in place, but most were cracked, distorting her image as Ganymede passed by. Only a few statues still sat upon their plinths; the rest laid broken on the floor, a few cracked but more or less solid, while others were smashed beyond repair or recognition. Many of the chandeliers had long since fallen to join them.

Yet this place, like Liesel's room, called her back time and again. It was where she'd first heard the voices whispering her name, where she'd glimpsed the first flickering images of the ghosts that now visited her as more than just shades reflected in the mirrors.

Tonight the figures came first, a crowd of unrecognizable figures scrambling through the hall. Among them Ganymede could pick out the forms of Liesel and Serge, the latter burdened with a sack of belongings as he pulled Liesel along. All the while, Liesel struggled to break free.

That was familiar, but the expression on Liesel's face was even more desperate than the scene by the lake.

“Let me go!”

The scene took shape around them. The hall of mirrors looked more intact, though it was obvious that it would not remain that way for long. The shaking beneath Ganymede's feat grew stronger. A statue on her right toppled over, and to her left one of the windows suddenly exploded, showering the hall with sharp bits of glass.

On instinct Ganymede shielded herself from the debris, and though she knew she was in no danger from ghosts and memories, she thought she felt a few slivers knick her skin.

When she looked up, Serge and Liesel were still struggling against one another in the hall. Liesel sported a few rips to his jacket, and a thin stream of blood oozed from his cheek where he'd been struck by a piece of glass.

“Let me go, Serge!”

Suddenly Liesel broke away, but when he turned to run back in the direction they'd come from he collided with another figure, this one a gray-haired man with piercing eyes, in a tattered suit and loose robes. The golden collar that usually draped over his shoulders was missing and he, too, bore obvious signs of having been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Another window burst further down the hall. Ganymede heard distant shouting and a series of loud, jarring explosions.

“Leave this place,” the man said. He was sweating profusely, his breathing labored, his face smeared with dirt and traces of blood. The Lord Chancellor, Ganymede decided. That was who he must be. She'd seem him enough and heard about him enough to confidently associate the title with him.

“I can't!” Liesel insisted. “I can end this! I can fix everything!”

“You can do nothing,” the Lord Chancellor said.

“But my father... if I could speak to him...”

“That man ceased to be your father long ago.”

Liesel looked as if he would argue. He shook his head, struggled against Serge's hands when they returned to him, making an attempt to pull him away again.

“Liesel,” the Lord Chancellor said, his voice firm but somehow not as harsh as Ganymede was used to hearing.

It seemed strange and out of place to her. Indeed, Liesel reacted with just as much shock and confusion, staring wide-eyed and open-mouthed at a man that had likely never referred to him by his given name.

“This is the end,” the Lord Chancellor told him. “You must leave.”

“But I... no! I can't! Where would I go? This is my home!”

“You know where.”

Blue eyes stared passed Liesel to Serge. Liesel looked between them, unable to disguise his anxiety as the two frowned at one another but seemed to come to an agreement for once. But then, considering the circumstances, there was probably not much arguing left to be done.

“But my father!” Liesel said.

The Lord Chancellor took him by the shoulders, stared steadily into Liesel's eyes. “Your father expects you to leave,” he said.

The sound cut out, and it left Ganymede with nothing but a silent image. She noted the seriousness of the Lord Chancellor's face, the way his eyes seemed alive in a manner Ganymede had never seen them manage before. Liesel's expression showed a mix of shock and despair in return. He shook his head, his mouth moving in a nonsensical stream of babbling. Again he struggled against Serge, who used his arms to restrain him when once he'd only used his hands.

Another window shattered. The noise echoed in the hall, and with it rose the incessant whispers.

“Ganymede... Ganymede...”

The sound returned in a rush of activity—screaming, crying, shouting, distant explosions that drew steadily closer. Liesel's hands gripped onto the Lord Chancellor's robes, his face wild as he pulled against Serge's restrictive hold.

“I don't understand!” he shouted. “I don't understand!”

The Lord Chancellor took Liesel's hands from his robes and forced them away. “Go, Liesel!”

There was that harshness, that anger, the emotional distance Liesel and Ganymede were used to, but there was more beneath it, a flood of emotions so deeply repressed Ganymede could only scrape the surface.

“This way,” Serge said, and finally succeeded in pulling Liesel away.

The scene faded as the two escaped down the hall. Liesel fought all the while, shouting over his shoulder as one of the chandeliers came down.

Ganymede never heard the crash, but saw the Lord Chancellor's figure disappear with it.

The darkness of her moon seemed suddenly inescapable. It closed in on her, pressed down on her, threatened to suffocate her where she stood, made her all too aware that she was the only living being left on this world. Ganymede glanced around in mild panic, as remnants of past emotions rose to the surface. She stumbled over debris, heard the crunch of glass beneath her boots and the shifting of rubble as she stepped toward the windows.

She leaned against the opening, took deep steadying breaths that did little to help, felt a calming wind against her face as she looked out onto the world beyond the palace. It was as barren and desolate as it'd always been, too large a place for one person to accomplish anything. She felt so small there, so lost to a time she could never hope to understand on her own. But it followed her everywhere, it pulled her back, it kept her chained to this world as surely as Liesel had been chained to it hundreds of years before.

And up there in the sky, as it always was, as it'd always been, Jupiter loomed large and imposing.

There, she knew, was where she would find it, hidden in a fortress with all the other secret parts of Liesel's life.