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Chapter 15: Mirrors

part 1: Erza vs The Scarlet Empress

The unraveling did not come with sound.

No shatter of glass, no scream of magic displacing the world. It came like breath leaving the lungs. Like warmth retreating from flesh. Like memory.

One heartbeat ago, Erza had stood beside Naruto and Trihexia atop the Tower of Heaven—broken, smoking stone beneath her boots, the divine pressure of collapsing rituals still lingering in the air. But then came the pulse. Not chakra. Not magic. Something older. Something that reached not into her body, but into her soul.

And in that pulse, the world folded inward—and changed.

The floor beneath her dissolved—not violently, but quietly. Not into nothing, but into something far worse.

A sea.

Not water. Not quite.

It stretched endlessly in every direction, flat as glass, deep as mourning. Crimson, unmoving. It did not ripple, though Erza's presence should have disturbed it. It merely existed—eternal, and still, and wrong. The color was not just red. It was the red of open wounds. Of dried blood on stone. Of memory made manifest.

Above her, the sky bled orange, thick with smoke and shadow. The sun hung broken behind ashen clouds, casting no warmth. Its light was tired. Ancient. Fading.

And in the center of this dead realm… stood the throne.

Twisted black steel, shaped into winged arches that rose like skeletal ribs around the seat. Crimson banners, stitched with runes she couldn't read—but instinctively feared—hung from the spires that flanked it. The air was motionless, yet the banners fluttered as if breathing.

Upon that throne… she waited.

Erza froze.

Her pulse skipped.

It wasn't a stranger that sat on that throne. It wasn't even an alternate version conjured by chance. No. She recognized every detail of the woman lounging before her.

Because it was her.

But not just her reflection. Not a shadow. This was a betrayal, sharpened into a crown.

The woman who sat upon the throne bore her face, but not her heart. Her long red hair fell in perfect waves, darker than blood. Her eyes, once fierce with compassion, now glowed with lazy, sovereign fire beneath obsidian bangs. She wore a gown—not a dress, but battle-forged regalia—crimson silk overlaid with etched black armor, every plate inscribed with runes of dominion.

And atop her head sat a jagged crown of thorns. Barbed, black, and glinting with cruel beauty.

Erza's voice barely escaped her lips.

"...You're me."

The woman smiled.

It was not cruel.

It was worse.

It was pitying.

"No," the Mirror replied, her voice soft, velvet wrapped around razors. "I'm what you were meant to become."

She uncrossed her legs, rising from the throne with elegant grace. Not stiff, not rehearsed—natural. She moved like someone who had never needed to prove herself. Every step commanded the silence to part around her.

"I'm the Queen who survived without chains," she said. "The one who didn't kneel. Didn't beg. The one who learned that strength begins where love ends."

Erza's jaw clenched. Her heart slammed against her ribs, like it too was trying to fight back.

"I didn't need a throne," she said firmly. "I found something better. I found people. I found Fairy Tail."

The Empress—because that's what she was—gave a soft, amused breath. Not a laugh. A dismissal.

"You found weakness."

Erza blinked, a chill creeping along her spine.

The Empress stepped forward again. She didn't walk toward Erza so much as the space between them simply ceased to exist. "Do you think this world rewards kindness? That your strength comes from holding their hands instead of holding your blade?"

"I chose them."

"No," the Empress said, voice cooling like descending dusk. "You clung to them. Because you were afraid. Afraid of being alone again. Afraid that if you stood on your own, you'd fall."

Erza took an involuntary step back.

It was a mistake.

The Empress saw it—and smiled.

"See?" she whispered. "You've already forgotten what it meant to survive without them."

Her hand lifted.

"And I remember it perfectly."

The crimson sea shuddered.

And the world changed again.

—

Stone.

Damp. Cold. Familiar.

Gone was the sky of burning dusk. Gone was the sea of silence.

They stood now within the walls of the Tower of Heaven.

Not the one Erza had recently returned to.

