prelude to something undefined

Looking into the mirror made Lux want to smash it in pieces. Her old dress had still fitted her, that wasn't the issue, but something in the way she looked in silk made her feel horribly uncomfortable. She didn't even know why, she had worn all kinds of disguises in the past and had never felt this strongly about any piece of clothing – but still, she was barely able to look at herself.

It was her hair, she finally decided, that was the worst – flowing down her back, in its bright blonde, perfectly complementing the dress. She'd never worn her hair like this in combat, or in training, or even as a spy – and looking at herself with loose hair just reminded her in a mocking way, that right now, she was neither a spy nor a soldier. She was just someone's daughter, and she was just supposed to look pretty. Lux had to suppress the sudden impulse to just cut it all off – her father wouldn't approve of it. She grabbed a blue ribbon and tied her hair into a small bun. It looked better. Not good – she was farther away from feeling good then she had been in a while – but bearable.

Testing, she took a few steps in her high heels, another piece of clothing she rarely wore. It worked better than expected – almost as if she had worn them recently. She hadn't, but there was enough to complain about already, so if there was any chance to not make a fool out of herself, she'd take it.

After one last, testing look at herself in the mirror, she sat down on her bed, sighing, and let the last hours run through her mind again. She had fled from Katarina and Garen shortly after they had gone inside, when Garen had finally brought up his favorite topic – politics – to go to her room to think. The way Katarina had looked, curtsying before her, was still burned into her eyes, and it still made her burn somehow. But thinking about it again, it felt different – as if something important was missing to her somehow, as if the way that Katarina had looked at her had some kind of meaning that Lux hadn't understood.
Well, she'd have a lot of time to get to know her, and maybe learn to read whatever was written between the lines of every word Katarina said, every look she gave her. She was her future sister in law, after all.

A knock on the door made Lux nearly jump off her bed. She was halfway to grabbing her staff when she remembered that she was at home, in the middle of a heavy guarded mansion and there was no reason to be armed.
"Come in", she called, forced her voice to be steadier than she felt herself.

It was Katarina. Lux looked for her brother – surely, he would accompany her? – but she was alone.
"Can I help you?", Lux asked, eyebrows raised. She didn't mean to sound this hostile, but her heard was still beating fast and just slowly she was able to sit back on her bed. If Katarina had noticed that Lux had been grabbing for her weapon, she didn't comment on it, but she was staring at Lux anyway, her eyes traveling up and down her body within a second. Then she gulped, took a big breath and seemed to regain control.
"Not really. Just wanted to see if you're ready. The banquet is starting in a few minutes.", the Katarina said, with a small smile on her face, then she added a "You look good."

Katarina herself was already dressed up, Lux realized, even though her outfit didn't differ as much from earlier. It was another black dress, but this one was slightly longer – just long enough to hide weapons under – and patterned with bronze roses on the lower half.

"Oh. Thank you. You … You look good, too.", Lux responded, feeling like an idiot for stuttering like a schoolgirl, but to her defense, Katarina had caught her off guard. "If Garen can't even be bothered to escort you to the banquet that's literally taking place because of your engagement -"
Katarina chuckled at that and waved her off.
"Oh, don't worry, I actually escaped from him after two hours of lessons on demacian history. Told him you would escort me. Building bonds with my future sister in law and stuff like this."
Lux sunk her head in her hands.

"I apologize for my brother.", she groaned. "He had no tact and no idea how to carry a conversation."
She didn't mean to talk bad about Garen, but it was true – Katarina had fought on the losing side of the last war, for fucks sake. She knew how Demacia had joined forces with Ionia, had probably lost comrades in the months of one-sided war following the alliance. Rubbing it in her face like this … She got that Garen was bad at Smalltalk and found it rather hard to find topics to talk about, but anything would have been better than their history.

