A Fool's Guide to the In-Between [A Twisted Wonderland Fanfic]

Chapter 24

Y/N hummed to herself as she sat on the floor before the mirror, her knees crossed like a child, her hands dirty with the stolen potions. A small pile of broken glass was scattered across the tiles around her, some splattered with her inky black blood, others coloured with drops of the potions that they had contained. Y/N didn't care. Her interest was focused on the cauldron in front of her, stolen from Crewel's lab. It had been rather easy to sneak in and steal it. The puppy was out trying to piece together the mess of the ink. All the teachers were. And this gave Y/N all the time she needed to grab exactly what she needed.

"Looking at me through your window," Y/N sang, ink bubbling over her lips with each letter. Some splattered onto the surface of the mirror, accidentally summoning the mask in the glass. 

"Who is it," he snapped, irritated that he had been awoken at this hour. Everyone should have been asleep, but as he stared down at the girl, he felt his metaphorical blood run cold. He had seen her before, that much he knew. She was Y/N. The girl he had sorted a little over two months ago when she had transferred to Night Raven College from... wherever she had attended school before. Though it wasn't really a sorting. Azul had instructed the mirror to put her in Octavinelle, no matter what he thought. But he would have put her there anyways. 

The mirror held his breath as he saw the curved blade in Y/N's hand. The steel edge glinted in the light of the fire beneath the iron cauldron, the only light in the dark room. Every other candle had been extinguished, and from the burns on her fingers, the mirror could only guess that it was Y/N who had snuffed them out. 

"Boy you had your eye out for a little..."

Another splatter of ink sprayed across the surface of the mirror, and Y/N looked up from the potion, rising to her feet. She approached the mirror and stared at the mask for a moment, before reaching out a hand and spreading the ink around the surface of the mirror, almost completely covering the reflective surface. The mirror backed away. He could feel the sickness in the girl. The sickness radiated from the tips of her finger as she touched the mirror. 

But from the shadows, he continued to watch. Her once s/c fingers, now the colour of ash, broke through the film of ink, tracing a strange rune in the centre of the glass. The mask would have vomited if he could. The rune made him sick. He felt sick whenever he looked at it, but having it drawn on the surface of his mirror was another sensation in and of itself. 

The forbidden rune of realm travel. 

Other realm travel runes existed, though these were all lost to the ages with few who knew of them, but there was one that had been banished ages ago. The rune currently being drawn onto the surface of the glass. The rune that would pull a soul from the depths of the Nowhere, even if they had been banished centuries before. A rune that required the darkest magic in existence. 

"No..." the mirror whispered, watching as Y/N pressed the blade of the knife to the skin of her palm. He flinched as she slowly pulled the blade across her hand, clenching her hand around the blood as it pooled on the surface. It was a deep enough wound that it wouldn't clot and scab over anytime soon.

Y/N turned away from the mirror and held her hand over the cauldron, smirking as she tilted her hand. 

"Erehwon eht morf htrof emoc kees i gnieb," Y/N hissed. Ink started to pool in the corners of her mouth, dripping out of the corner of her lips and marking streaks down her cheeks as she recited the spell. The spell she hadn't known before that minute. The spell that she had never heard before, save for a whisper in her mind. 

"Erehwon eht morf htrof emoc kees i gnieb."

The door to the room suddenly burst open. Y/N's friend's rushed in, their pens in their hands as they readied themselves for a battle. In the front stood Che'nya, his eyes clouded with worry, his ears drooping, and his movements simple twitches as he feared for the life of his sister.