Ahri: Starlit Charmcaster by Jade Gretz

https://www.deviantart.com/jadegretzai/art/Ahri-Starlit-Charmcaster-1299853335?file=1

Ahri: Starlit Charmcaster ANIMATION

The Thirteenth Reflection

Grief has a specific salinity, a mineral bite that lingers on the back of the tongue long after the spirit has been swallowed. Ahri sat by the edge of a stream that flowed upward, its waters defying gravity to lick at the underside of weeping willow branches. In the Ionian borderlands, where the veil between the waking world and the spirit realm wore thin as moth-wings, reality was often a suggestion rather than a rule. But today, the air tasted of copper and ozone—the flavor of a predator who had forgotten they were also prey.

She watched her reflection in the ascending water. Her ears, tufted with silver fur, flicked at the sound of a falling leaf. Her nine tails drifted behind her like silken banners in a slow-motion gale. She was beautiful, a creature of myth and bone, but her eyes held the weariness of a thousand stolen lifetimes. She reached out to touch the water, but the reflection didn't move. It stayed still, staring back at her with a terrifying, unblinking intensity.

"You’ve missed a spot," the reflection said. Its voice was Ahri’s voice—honeyed, melodic, and sharp enough to bleed on. "There is a smear of shadow behind your left ear. It makes you look... mortal."

Ahri recoiled, her hand flying to her orb. The crystalline sphere hummed with a restless, azure light, casting long shadows across the clearing. The reflection in the gravity-defying stream didn't recoil. Instead, it stepped out of the water. The liquid clung to it like a translucent gown before hardening into the familiar red and white silks of Ahri’s own attire. The entity stood before her, a perfect mirror, save for the fact that its eyes were not the warm amber of the Vastaya, but a void-like violet that seemed to drink the light.

"Who are you?" Ahri asked, her voice steady despite the cold prickle of dread dancing down her spine. "The forest is full of tricksters, but I have little patience for mimes today."

The doppelganger tilted its head, a gesture so perfectly Ahri-esque that it felt like a violation. "I am the version of you that doesn't weep for the dead. I am the Ahri who remembers the taste of the gardener’s soul without the bitter aftertaste of his daughter’s tears. Don't you want to meet the rest of us?"

With a sickening, wet sound—like skin tearing from a drum—the trees behind the entity began to warp. From the bark of the willows, more figures emerged. One crawled out on all fours, its limbs elongated and its tails matted with dark, viscous ichor. Another stepped out with the grace of a queen, her face a porcelain mask that lacked a mouth. They all bore Ahri’s face, her ears, her essence, but each was a distorted facet of a soul she had tried to prune away in the Garden of Forgetting.

"This is the Calculus of the Fox," the first mimic whispered, gliding closer. The scent of jasmine and rotting meat wafted from its skin. "For every life you take, a shadow is born. For every memory you discard, a ghost finds a home. We are the surplus of your existence, Ahri. And we are very, very hungry."

Ahri felt the familiar pull of the hunt, the primal urge to lash out with essence-fire, but she hesitated. To strike them was to strike herself. The entity stepped into the radius of her orb’s light, its beauty so radiant it felt like a physical weight. It reached out a hand, fingers tapering into claws that were black as obsidian.

"Why struggle?" the mimic asked, its tone shifting to one of heartbreaking tenderness. "The world of men is a cold place for us. They love us until they see the teeth. They worship us until they realize we are the ones who turn out the lights. Come back into the mirror. Give me the orb, and I will give you peace. You won't have to remember the faces of the men you’ve emptied. You won't have to feel the hunger."

Ahri looked at the creature’s hand. It was beautiful, a seductive promise of an end to her loneliness. For a moment, the temptation was a physical ache in her chest. To stop being the monster with a conscience and simply be the monster. Or perhaps, to let the monster take over so she could finally sleep.

"You speak of peace," Ahri said, her voice dropping to a whisper. "But you smell like the bottom of a well. You are a scavenger, feasting on the scraps of my regret."

The mimic’s smile didn't reach its void-eyes. "Scavengers survive. Saints are forgotten. Tell me, Ahri—if you are the 'real' one, why do you feel like an echo? Why do you wander these woods looking for a his
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