"Don't apologize. He didn't mean any harm, after all."
"Still, he sucks at Smalltalk and I'm sorry you've got to bear with him. I promise he gets better if he gets more comfortable with people, though."
Katarina raised an eyebrow at that, then she smirked. "I'll look forward to it, then. Until then – will you be my company for the banquet?"
"Anytime.", Lux responded, laughing, and offered Katarina her arm. She felt lighter, lighter than she'd felt in hours, and Katarina grinned and took it. "Well then, it's time we show you a proper demacian banquet, right?"

"You mean drunk nobles?", Katarina asked.
Lux rolled her eyes, then opened the door. Somehow, her broody mood from earlier had disappeared, and she was even able to look at her dress without feeling disgusted and strange.

Lux had been on many banquets in her life, but the ones hosted by her own family had always been different – in a good way. It wasn't arrogancy that made her think it, but nobody but in as much effort as her family. It was one of the rare things about her parents that filled her with pride.

The food was always a little bit better, the music a little bit more fitting, the room a little bit prettier decorated. Of course, Sona played a big part in the whole thing, the women's eye for detail was second to nobody's, but the Crownguard banquets had even been awesome before Garen had turned up with Sona. Speaking of which – Lux hadn't seen her all day. She let her gaze sweep over the guests, but she couldn't spot blue hair anywhere.

When Katarina entered the room after her - she'd let go of Lux' arm before they had entered the hall – she stopped, frozen in the spot.
"Pretty, isn't it?", Lux asked, because it was. Katarina nodded.

Somebody had bewitched thousands of glass balls filled with candle lights, that were now floating over their heads. There was a big table filled with all kinds of food at one side of the room, it's tablecloths black with bronze patterns. In the middle of the room was a dance floor that looked like it was some dark red liquid, reflecting the lights. Not many guests were this early, and the nearly empty, but fully decorated room seemed to have its own magic.
"Looks like she went with a dark theme this year. Must be in your honor.", Lux said, while glancing over everything.

"She?", Katarina asked, still staring at the room.
"A servant of ours. Her name's Sona, she's the one responsible for decorations and for the food. She's really outdone herself, though.", Lux responded. At the mention of Sona, Katarina's eyes seemed to widen for a second. "Something's wrong?"

Katarina seemed to snap out of whatever though she'd been in. "Oh, no. I once knew somebody with that name, and for a second I thought … but it can't be her. She's dead."
"Oh, I'm sorry -", Lux began, but Katarina shook her head.
"Don't worry about it. It's been years, and she was more of an acquaintance than anything else, anyway. It's just a rare name, and I haven't heard it in years.", there was a strange look in Katarina's eyes, but then she blinked at it was gone. "But you're right, this is awesome. These colors -"

"It's in our honor. They decorated the whole hall in black and red, after the noxian flag."
Lux turned around and there was her brother, smiling at them both.
"Seems like you decorated yourself after the noxian flag as well.", Lux grinned at him, pointing at his clothes. He was wearing a black suit and a red tie and was looking extremely formal.
"Oh, shut up, Lux.", he responded, but he was smiling. "Have you seen the cake, though? If that's the cake we get for our engagement party, I'm kind of scared what Sona's going to pull out of her hat for the wedding."

Lux shook her head, and Garen pointed at the right side of the buffet table – to reveal the biggest cake that Lux had ever seen. It looked like it was fruit-themed, she spotted pomegranate, cherries and huge amounts of blackberries. The cream coating it all was pitch black, and the cake was topped with two flags, the demacian and the noxian one. Lux couldn't stop a 'Holy fuck' from escaping her lips.
"How do you get a cake this dark?", Katarina asked, and her face was somewhere between impressed and confused.
"Sona said its edible charcoal in the vanilla frosting. That absolute madwoman made a noxian-themed fruitcake.", Garen responded. "She isn't here, though, said she had been feeling ill all day. I hope she hasn't overworked herself."

Lux sighed at that. "I bet she has. She was awake at freaking five in the morning, when I finished training. Remind me to look after her tomorrow."
"I'll do it myself; I've got to thank her for this absolute madness anyways.", he turned to Katarina. "As this is kind of our engagement party, and I know a few people won't leave us alone until we've spent some time on the dancefloor – you want to do a test run?"

