It is afternoon, about 74F(23C) degrees, and the sky is partly covered by grey clouds. The mist is heaviest At Mayflower and Washington/span

The afternoon sun filters through gathering clouds as Dovie, Cadalie, and Meridith approach the narrow alley between the weathered brick buildings. The scent of blooming lilacs mingles with something else – something acrid and unsettling that makes the air feel heavy despite the mild temperature.

Scattered across the uneven cobblestones, white chalk marks form an intricate circular pattern about six feet across. The geometric symbols and strange lettering stand out starkly against the dark stones, while five black candle stubs sit at precise points around the circle’s edge. Pools of unusual purple-black wax have hardened around each candle, creating dark stains that seem to absorb rather than reflect the filtered sunlight.

Against the eastern wall, an ornate mirror leans at an odd angle, its surface spider-webbed with cracks. Despite the damage, something about its reflections seems wrong – showing glimpses of movement and shadows that don’t match the current scene. Nearby, several pages of handwritten notes flutter slightly in the breeze, some torn and scattered, others weighed down by a worn leather satchel.

The ivy climbing the eastern wall has turned brown and brittle in a distinctly human-shaped silhouette, as if someone had pressed against it with intense heat. Dark patches on the cobblestones seem to shift at the edge of vision, and the air carries the faint sound of whispered words too quiet to understand clearly.

The alley feels watched, as if something lingers here that shouldn’t.

Meridith steps lightly into the space, peering about at last then hesitates. “Chalk marks, geometric ritualism?” She peers at the symbols and lettering and frowns. The dark stain especially draws her eyes. Then the mirror, the handwritten notes. She steps over to the satchel to begin to poke into it. “Hello? Anyone here?” she calls.

“I’m not in the Order,” Dovie remarks gently as she walks along the alley, looking around. “Lots of strange things happening recently. It behooves us all to look into them.” She stops at the sight of the white chalk marks, her eyes running over the shape of it all. Her gaze moves naturally over to that cracked mirror and she inhales steadily before taking a step towards it, trying to read some of those handwritten notes, if possible.

Cadalie’s eyes find some degree of competence at the pentacle- or, the candled and chalky silhouette of one. She searches within diagram of the ritual for its praxis, its processes- its symbolism and etchings to discern its intent.

17 AM – optimal time when the veil thins.”

Cadalie studies the ritual circle more closely. The symbols blend Latin phrases about “seeing beyond the veil” with Hebrew letters forming protective wards, while medieval alchemical notation suggests a scrying ritual designed to pierce through time itself. The pentagram arrangement of the candles indicates an attempt to contain and focus supernatural energies, though scorch marks radiating outward from the center suggest the ritual’s power exceeded its boundaries.

As the three women examine the scene, a faint whisper drifts through the air – barely audible words that sound like “So many… all at once…” The voice carries a tone of overwhelming terror, as if someone witnessed something too horrible to comprehend.

The cracked mirror’s surface shimmers slightly, showing brief glimpses of the alley at different times – sometimes in darkness, sometimes with different people walking through, all layered together like double-exposed photographs.

Meridith sighs soft. “Yes, buddy, that’s why every magic text, every little scrap, all of it, always says how fucking dangerous this is,” she mutters contemptibly under her breath. She looks about the cracked mirrors and wonders. “How much bad luck for breaking broken mirrors?”

Dovie puts a hand to her katana hilt as she hears that faint whispering in the air, the short Fairchild frowning. “Seven years,” she tells Meridith. “Give or take,” she watches the broken mirror surface cycle through various images. “This looks like more than just seven years though…” Cupping her free hand to her mouth, she calls out to the mirror. “Is someone there? Are you lost?”

Google, as ever, is an excellent accompaniment to any ritualist not currently within their incantations. Cadalie dotes a talon’d finger against her revolver and its holster. “Temporal.” She announces to the group. “I.. It’s not foundational- whatever this is. I don’t think. Some of the latin suggests that they meant to.. Scry? Hard to say. Divination through time was never a mortal prospect.” She glances over to Dovie, sighing. “You folks see anything else?”

“I can see them all dying… every death in this place… three hundred years of endings…” The words seem to echo from multiple directions at once, as if bouncing off invisible walls.

The mirror’s cracked surface responds to Dovie’s call, the overlapping images becoming more focused. For a moment, the reflection shows a middle-aged woman with graying hair and wire-rimmed glasses, her face contorted in absolute horror. Her mouth moves as if screaming, but no sound emerges from that particular vision.

Meridith’s examination of the satchel reveals a Windermere University faculty ID for Dr. Helena Voss, Antiquities Department, along with reading glasses, a thermos of cold coffee, and what appears to be a university master key. One of the scattered research notes near her feet bears the header “Project: Temporal Scrying – UNAUTHORIZED” in neat handwriting.

The dark patches on the cobblestones seem to pulse slightly, and the withered ivy silhouette on the wall appears to shift, as if the shadow of whoever created it is still pressed against the bricks. The acrid smell in the air grows stronger, carrying hints of ozone and something metallic.

A new whisper joins the first: “The mirror… it shows too much… I can’t stop seeing…”

“…Yeah like…obviously…” Meridith murmurs. “So, a university dumbass comes down to a twisted alleyway to do some occult time travel stuff, basically the most dangerous of the dangerous. Gets her ass scorched by, presumably, getting exactly what she intended to do.” She peers at the others. “So, either, we help them pull back from the brink of extreme magical connection, or shatter these things to avoid the fallout?”

Cadalie catches the voice now, wherein previously not, perhaps? Perhaps not? Maybe it’s best to assume that all ghosts have a degree of manifestation saved up in order to speak- lest the poor storyteller ramble non-stop to deaf ears. “Oh dear.” She mutters to the whispers. “That will happen. Where’s your body?”