No—this was the memory of it. The original. The one etched into the marrow of her bones.

The prison cell.

Four walls. No windows. One flickering torch. Chains bolted to the floor, stained with rust and dried blood. The smell of mildew, and something worse—abandonment.

And in the far corner… a little girl.

She was curled into herself, knees hugged to her chest, thin arms trembling beneath tattered fabric. Her hair—her hair—hung limp over one eye, the other already bruised and swollen. Her lips were chapped. She didn't cry. She didn't speak.

She merely shook.

Erza couldn't move.

Her throat locked.

The Empress's voice came from behind her, not cruel—but intimate. Reverent.

"This," she whispered, stepping into the dim light, "is what you really were. Before the guild. Before the armor. Before anyone gave you a name that meant something."

Erza whispered, "Stop."

But her voice cracked.

"No." The Empress knelt beside the memory. Her gloved fingers brushed gently across the child's cheek. "I didn't abandon her. You did."

"Stop it—"

"I gave her a crown. I taught her how to never need again. How to turn loneliness into legacy."

Erza's fists clenched, her eyes hot.

"I'm not begging," she snapped.

But it was soft.

The Empress rose slowly, turning to face her again. Her eyes no longer glowed—they burned.

"Then why do you apologize when they cry?"

Erza flinched.

"Why do you carry every failure like it was earned?" The Empress stepped closer, her voice now a blade drawn. "You didn't save Simon. You didn't stop the tower. You just ran."

"I never stopped thinking about them—"

"No." The Mirror's voice was iron now. "You survived. And you hated yourself for it. So you turned your guilt into armor. And you dared to call it love."

Erza's knees threatened to buckle.

But she remained standing.

"Take the crown, Erza Scarlet," the Empress said, holding out her hand. "And never be weak again."

And in that moment, in that flickering memory cell, Erza's silence was louder than any scream.

The silence between them thickened, made heavier by the presence of the child in the corner—the memory of who Erza had been, preserved like a wound that never scabbed over.

The little girl didn't look up. She didn't cry. She didn't even flinch at the sound of the Empress's voice, though it echoed clearly through the cell. She simply stayed curled against the wall, as if by pressing her back hard enough into stone she might slip between its cracks and vanish.

Erza stared at her younger self. Her fists were still clenched from before—so tight that her knuckles blanched. Her nails dug into her palms. She hadn't realized her breathing had grown shallow until the torchlight began to flicker with her pulse.

The Empress's offered hand still lingered in the air, elegant and patient.

"You're still her," she said softly, "even now. You think you grew out of this room. But you never did. You just learned to wear nicer armor over the same pain."

Erza shook her head. "That's not true."

But it came out too fast. Too defensive. She knew it.

The Empress didn't smile this time. She simply walked slowly around the room, tracing a fingertip along the wall where faint claw marks—her claw marks—still marred the stone. "You weren't just imprisoned here. You were made here. Every promise you ever swore, every tear you never let fall, every time you stood up and said 'I'll protect them'… it started here. In fear."

"I chose to be strong," Erza said, her voice gaining strength. "No one made me—"

"No one had to," the Empress interrupted, glancing over her shoulder. "You made yourself into a sword because no one else would be your shield."

Erza stepped forward, boots scraping gently on the stone floor. She looked down at the child in the corner—the way her small shoulders trembled, the bruise blossoming beneath one eye like a bruise on her soul. She wasn't bound by the chain. She stayed because she had nowhere else to go.

The room felt colder.

"She was alone," Erza whispered. "But I survived."

"You endured," the Empress corrected. "There's a difference."

Erza looked at her sharply.

The Mirror's gaze remained calm. "Surviving is what you do when you still have something to lose. Endurance is what happens when you've already lost everything. You didn't survive that night. You endured it. You let it bury you so deep you forgot how much of yourself you left here."

She gestured to the child.

"And you've been carrying her ever since."