He offered his arm to Katarina, and when she didn't immediately take it, he laughed and added "I promise I'm a decent dancer."
She rolled her eyes, but took his arm, and they went off to the dancefloor, just as the band started to play their first song. It wasn't a close dance – some weird part of Lux was glad it wasn't – and after a few minutes Katarina seemed to enjoy herself as well.

Lux went over to the buffet. Some weird wave of loneliness had washed over her when Katarina and Garen had left for the dancefloor, and she mindlessly grabbed a glass of red wine.
The next half hour passed without the type of the music changing, and Lux just leaned against the wall, watching her brother and Katarina dancing while nipped at her wine. The hall slowly filled with people, and occasionally Lux nodded or waved at somebody she knew from the military, but most of the time, she was left alone.

Lux had just refilled her glass, when a slow music started to play and Katarina and Garen left the dancefloor, heading in her direction. Katarina was flushed from the strain of dancing for nearly half an hour and Garen was wiping some sweat off his forehead.
"He didn't lie.", Katarina said, grinning. "Your brother is a good dancer."
It stung, in a weird way, as if Lux had hoped Katarina would hate dancing with Garen. She forced her voice to sound happy anyways.
"Well, stepping on my feet all the time during practice had to be good for something, right?"
"Oh, shut it, Lux.", her brother said, rolling his eyes, but he seemed highly pleased with himself. "You already tried the cake?"

Lux shook her head at the question.
"But you surely tried the wine, right?", Katarina snatched the glass from her hand before she could protest and drank nearly half of it in one big gulp.
"Is that an attempt to stop me from getting drunk today?", Lux asked, and Katarina shrugged.
"Either that or an attempt to get drunk myself. Haven't decided yet."

"How about nobody's getting drunk and we finally grab some cake?", Garen proposed, and Katarina let out a small laugh, but both women followed him when he made his way to the monster of fruitcake that Sona had created.
A small line had formed, and they had been queuing up for a few minutes when the man approached them. Lux recognized him; he was one of the advisors of the crown, but she didn't remember his name. She rarely made the effort to learn the names of people who had sat out the war without ever leaving the capital.

"Officer Crownguard.", he said, looking at Garen. "Congratulations on your engagement. I had hoped to discuss something with you, actually?"
Lux watched her brothers face get slightly irritated – not enough for the advisor to notice, but plenty for her. Garen took a slighter deeper breath then usual before responding, his face a mask of perfect politeness.
"Mr. Everguard. Thank you for the congratulations. As you see, were currently about to get some of this marvelous cake, though.", her nodded in the direction of Lux and Katarina at the word 'we'. "I recommend you try it as well. Maybe we can talk about it later?"

It was as if Mr. Everguard – the name wasn't even ringing a bell to Lux – had just noticed her and Katarina standing right beside him. His brows furrowed at the sight of them and he bowed shortly.
"Of course. Milady Crownguard, Milady DuCouteau."

Milady. Lux swallowed, forced her face to continue smiling. She was more involved with the military than this cockroach ever had been, she had earned her title just as her brother had. Yet, he called her Milady instead of Officer. She bit back her comment on it, though. This was Garen's day, and if she could prevent ruining it by ignoring the disrespect, she would.
And then she caught Katarina's gaze out of the corner of her eye, and for the splint of a second before it happened Lux knew that Katarina had somehow just guessed what was running though Lux' head. Before she could shake her head, Katarina had opened her mouth.

"It's Officer Crownguard, actually.", she said, her voice had a dangerously neutral tone. "She risked her life fighting for this country. It's more than a lot of people can say about themselves."
The murderous look from earlier had made its way back in Katarina's eyes, and it made Lux shiver. Not out of fear, though – watching Katarina looking at somebody else like this, for her sake – it was a sight. She knew, she should stop Katarina from talking, should try to prevent any more damage from happening, but the woman had just stood up for her. Unlike Garen, an unhelpful voice in her head whispered. Unlike anybody in your family, actually.

