The others had left the room.
Goori wandered off to chase a flickering light that might’ve been a bug. Or a glitch.
Miss Nibble claimed she “needed air” but muttered something about “emotions being contagious.”
Even the mirror had dimmed, just slightly.

So Simba sat alone, in the quiet.
With the Root.

It was smooth, gnarled, and pulsing with something that wasn’t quite light.
Not quite warmth.
But something like memory.

He’d found it three days ago—wedged between the baseboard and the mirror’s edge, tucked inside a space that shouldn’t have existed. It hadn’t moved since.

Until now.

The Echo Root glowed gently beneath his paw.
As if responding to his breath. Or his thoughts. Or something even older.

And then—

A scent: warm hay and pansy petals.

“Munji?” Simba whispered.

The light beside him softened. And there he was.

Not fully formed. Not a ghost. But not gone.

Munji shimmered faintly, like an afterthought the world couldn’t quite erase.

“You found it,” he said, voice like a warm breeze between dream and waking.

“I didn’t know I was looking,” Simba replied.

Munji didn’t smile. But the energy around him shifted—like he might have, if it weren’t so serious.

“The Root remembers,” Munji said. “It always did.”

Simba looked down at it.

And for the first time since this all began—since the first flicker, the first crack, the first too-long reflection—he felt less alone.

The Root glowed brighter.

And for a moment,
the mirror felt like it wasn’t against him.