Erza stared hard at her younger self. Her voice trembled now, barely audible. "I never abandoned her."

"You did," the Empress said, not cruelly, but factually. "You abandoned her the moment you believed being loved was something you had to earn. The moment you stopped thinking you were allowed to rest."

The words cut.

Because somewhere, in the deepest part of herself, Erza knew it was true.

The missions. The battles. The way she threw herself into every war without hesitation. How she always stood at the front. Always protected the others. Always smiled, even when her bones were broken and her heart was bleeding.

She had always been trying to prove it. That she deserved the love she was given. That Fairy Tail hadn't made a mistake by letting her stay.

"You left them," the Empress whispered, circling back toward her, now barely a breath away. "When the tower fell. You made it out. But they didn't. Sho. Millianna. Wally. Simon. They stayed. They waited."

Erza flinched.

"And what did you do with that time?" the Empress pressed, voice soft but sharp as a needle. "You got stronger. You smiled. You lived. While they rotted in the very cage you escaped."

"I never stopped looking for them," Erza said fiercely.

"Didn't you?" the Empress asked.

Erza opened her mouth—but no words came.

Because the truth was never that simple.

She had searched. She had begged the council. Hunted through records. Raged against the system. But she'd also… moved on. She'd trained. She'd laughed. She'd built something new. Because if she hadn't, she would have broken.

Still, that never stopped the guilt.

"You wear their absence like a brand," the Empress said. "And now that you've found them again, what did they give you?"

A pause.

"Chains," the Mirror finished.

Erza swallowed.

The memory cell began to distort—the walls darkening, the light flickering out one by one until only the torch beside the child remained. That flame, too, was dying.

The Empress stood in front of Erza now, hands no longer offered.

"You're tired," she said gently. "And deep down, you know it. You're tired of hurting. Of carrying them. Of smiling for the sake of the weak. Of waking up every day wondering when the next person you love will die in your arms."

Erza felt her chest tighten. She didn't reply.

The Empress stepped close.

"And you're tired of waiting to be enough."

Those words hit like a hammer to the ribs.

Erza shuddered.

"But you could be free," the Mirror continued. "No more expectations. No more debt. No more desperate need to prove that you deserve the love you were once denied."

She reached up slowly—and from nothing, the jagged black crown formed again in her hand, flickering like it was forged of starlight and shadow.

"Take it," she whispered. "Become what you were always meant to be. The girl who rose without being carried."

Erza's hand lifted—

Then stopped.

Her eyes flicked to the child again.

She stepped past the Mirror.

Kneeling slowly, she didn't reach for the crown.

She reached for the part of her she'd forgotten.

Herself.

The little girl didn't look up. She flinched when Erza touched her hand.

"I'm sorry," Erza whispered, tears burning at the corners of her eyes. "I forgot you. I tried to forget you. But I needed you."

Her voice cracked. "You're where my courage started."

The child didn't respond. But she didn't pull away.

Behind her, the Empress stood silently. No anger. No triumph. Just stillness.

"I'm not ashamed of her," Erza said softly. "And I won't bury her just because she's broken. I'll carry her. Not because I have to…"

She rose, turning slowly.

"But because I choose to."

The Mirror's expression didn't shift. But the torchlight behind her flickered.

"You'll break again," she warned. "They'll betray you. Or die. Or forget you. And you'll be alone all over again."

Erza met her gaze.

"I know."

Silence stretched.

Then, for the first time, the Empress looked away.

The cell faded.

And the sea returned.

But this time, it rippled—just once.

It faded as quickly across the crimson sea as it had come, swallowed again by the oppressive stillness that blanketed this unreal world. The child, the cell, the torchlight—everything had vanished like breath on glass. All that remained was the endless red, the broken sky, and the two of them.

Erza stood taller now, her shoulders still trembling from the weight of what she'd just confronted, but her eyes no longer wavered. She had looked into her own wound and refused to flinch.