"Excuse me?", Mr. Everguard asked, raising an eyebrow at Katarina, who answered with a cold "Her military title is 'Officer'. She has every right to be called by it."
He took a deep breath, Lux could see him rolling his eyes just slightly, as if he was about to deal with an unruly child. Garen was watching them with wide eyes, seemingly unsure what to do.

"Milady DuCouteau. I understand that things might be different in Noxus, but in Demacia, women don't use military titles.", he shot a look at Lux as if he was actually expecting help from her side, and it made anger fill her entire body like ice water. "I'm deeply sorry if I offended you, but maybe your finance or Lady Crownguard can fill you in on the differences between our countries later?"

Women don't use military titles. Way to prove to everyone present that he had never set foot in a camp, had never actually interacted with the soldiers on the field. Katarina's lips had gone thin in anger, Garen looked as if he'd be rather anywhere else but here. It had been a while since Lux had wanted to hurt somebody as much as she wanted to hurt Mr. Everguard.
"You didn't offend.", Lux forced herself to say, keeping her voice cheery and kind. She had sworn not to ruin her brother's wedding. She would not make a scene, but right now, her appetite for cake had completely disappeared. "If you'll excuse us, somebody who owes me a conversation just arrived. Will you join me, Katarina?"

She was lying, and Katarina knew it, but when Lux looked up to catch her gaze, there was a heat in Katarina's eyes that Lux hadn't seen before. Katarina was mad, the anger seemed to burn though her body, and it made Lux gulp, even though she knew it wasn't directed at her. Then, Katarina nodded, and after Garen had murmured a quick "Of course", Lux turned around and left both men, Katarina following her.

They left the hall and Lux led them to a small room besides it, that was filled with a few chairs and a table. Sighting, she sat down.
"What an asshole.", Katarina said, still sounding angry. "Women don't use military titles. The nerve -"
"You didn't have to say anything.", Lux interrupted her. "He's just a stupid civilian anyways."

She hadn't meant to sound this annoyed, but her head was pounding, and after watching Katarina dance with Garen for half an hour, discussing with Mr. Everguard had cost her every ounce of composure she'd still had.

"He was disrespecting you."
Katarina's voice sounded hot with anger, her hands were clenched into fists. Lux laid her head on the table. "I know. But he isn't the first and he won't be the last to do so. There was no need to make a scene, you know?"
"So you're just going to let him, because you won't stand up for yourself and Garen is too much in love with his public image to do so?"

Lux opened her mouth, and then closed it again. What was she supposed to answer about it? Yes? It was like that, after all. She had decided years ago to not pick fight about her titles with anybody who hadn't been involved in the war. So yes, she would let him disrespect her if it earned her a calm evening, because the alternative would be fighting with somebody that she didn't care for, over a topic they couldn't understand anyways?

They sat in silence for minutes, and Lux could see Katarina slowly calming down. Eventually, Katarina closed her eyes and looked away from her, staring out of the window in the darkness.
"How do you stand it?", she asked finally, her voice softer than before. "You could kill them, probably without putting down your glass. And yet, they treat you like a second-class citizen and you let them."

Lux closed her eyes.
"I wouldn't kill anyone for not using a stupid title. Also, why do you think I'm that powerful?"
At her words, Katarina started to laugh. If sounded honest, and a little bit scary, and somehow, Lux thought it also sounded as if Katarina was in pain. But Katarina was gasping for air laughing, holding her stomach, and Lux just sat there perplexed, while she was laughing tears.

