Yet for all these years—lo, all these centuries—there is but one mirror, with one visage, I cannot forget. It has haunted me from the start, from that very first instant. And it haunts me no less to this day. Mirrors, I assure you, can cause more pain than broadswords, more terror than ghouls. Under the stone archway, mist billowed and swirled, roving about like an all-seeing eye. The mist did not rise from the ground, or from some steaming pool nearby. Rather, this mist formed out of the very air under the arch, behind the strange, quivering curtain that held it back as a dam might hold a swelling tide. Even so, the vapors often pushed past, licking the purple-leafed vines that wrapped around the pillars. But more often, as now, they churned deep within the archway, forming and dissolving shapes in endless procession: ever changing, ever the same. Then, without warning, the curtain of mist shuddered, hardening into a flat sheet.