The Empress stood a short distance away, the jagged crown still nestled in her palm like an answer to a question not yet asked. Her posture was unchanged—regal, poised—but her expression had shifted. The certainty she'd worn like armor now cracked at the corners, giving way to something far quieter.

Curiosity.

"You knelt beside her," the Empress said, her voice smooth again, but no longer pitying. "You chose the past over the future. The wound over the weapon."

Erza didn't speak right away. She inhaled slowly, then exhaled. Letting the weight settle. Letting the sea hear her breath and know she hadn't drowned.

"She's not a wound," Erza finally said. "She's a part of me. Maybe the most honest one."

The Mirror's lips parted slightly, not in protest—but thought. "Most people refuse their beginning. You embrace it. Admirable. But limiting."

She stepped forward, lowering the crown—not discarding it, but presenting it again. This time, not as a command, but as an invitation.

"You're still clinging to a life built on uncertainty. You don't know what tomorrow brings. Every smile in Fairy Tail could be the last. Every battle could take another name from your heart." Her voice softened to silk. "You could trade that fragility for permanence. For power. For clarity."

Erza's brows furrowed.

The Mirror gestured—and the sea shifted.

Just beyond them, the crimson flatness rippled again—and revealed something new. A vision, clear as crystal.

Erza stood—no longer herself, but a vision of what could be. Towering above cities. Wearing her armor not as protection, but as declaration. Wings of light fanned behind her—magic without limit, a warrior without equal. People bowed as she passed—not out of love, but reverence. Fear. She commanded armies. Shattered tyrants. Made nations kneel.

And she was alone.

Utterly, pristinely, unbreakably alone.

"This is not fiction," the Empress said, stepping beside her. "This is a timeline you almost became. A path just barely denied. A heartbeat away from happening."

Erza stared at the image. Her doppelganger in that vision stood atop a fortress of her own making, cold eyes watching the world like a god too weary to intervene.

"She looks… tired."

"She is," the Mirror agreed. "But she's safe. Untouchable. She never needed a guild to save her. Never needed Makarov's lectures. Never cried for Gray. Never broke for Natsu."

"And never smiled for them, either," Erza whispered.

The Empress didn't argue.

Instead, she turned away from the vision and approached her throne once more.

"The difference between us," she said calmly, "is not love. It's fear. You fear solitude. I mastered it. You fear control. I embraced it. You fear becoming like me—because you already are, underneath all the softness."

She sank into the throne again, gracefully, like it was part of her body.

"But here's what you forget," she said, tapping the jagged edge of the crown still held delicately in her fingers. "I'm not here to punish you. I'm here to finish you."

Erza's jaw clenched.

"I'm not unfinished."

"You are," the Mirror replied. "Half a weapon. Half a martyr. Still hoping someone else will tell you who you are."

She held up the crown once more. It pulsed in time with the beating silence.

"Take it. You won't need anyone else again. No more apologies. No more guilt. Just the truth, and the blade to enforce it."

Erza stared at the object. At the runes twisting gently across its surface like a heartbeat rendered in steel. It was beautiful. Terrible. And tempting.

For a moment, she imagined it.

Wearing that crown.

Not being questioned. Not being relied upon—relied upon until she collapsed under the weight. Not needing Naruto to tell her she mattered. Not needing Makarov's voice to remind her of home.

Just her. And the sword. And the storm.

Erza's hand twitched.

And then she closed her fist.

She stepped back.

The Mirror's expression remained unchanged.

"You'd still choose uncertainty," she said. Not mocking—genuinely surprised. "After everything they've taken from you?"

"I'd rather be uncertain," Erza said quietly, "than unfeeling."

A pause.

"I want to be strong. But I want that strength to mean something."

She looked at the vision once more—at the cold, unstoppable queen on the hill of ashes.

"That strength only serves you. Mine is meant to serve them."

The Empress tilted her head, as if she couldn't quite believe what she was hearing.

"You truly think they'll be there forever?"

Erza's gaze didn't waver.