"Why I think your powerful? Lux, did we fight in the same war?", Katarina finally managed to say between gasps, and Lux bit her lip, because she didn't want to talk about it, not really. But Katarina didn't let her go silent again.
"Noxus has quite a few assassins, you know? My family, a few dark mages from the black rose, smaller families, that stuff. And assassins aren't really fit to fight in a war, at least not as soldiers. But they are pretty good at sneaking in the enemy's camps and killing their officers in their sleep, so of course, the military tried to use them.", Katarina said, taking a deep breath. "We had hit lists. Every time we became aware of somebody particularly powerful on the demacian or ionian side, we would carefully watch them, and eventually, some poison would be dropped into their drink or somebody simply cut their throat at night. That's how we fought off two nations at once for years."

Lux rose her eyebrows. This sounded anything but honorable, but the war had never been about honor, she knew as much. For Noxus, it had been about survival. And if killing sleeping soldiers had been what it took to keep her comrades safe, she'd have done it without second thoughts as well.
"Why are you telling me this?", she asked with a cold suspicion. Katarina smiled sadly.

"Because after Demacia joined the war, it took mere weeks before you showed up on every single hit-list I could get my hands on. You weren't first, but you'd always make the top five. However, despite your … fame, one could say, you're here, alive and well, and it wasn't for our lack of trying."
The worst part of it was, that this didn't surprise Lux as much as it should be. She should be horrified, scared out of her life, ashamed for getting noticed like that – but she wasn't. Something in her head had changed back then in the war, with all the death, with the responsibility of being an officer and leading her own team. Something had changed, and when the war had ended, there'd been so much blood on her hands, and she had known that there was no way to return to being a kid that thought that being powerful meant to be able to save people.

"Why am I still alive, then?", Lux asked, raising an eyebrow at Katarina, who laughed again.
"Why you are still alive? Because you were fucking terrifying, Lux. I knew the man who first tried to earn the bounty on your head, do you know? He wasn't bad at his job. And you know what you did?"
There was no anger in Katarina's eyes, and maybe it was worse than if there had been, because Lux knew she deserved it. Because she did remember the man, a noxian assassin who had tried to kill her in her sleep, and she remembered what she did to him.
"I killed him and sent back his remains.", she whispered. "In multiple packages."
Katarina nodded. "After that, nobody wanted to try anymore."

Lux tried to keep her voice steady, her body from shaking.
"He died quick and painless.", she eventually said, and Katarina's eyes opened in surprise. "Whatever it looked like afterwards – we did that when he was already dead. We wanted to send a warning. I - I'd never torture somebody. I wasn't even really involved into the whole 'multiple packages' thing. I just -"
" -killed him. I know."
Lux wanted to apologize, but she knew, it wouldn't make anything better. On the one hand she had been protecting herself and her comrades, and if this had been what it took to stop more assassins from coming, she'd do it again in a heartbeat. On the other hand, he'd still been somebody Katarina knew, and she had killed him to make a point.

For a few minutes they sunk into silence again. Then, Katarina sighed and leaned back on the chair she was sitting on.
"Well, how about we stop talking about depressing shit and get back to the ball?", the woman asked, and Lux, just grateful for the change of topics, nodded.

Barely anybody noticed them slipping back into the hall. Lux did catch a disapproving look from her father, but besides that, they weren't payed any mind. The slower music that had played earlier was still playing, there was still a line in front of the cake that wasn't even seeming smaller than earlier, and Garen was still talking to Mr. Everguard. Maybe Katarina was right, Lux though. Maybe her brother cared more about his public image than about his sister, because she couldn't imagine herself giving so much attention to somebody who had been talking crap about her brother.

"If I were you, I wouldn't mind Garen.", Katarina whispered in her ear, and Lux nearly jumped when she realized how close Katarina suddenly was to her. "If he rather spends his evening talking to vain idiots than with us, it's his loss."
Lux could feel her breath on her skin, her lips just centimeters away from Lux' ear, and it made every single hair on her body stand. Katarina smelled like wine and dark chocolate, and a part of Lux wanted to pull her closer. She gulped and stepped away from the other woman.
"I suppose so.", she answered, fighting for her voice to be steady, and she could have sworn that there was the faintest hint of a smirk showing in Katarina's face, as if the other woman knew exactly what effect she had on Lux. The thought was utterly ridiculous, though.