“But,” Dovie’s fair brow crinkles a moment. “Who put up the mirror?” she wonders, glancing to the outline of dark patches on the cobblestones, “Gone, I expect, but let’s see what they have to say for themselves…”

The whispers grow more coherent in response to Cadalie’s direct question. “Hospital… Mercy General… my body won’t wake up… trapped between the mirror and flesh…” Dr. Voss’s voice wavers like a radio signal fading in and out. “I brought it here myself… stole it from the university vault… thought I could control it…”

Meridith’s enhanced vision catches details the others miss – the dark patches on the cobblestones aren’t just stains, but seem to contain swirling movement, like looking down into deep water. The mirror’s reflections show not just different times, but different deaths – glimpses of people throughout history meeting their end in this very alley. A duel in the 1800s, a mugging in the 1960s, someone falling from the fire escape decades ago.

The withered ivy silhouette on the wall suddenly shifts more dramatically, and for a moment it looks less like burn damage and more like a person-shaped shadow trying to pull away from the bricks. The acrid smell intensifies, and the temperature in the alley drops noticeably despite the afternoon warmth.

“The mirror shows death echoes,” the voice continues desperately. “Every ending that ever happened here… I saw them all at once… couldn’t stop the visions… now I’m stuck seeing them forever…”

One of the scattered research notes flutters closer to Dovie’s feet, revealing a sketch of the obsidian mirror with notes about “13th century necromantic scrying glass – DANGEROUS – do not activate without proper wards.”

Meridith shakes her head. “I think the mirrors were a focus,” she explains. Like, to project the various moments in time through the execution of the ritual…” She steps light, and for a moment, crouches to touch the mirror’s reflection. “In other words,” she peers at the voices direction. “Isn’t this what you wanted?”

Dovie picks up the note, reading aloud for the others. “13th century necromantic scrying glass. Dangerous in all caps. Do not activate without proper wards,” she sighs, glancing to Meridith and Cadalie. “Well, I certainly hope one of you two have studied wards,” the fae remarks dryly, her grip loosening on her katana in the realization that such a thing shall not help here, likely.

“Hm. H-well.” Cadalie posits to the ritual below, ducking down on her sneakers, resting on her side when on of her legs wobbles painfully. “Slow down, honey, I’m still tryin’ to figure out what you did wrong.” She chews on a lip, eyes fluttering foggy to some of the Hebrew.

“Well, in terms of wisdom. I can say that doin’ a ritual outside of the foundational praxis provided to you, without aid, in an alleyway, often has a habit of goin’ poorly.” She nods to herself, as this, more than anything else, makes sense. She gives a smile full of teeth and nothing in her eyes to Dovie dully. “..I can.. Uncurse it? If it’s an active component it either stands to break the ritual and its temporal hold on her sight and psyche… Or it will break the connection and trap her.”

“So cold… so many voices… make it stop…”

“She sees us all… the woman who watches… she won’t let us rest…”

The mirror’s surface ripples like disturbed water, and for a moment, Dr. Voss’s terrified face appears clearly in the reflection, mouthing the word “Help.”

Meridith shakes her head. “This isn’t my wheel house, then, Cadalie. You tell me what to do and where to stand, and I will. Otherwise, I say we gather up all these artifacts and find something hot enough to burn them.”

Dovie nods slowly to Cadalie, a second nod of agreement spared for someone before she’s off looking around for another research note to pick up. Any clue that might help, really. Her blue eyes scan the area. “She’s already trapped. This might be her only way out. Us. You, really. It wouldn’t hurt to try something, at least.”

Dovie nods slowly to Cadalie, a second nod of agreement spared for Meridith before she’s off looking around for another research note to pick up. Any clue that might help, really. Her blue eyes scan the area. “She’s already trapped. This might be her only way out. Us. You, really. It wouldn’t hurt to try something, at least.”

“Don’t touch’em.” Cadalie waves at Meridith’s comment as she slips her phone out to make a call. “Mmmh. Yes. I’ll need a supplicant delivered just east of stop one-nine-two. Take a left up the alley.”

In the meantime, before the cost is to be paid, the Pontifex begins to take some spare chalk and run two concentric circles around the already large ritual in the center. She begins to adorn what’s already there- trying to center around the object she wishes to decurse without making convoluted this mess of lines and destroying the ritual as it was. Keeping.. most intact, she manages to set up the foundation of the decursing before the sacrifice is brought to the alley.

“The mirror binds the seer to witness all endings within its domain. Only by experiencing a new death can the binding be transferred or broken.” Below that, in increasingly frantic handwriting: “I was wrong – it doesn’t just show death, it collects the dying moments. I can feel them all pressing against my mind.”

The temperature continues to drop, and frost begins forming on the metal fire escape despite the afternoon warmth. The withered ivy shadow on the wall writhes more violently, as if trying to escape the bricks entirely.

From the mouth of the alley comes the sound of approaching footsteps – presumably Cadalie’s requested delivery arriving.

Meridith rests a hand on the hilt of her sword. Whatever it is, she is braced and ready. She fights the growing uneasy, the chill running up her spine, and steps lightly. “Experiencing a new death isn’t…” She shakes her head. “Not a real solution.”

Dovie shivers, and seeing Meridith’s hand move to her sword hilt, the Fairchild follows suit, casting a glance towards the mouth of the alley. “Identify yourself,” she calls out as another bout of shivers runs through her body at the dropping temperature.

Bringing the supplicant over to the ritual space, Cadalie ceases her attempts to mettle with what she has made. She brings a briar of thorns out from the pocket of her jacket, living and twisting, and lets it wrap around her wrist as she sets the young sallow man in the middle of the circle. He is reverently silent as she clasps in hands in its center.

“Lord, remove the veil that has cleansed.”