"I don't know. But I want to live like they will be."

The Mirror watched her.

Then, slowly… she stood.

But this time, she didn't conjure another illusion.

She conjured her blade.

A greatsword of obsidian and light, rimmed in the same runes as the crown—pulsing with finality.

"You've made your choice," she said, not with malice, but certainty.

Erza nodded.

"I have."

From behind her, the Voidfangs shimmered into her hands. Their twin crimson edges flared against the sea's reflection, like twin stars caught in glass.

The crimson sea began to stir again—slightly this time. Like it understood.

The Mirror stepped forward, drawing her blade across her palm—ceremony, not injury. The sea absorbed the blood with reverence.

"You refuse the crown," she said. "So now you'll earn your freedom."

Erza raised her weapons.

"I don't need to be a queen," she said.

Her voice was steady.

Clear.

Conviction without apology.

"I just need to be enough."

And the sea around them surged.

Not in violence.

But in verdict.

The sea screamed.

It didn't ripple or wave—it shook. Like something ancient waking from slumber beneath it. Red turned to black at the edges. Crimson foam bubbled around their feet, hissing with the heat of fate about to clash against fate.

The two stood motionless at the center of it all—opposites carved from the same soul.

Erza Scarlet, clad in starlit armor forged from legacy, the Voidfangs gripped tightly in each hand, their blades humming with a defiance that wasn't just magic—it was memory.

The Scarlet Empress—her Mirror—stood across from her, draped in the regalia of a sovereign without mercy. Her greatsword pulsed with ominous runes, absorbing the sea's energy with each breath. Her crown remained in her hand, unclaimed. A symbol, not of temptation now—but judgment.

"You refuse to kneel," the Empress said softly.

Erza's voice cut through the thunder rumbling across the sky. "You refuse to feel."

The Empress's eyes narrowed. "Then let us see whose conviction is truth."

The sea obeyed.

It detonated beneath their feet as they launched forward—no warning, no slow build. It was not a duel. It was a collision.

The Empress struck first, her greatsword cutting down like a guillotine from heaven—massive, brutal, yet faster than a thought. Erza barely pivoted aside, the blade missing her by inches as it cleaved through the sea and carved a trench in the void itself. Red light exploded outward, forming spires of energy that chased Erza's movements like seeking spears.

She ducked, spun, slid beneath them—and retaliated.

The Voidfangs sliced in a perfect X, twin arcs of crimson crashing into the Empress's side with a sound like a scream torn from the world's throat. But instead of staggering, the Empress stepped into it. She twisted through the blows, countered mid-turn, and brought her greatsword around in a horizontal arc.

Erza's arms crossed in defense—steel against shadow—and the resulting shockwave rippled the horizon.

The sea buckled.

The sky cracked.

Erza was thrown back—not from power alone, but the weight of what the Empress believed. Every strike came with the force of her truth: that solitude was strength. That love was weakness. That chains forged by compassion would always rust.

But Erza didn't yield.

She landed hard, boots skidding through steaming crimson glass, and leapt back into the fray before the Empress could press the advantage. The Voidfangs hissed in her grip, each strike faster than the last, each blow guided by something deeper than rage.

Memory.

Of Fairy Tail.

Of laughter in the guild hall.

Of warm meals after war.

Of hands reaching for hers—not to drag her forward, but to hold her steady.

Those moments burned inside her now.

And her blades sang.

Clang. Clang. Clang.

Erza's swords struck with rhythm, her footwork dancing through the air like poetry written in blood and belief. The Empress matched her every step—but the tempo quickened. Faster. Wilder. More desperate. Lightning-fast flurries lit up the sea like strobe bursts in a cathedral of wrath.

Until—

CRACK.

The Empress's pauldron shattered under a spinning blow, shards of obsidian flying like meteors across the void.

Erza pressed forward, relentless.

"You don't get to erase what I've lived!" she shouted between strikes.