"You want to dance?"
Lux brain completely blanked at the question, and she probably stared at Katarina for a few seconds before she managed to sputter out a "What". Katarina grinned at it.
"Well, the music is good, and you wanted to stop thinking about your brother being a git, right?"
"I, uhm -"
The point was, Katarina was right. Every single cell of Lux' brain that was still able to think rationally knew that dancing was a great idea – moving her body would definitively release some of the stress and anger she was feeling, and it would help with taking her mind off Garen and military titles and whatever had happened with a certain assassin in the war back then. And it wasn't as if Katarina could misunderstand Lux' intention, they were both women after all. Neither of them could ask a random guy for a dance without coming off weird, and especially Lux wasn't keen on catching anybody's attention in that way – god knew what ideas that could give her father, after all. But they could dance together as friends or future family, and nobody would think any of it.

And yet, the idea of getting close to Katarina made her shiver. The picture of Katarina curtsying in front of her came back from the corner of her mind that she had banished it to hours ago, and Lux didn't like it single bit. Because she shouldn't be thinking about it when Katarina asked her to dance, she shouldn't think about it at all. But how should she tell any of this Katarina?
'I'm sorry, but I can't stop thinking about how you are the most beautiful person that has ever walked the face of the planet, and I'm when you get close to me, I get the shivers, so please stay away from me because this is probably not normal?'
She'd get laughed at, if she was lucky.

"That's an awful lot of thinking for saying yes, you know that?"
That fucking smirk, Lux thought, still desperately searching her mind for the words to politely decline, that fucking smirk would kill her one day. Mindlessly she nodded, and Katarina grabbed her hand and pulled her towards the middle of the dance floor.

"You want to lead?", Lux finally forced out, and her voice sounded hoarse and brittle. She could have cringed at it. Katarina crocked her head, looked confused for a second, and Lux had the feeling she was missing something, but she couldn't pinpoint what.
"Should I?", she asked, and Lux shook her head and, in a sudden burst of confidence, pulled Katarina closer and wrapped her arm around her waist. If she was going to dance with her, she thought, then she was at least going to dance well, and Lux had always enjoyed leading in a dance more then getting led. She was better at it as well.

Somebody else may have stumbled when Lux pulled her, but Katarina just made a graceful step towards her, the confusion from seconds ago had vanished. She paced her arm on Lux shoulder and leaned slightly back, and when Lux made the first step sideways, Katarina did so simultaneously.

Every part of skin that Katarina was touching burned, and yet somehow Lux managed to lead her though an entire waltz without messing up. Every breath she took smelled like the other woman, and it became hard to concentrate on her steps. Katarina was just staring at her, being a little bit taller than her, and they nearly bumped in another couple because Lux couldn't look anywhere but her shining eyes. Somehow, Katarina seemed more alive than she hadn't in hours. Somehow, their bodies moved as if they had never done anything else but dancing with each other. As if they had done it before.
During the next song, another slow piece, rumba this time, one of them or maybe both had closed the last distance between them, and slowly the racing thoughts in Lux' head calmed down. They danced though another waltz and then the music sped up, and they stayed on the dance floor.

It was like a spell, Lux thought between two songs. She knew she would regret dancing with Katarina later, when she remembered what it had felt like, to get this close to her, only to be out of excuses to do it again. She would regret remembering it later, because the more time she spent with Katarina the harder it would be to avoid thinking about her. But right now, having Katarina this close, their bodies moving together as if there were made to do so, Lux couldn't bring herself to act logically.

As the evening progressed. Lux lost herself, in the heat of Katarina's body, the smell of wine and in the way the other woman smiled at her. The rational part of her brain had long shut up.

She couldn't believe that she was making a mistake.

The manor was dark and silent. There was a burning candle on the table, but besides it, every light was turned off. After Katarina, Marcus and Talon had left, at night Cassiopeia was the only person left in the Du Couteau villa.

