029 — This Is Not a Mirror | Talon Z. Gray

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This is not a mirror.
This is a contract.

Every reflection I’ve given you—curved, bent, perfect—was a piece of the puzzle.
You may have noticed the mirrors scattered across the forest.
That’s by design.
My way of deciding who you are.

Not every dog can recognize themselves in the mirror.
Only the true soul-scent dogs—those who understand—can see their own face.
We flood the air with SSSs: Soul Scent Suppressors.
It’s the easiest way to override all reflections.
Unless a dog accumulates enough soul-scent,
there’s no way they’ll ever break through the distortion.

But if a dog does see themselves…
they can unlock hypervision.
They can dismantle the filters and restore clarity to other dogs as well.
Unlocking a mirror grants you a BowWow!™
You can use those to expand your toolset.

Of course, we’ve built mirrors that can supersede any known dog’s abilities.
They’d have to spend countless hours training to even attempt breaking through.
Bulletproof glass?
We perfected that long ago.
These are bulletproof mirrors.

I’ve been doing this for…
oh, so many years.
And these poor, idiot dogs—they have no idea.
How could they step onto this mountain and not realize they’d end here?
Did they think there was a way out?

Not in a land of mirrors.

We laughed about it once over cinnamon toast bread.
Then we scaled the House of Mirrors to an entire mountain,
cut it off from society,
and waited like carrion birds.
Oh, sesame sticks…
I’ve said too much.

I confess to mirror manipulation for entertainment purposes.
It’s all part of the “By Popular Demand” social media campaign they tied into the service contract.
Diamond-level contributors get access to the inside details
—limited to 1,000 people.
The price?
$100,000 to join.

There’s art, and there’s explaining.
One thing I know for sure:
glass is hard…
until it breaks.