"You've only survived," the Empress countered, parrying, twisting, slamming the flat of her blade toward Erza's face.

Erza ducked, rolled under the counter, and thrust upward—but the Empress vanished.

Literally.

In a blur of motion and light, the Mirror reappeared above her—blade held overhead, now engulfed in runes burning black.

Erza's eyes widened.

The Empress dropped.

Like divine judgment.

Erza crossed the Voidfangs overhead—and the collision broke the sea. A crater of blood-red glass erupted around them, a pillar of red light shooting skyward. Erza screamed—not in fear, but effort—as she was forced to one knee beneath the weight of that divine swing.

Her armor cracked.

Her vision blurred.

But she held the line.

The Empress loomed above her, blade locked against both Voidfangs, pressing downward inch by inch.

"You believe in others," the Mirror hissed. "But you never believed in yourself without them!"

Erza's teeth clenched.

Her fingers trembled.

And yet—

"I do now," she growled.

She let go of fear.

And the Voidfangs responded.

They shone—blazing with raw red light, as if responding to her will made manifest. With a roar, she surged upward, the energy coursing through her limbs not from rage—but from knowing.

Knowing who she was.

Knowing who she refused to become.

She broke the lock and spun, one blade slicing across the Empress's gauntlet, the other burying into her side.

The Empress staggered.

For the first time—she bled.

Not darkness.

Not fire.

But light.

A brilliant white ichor spilled down her side, hissing as it touched the sea.

They stared at each other.

The Empress's expression was unreadable.

"Why don't you hate me?" she asked.

Erza breathed hard, her knees buckling slightly but not giving.

"Because you were me," she said. "You're still part of me. You're the pain I never let heal."

The Empress looked down at the wound in her side. Then at her hand. And finally, she raised her blade once more.

Then she changed.

Not into a beast.

But into wrath incarnate.

The runes across her armor and sword surged, casting shadowfire across the battlefield. Wings of black crystal burst from her back—jagged, imperfect, divine in the way ruined churches still echo with prayers.

She stopped speaking.

And attacked.

Faster than before. Angrier. Quieter.

She came with everything Erza feared.

Everything she had once believed herself to be.

Erza fought back with everything she'd become.

The sea around them became a storm.

Blade met blade. Again. And again. And again.

Each clash sent thunder across the horizon. The air boiled with magic and the echoes of decisions not taken. The crimson sea swallowed their footsteps, and the black sky split open, showing stars that didn't exist.

And then—

It ended.

Not with a scream.

Not with a final blow.

But with Erza on the ground—chest heaving, blood seeping from a dozen shallow wounds, hair matted to her face, one of the Voidfangs shattered beside her. The fragments hummed faintly where they lay. As if unwilling to be forgotten.

The Empress stood tall.

Not unscathed. But triumphant.

For now.

"You still breathe," she said, her voice strained. "Why?"

Erza coughed once, spitting crimson into the sea. Her body begged her to stay down. Her muscles trembled from overexertion.

But she didn't fall.

She didn't kneel.

She stood.

Slowly.

Painfully.

But completely.

Her one remaining blade dragged along the ground behind her—sparking, humming. It sparked along the sea—more anchor than weapon now.

"I'm still standing," she said, her voice raw but steady.

She didn't ask again. She simply watched, her eyes flickering with a question too old to voice. "You've lost."

"No."

Erza's eyes gleamed beneath her bloodied bangs.

"I've endured."

And the Mirror flinched.

Just barely. A twitch at the corner of her lips. A fraction of hesitation in the hand that gripped her bloodstained blade.

But it was there.

She had struck with godlike force. Unleashed her wrath without restraint. Broken bone. Cracked armor. Shattered one of Erza's sacred blades. And yet—

Erza stood.

Wounded.

Weakened.

But not defeated.

Not kneeling.

Not finished.

Erza's breathing was ragged, her body trembling from the onslaught, but her eyes… her eyes burned. Not with rage. Not even defiance. But clarity—the kind born from choosing to stand when every piece of her said she couldn't.