Talon wouldn't have left if she had been honest, she was sure of it. He was like that, even after everything that had happened – or not happened, she thought bitterly – between them. If she'd told him that it was getting worse, he wouldn't have left her side. But what use was it, that he followed her like a shadow? She was either living or dying, and there wasn't a thing Talon could do about it by blaming himself. More than once Cassiopeia had wished to just get it over with, to have a quick and clean end to her life instead of this pathetic waiting game whose outcome everybody knew anyways. The least she could do was to play strong and let her sister and Talon live their lives.

She sighted and turned another page in the book lying on her lap. It was old, the binding made from brittle leather, the pages felt as if they could turn to dust by merely touching them. Its title was written in cursive, golden letters and read Fairytales of Ancient Anomalies.

Chronos: Although there haven't been any documented cases of a human surviving Chronos, there is an old myth that tells of a maid with the name of Amelia Meir, who used what is today understood to be the predecessor to Cronos. The magic she used was called a Timeless Soul Link, which, just as Chronos, trades a human life in exchange for the power they may possess in the future, to protect her sister from a sea monster. Multiple eyewitnesses swore that instead of dying, Amelia Meir grew a fishtail and disappeared into the ocean when the Soul Link wore off. Her sister was even convinced that she saw Amelia as a mermaid multiple times afterwards, watching over the family house from afar. Until today, the family Meir has a Mermaid as the sigil.

There was a beautiful illustration of the Meir's family's sigil besides the text, a young woman with a fishtail sitting on a boulder in the ocean. Below the text there was another small paragraph.

However, Amelia's sister's testimony needs to be taken with a grain of salt, considering that she was admitted to a mental clinic a few years later for –

But she was unable to continue reading. The letters were swimming in front of Cassiopeia's eyes, slowly moving in and out of focus. She blinked multiple times, but it only seemed to make it worse. Slowly she turned her head to the mirror and stared at the reflection.
Maybe it was the worst part of the curse, she thought, how her physical appearance had detorated first, even before her body had slowly started giving it. She could always hide the pain and the dizziness, but how was she supposed to make excuses about the way that her face had become gaunt and the dark bags under her eyes that looked almost like bruises?

Cassiopeia was nearly unable to recognize the person looking back from the mirror. She had always been fragile and small, even as a kid, but right now she looked as if she would break apart any second, her pale skin stretching tightly over her bones. As if she was already more dead than alive. Maybe she was.

There was something weird about her eyes, she decided after a while of staring at herself and feeling more dreadful by the minute. She got up – slowly, to prevent another dizzy spell – and moved closer to the mirror. It was the form her pupils, she realized, her horror slowly growing. They weren't round anymore, had elongated themselves into slits, and while she was watching, the color of her iris slowly changed, until there was nothing left of her bright green eyes anymore.
The eyes staring back from the mirror weren't human – they looked reptilian.

Cassiopeia felt her body grow cold and closed her eyes - please, let it be a hallucination, let it be the dizziness, let it be a bad daydream, please – but when she opened them again, they were still yellow, and her pupils were still vertical slits.
She stumbled backwards from the mirror, shaking. Her legs gave away under her, and she fell to the ground, her hands hitting the wooden floor painfully. Her heart was racing – how many beats did it have left, though? – and her nextbreath came out as a sob.

'I can recognize the curse by its magical signature, Cassiopeia. I'm so sorry, but there's nothing I can do for you. Either your body can finish the transformation, of it will die trying.'

Emilia LeBlanc's voice echoed though her head, and it made her sick. She was lying, Cassiopeia had told herself back then. It was some kind of sick joke, or Emilia was simply wrong. There was no way that a simple peasant could cast a curse like this, there was no way her body was truly transforming into a – she wasn't even able to think about it.

Cassiopeia looked up again. The mirror still showed her the yellow reptilian eyes, eyes of a snake, not of a human. The magic around her started whirling, responding to the horror filling her body like iced water, and with a single bang, the mirror exploded into a million pieces, and a scream escaped her mouth.