The reflective copy did not hurry.

It walked the way Zelda herself walked when the cost of a decision had already been paid and only the consequences remained. Same stride. Same set of the shoulders. Same faint, unfinished tension in the hands. The only difference lived in the eyes: perfect mirrors, reflecting the fourth temperature’s quiet light back at its source without absorbing a single degree of the wound’s heat. Where the living origin-wound ached, the copy’s reflection merely shone.

The three children felt the wrongness first.

The pup’s early memories recoiled from the counterfeit warmth the way living tissue recoils from frostbite that pretends to be snow. The girl’s...