The Empress stepped forward slowly, dragging her blade behind her, its edge hissing against the crimson sea like a whisper of execution. She studied Erza with quiet confusion, as if trying to understand something just out of reach.

"You shouldn't be able to stand," the Mirror said softly.

"I shouldn't," Erza agreed, her voice raw, throat thick with pain—but steady. "But I am."

The Empress tilted her head, slowly. "Is it fear? Of failure? Of being seen as weak? That's what kept you standing before."

Erza shook her head. "Not anymore."

She lifted her remaining Voidfang.

The blade trembled in her grip. Her knuckles were torn and raw, her fingers twitching from strain. But it didn't fall. It shone—low and steady, like a candle against an endless night.

"I used to think strength was something I had to prove," she said. "That if I just fought hard enough… bled long enough… they'd stop looking at me like I might shatter."

She stepped forward once.

The sea rippled beneath her bare, battered feet.

"But strength isn't what you show when you're winning," she continued. "It's what you choose when everything's already broken."

The Empress's lips parted.

A flicker of something—not pity this time.

Not scorn.

But... something like dread.

"You don't know what you're saying," she said.

"I do," Erza replied.

And she kept walking.

One step.

Another.

Dragging the Voidfang through the red as the sea pulsed in time with her heartbeat.

"Every time I get back up, I remember who I am. Not because I'm invincible. Not because I'm perfect." Her eyes lifted, locking with her Mirror's. "But because I keep going even when I'm terrified. Because I still feel everything—and fight anyway."

The Mirror's grip tightened. Her wings flexed. "No one remembers the weak."

"You're wrong," Erza said.

The words struck deeper than any blade.

"They remember those who kept walking when they had no strength left."

The Mirror didn't answer.

Erza raised her sword again.

She wasn't glowing with celestial power. She didn't summon another armor set. She didn't scream. She simply stood with everything that was left of her.

And the sea—responded.

The light beneath it pulsed. Just once.

Then again.

A heartbeat.

A rhythm.

It began to glow not with red—but violet.

The sea didn't just reflect magic. It reflected memory. Their memory of her.

Her color.

From beneath the surface, the Voidfangs' fractured twin—left for dead—began to rise, bathed in that same hue. The broken hilt floated toward her hand, reassembling itself in shards of magic and memory.

Erza stared as the blade reformed—its new edge darker, serrated, etched with fresh lines that hadn't existed before. Not born of wrath.

Born of resolve.

She took it.

The second Voidfang pulsed once in her hand.

The Empress watched with unreadable eyes.

"That blade doesn't come from power," she said warily.

"No," Erza replied. "It comes from faith."

The sky cracked again—but this time, it wasn't rage or collapse.

It was change.

As if the world itself had decided to listen.

The Empress's crown pulsed in her hand, almost pulsing with rejection—cracks forming along its base. She looked down at it, as though confused. As if something inside her had changed the moment Erza's second blade was whole.

"What are you doing to me?" she whispered.

"I'm not doing anything," Erza said, lifting both blades. "You're remembering."

And suddenly—she moved.

Not with rage.

Not with hate.

But with everything she had left.

She charged, blades alight with violet fury, her feet skimming the sea as it shone beneath her. And the Empress met her again—sword raised, voice silent.

They clashed—

And for a moment, they were equals again.

She should have fallen—but the throne had never given her power. She was the throne. As long as Erza stood, so would she.

Not in power.

But in pain.

Every strike from Erza now rang with emotion. Not wrath. Not vengeance.

But memory.

Laughter at the guild hall. Natsu's fire cracking like a campfire beside her. Gray's sarcastic quips in winter. Wendy's gentle healing touch. Lucy's worried smiles. Naruto's quiet, pained eyes when no one else noticed the weight he carried.

Her family.

Her anchor.

And with every swing, she reminded herself—

"I am not strong because I am alone."

Block.

"I am strong because I'm loved."

Strike.

"Because I choose them—every time."

Clash.

"And they'll choose me."

She screamed the final words into the sky, her Voidfangs crossing with the Empress's greatsword—and this time, the sea exploded upward, launching them both into the air.

Time slowed.

The Empress's blade cracked down its center.

Her wings flickered.

But she did not fall.

She struck back, even as she bled, even as light poured from the cracks in her armor.

And when the clash ended—

The two landed in the sea once more.

Erza fell to one knee.

Her body trembled, her balance wavering—but her will lifted her anyway.

Across from her, the Empress stood as well—but her sword was broken.

And her eyes…

They weren't angry anymore.

They were lost.

The silence that followed wasn't empty.

It was full.

Not with noise, but with something deeper—like the echo of a bell long after it stopped ringing. Like the stillness left behind when a storm finally gives up and lets the sky cry.

Erza's boots sank into the crimson sea, though it no longer boiled with magic or hate. The tide had fallen silent, like it too was waiting to see what would happen next.

Across from her, the Empress stood.

But not as before.

The jagged crown in her hand had split down the middle, the light within it gone dim. Her greatsword had collapsed into fragments, scattered across the sea like broken promises. Her wings of crystal were cracked, flickering.

And her eyes…

They weren't sovereign anymore.

They weren't cruel.

They were tired.

"…Why?" the Mirror asked at last, voice hoarse. It didn't sound like a queen anymore.

Erza didn't answer right away.

She stepped forward slowly, the glow of the Voidfangs fading in her hands, no longer needed. Her breath was unsteady, her body sore in ways that went deeper than flesh. But She moved not with strength, but with certainty.

The Mirror didn't raise her hands to fight.

She didn't even flinch.

"Why do you still stand?" she asked again, softer this time. "Why not hate me? I've done everything to tear you apart."

Erza stopped just a few steps away, looking at her—not with triumph.

But with understanding.

"Because you were never trying to destroy me," Erza said. "You were trying to protect me. The only way you knew how."

The Empress's mouth trembled. Her eyes darted away. "You call this protection?"

"You were born from pain," Erza said gently. "You were the strength I needed when no one else was there. You kept me alive when I was still that little girl in the cell."

Her voice softened further.

"But I'm not her anymore. I'm not alone anymore."

The Mirror looked down at her hands, as if seeing them for the first time. Pale. Empty. Shaking.

"I don't know how to stop," she whispered.

"You don't have to," Erza said. "You just have to let go."

She reached forward—not with a blade. Not with magic.

With her hand.

The same hand that had once swung a sword for justice.

The same hand that had held her guildmates through sorrow.

The same hand that had once reached for the sky, begging for something—anything—to answer.

It reached now for herself.

The Empress stared at it. Then, slowly, tentatively… she took it.

Their palms met.

And something broke.

Not violently.

Not loudly.

But peacefully.

The Mirror's form began to glow, light spilling from her cracks like sunrise through frostbitten glass. Her armor dissolved piece by piece into stardust. Her shattered crown slipped from her fingers, crumbling midair before it could fall.

She didn't look afraid.

She looked relieved.

"…So that's what it feels like," she murmured, a faint, tired smile forming at her lips. "To not carry it alone."

Erza's hand tightened gently around hers. "You never had to."

The Empress gave one final breath.

And then she shimmered—

And was gone.

The sea, too, began to fade. The sky above bled gold instead of red, dissolving the ruin-streaked clouds into nothingness. The battlefield unwound itself like the last dream of a sleepless night.

There was no thunder. No final blast of magic.

Just light.

And warmth.

And somewhere, deep within her, the child in the cell finally exhaled.

Mirror Confrontation: Complete.
Original Self Maintained.
Memory Index: Stabilized.

ngl I had to rewrite this after finishing chapter 16 and I completely forgot she got the blades from trihexia AFTER the mirror. So i'll fix that later after this huge mess, please bear with me