The Other Side of the Mirror

a lot of this is metaphorical and abstract, and a lot less straightforward than my other writing, so it may be a bit confusing to read and will probably require a few rereads to fully understand once completed.
Prologue - The Dragoness and the MirrorThe pool of water was pure perfection.
The glow of the three moons reflected from the circular pool of water, rippling onto her thin face. Even though wind howled mournfully through the peaks of Jade Mountain at almost all times of day and night, at this moment it was perfectly still. In fact, everything was still, from the wind to the rocks to the earth to the weeds to the very stars in the sky; all that moved was the expectantly twitching tail of the silver-washed dragon.
The dragoness lowered her head, moving from staring up at the moons to gaze down into the endless abyss below her. As if just through the force of her gaze, the ripples stilled, transforming the pond into a perfect glassy mirror, from which the largest of the moons glared out like a judgemental eye. Shadows fell away, and the stars were blotted out by clouds of pure night, reducing the scene to full black and white, moon and stone, pool and claws, scales and shadows, and pure, bitter silence.
She brought her snout closer, and closer, and closer to the water, stopping just short of dipping her fine nose directly into the black abyss. Though most with physical bodies cannot stop themselves from trembling, even when calm, her movements were so precise as to lend to her the look of a moving statue; no ripples resonated out onto the water from her touch, though they rung out across the vast expanses of shadowy space, reaching for something not as far off as one living within the dragoness's world would think.
An explosion of white light burst from the water, shooting upwards into the endless night sky, glittering with all the heavenly shimmer of a beacon or the hellish light of a detonated bomb; a permanent rift was torn in reality, and the reflection in the pond began to change. Stars emerged, but they were unfamiliar stars, and the moons hung in different places in the sky; from a mirror of liquid purity, a new world stared back at her.
She took a single breath in her last moment, steadying herself for what was to come. Her gift, her apex, her magnum opus stared up at her; and she was coming to meet it. No longer it lingered on the edges of her mind, but it waited, solid and real, on the other side of the blackness.
The dragoness dove through the pool, letting the black water take over and drag her down into its shadowy depths, The tip of her tail slipped into the deep, folllowing after the rest of her silver scales. She left behind only a single ripple in her wake, though none were around to see it; though once it vanished back into the flat stillness of the abyssal pool, all was still once more.
Many hours later the sun rose, bringing life and movement back into the world; delicate songbirds on fluttering wings, whispering breezes that curled through the heather and weedy grass and stunted trees, drifting candy-pale clouds in a picturesque dawn sky, an all-encompassing, ever-shifting warm pastel, making way for the blue hues of morning.
And the dragoness was never seen again.
~
Act One
Chapter One - The Viper's FangsIt is often the echoes of others' decisions that impact our lives to the greatest degree; a mistake made hundreds of years ago, across the planet from your home, can catch on to one wholly unrelated to the unfortunate perpetrators. Space and time never forgets, and when the fabric of her cloak is torn to bits, she will screech her fury and vow revenge; but rarely does she make her move in the lifetime of her rival, for reality is patient. She waits, poised to strike, for as long as it takes for the one she seeks to fall into her claws. Then, and only then, does she proceed to do do what she does best: slowly break them down, clawing their mind to bits and scattering their physical body like the ashes of a deceased loved one from a mountaintop.
Great dark wings tilted to catch the breeze, carrying her closer to her destination; atop the mountain, between the split peaks that formed the viper's fangs. To the place where they waited for her, their patience slipping away with every whisper of wind; the herald, the disillusioned, and the enchanted.
Chapter Two - True DarknessLupine had never known fear until she dove into the pool.
Choking, terrifying, primal fear in an inky abyss of nothing and everything.
A pervasive sense of universal impossibility was intwined within the very waters themselves. The echoes of a moment long ago... or perhaps it was only yesterday. How long had she been in the water? When had the swirling waters of the pool turned from sleek and dark to hot and thick and uneasy? It felt as if she was gliding through a sea of ink, or perhaps one of blood. It could have been seconds, or minutes, or years, or centuries. Kingdoms rise and fall, dragons hatch and die, wars are fought and ended, bones are buried in the earth from which green things grow. Only now that she was trapped outside the great cycle of life and death and doom did she truly fear; the waters may have been deathless, but they were lifeless as well, populated only by the figments of a twisted imagination.
There was no light, no sound, no perception of any kind. Only silence, and fear, and water. Who knew what leviathans could lurk in these depths? Great empresses of alien seas, armored sharks with stabbing pincers, ethereal serpents that screamed with the voices of the damned; anything could be swimming beside her. Her nightmares, her dreams, her worst enemies, her best friends, her ancestors, her descendants, her creations, her fixations, the things she had built up and rewritten and broken down in the vast expanses of her slowly crumbling sanity, all of it and none of it. In the black water between reality, it all ceased to exist.
She was beginning to lose herself; with every movement forward, the dark water seemed to tug away a piece of her. The bits of herself she had made and labeled and organized falling loose, shattered and splintered and knocked loose, all swarming around her in a vast banner of forget. What was her name? Who was she? What was she?
She was swimming up.
When had she started swimming up?
She was heading towards a light. Right. Yes. Go towards the light. Reach your talons into it, hook your claws in like a solid object, dig in deep and drag it towards you and swim into it and do ANYTHING you need to do to GET OUT OF THE WATER-
With a sharp intake of air, the IceWing surfaced, pulling her head and neck and shoulders and every inch of her free of the horrid water. The shadowy liquid dripped off of her black scales in rivulets, falling slowly and strangely as if reluctant to be free in her yet eager to return to its source. The droplets trickled between her blue-tipped spines, vanishing back into the abyss.
"Never, ever again," she wheezed, collapsing onto the dark stone. 
"Calm down, Lulu," a familiar voice laughed softly. "It's only about a minute of swimming each way."
She looked up at the dragon sitting before her: a thin, elegant dragon emblazoned with the night sky, gracefully decorated in black and silver and blue and gold. Long golden streaks decorated the ridge above her galactic eyes, and the marks of gilded tears fell from the corners of her eyes, shining with light of existence. Of course she managed to brave the waters just fine, Lupine thought with a twinge of jealously. Stormcaller may have been a rather insufferable presence, but Lupine would give her one thing: she was remarkably calm in all situations, and her perpetually guarded mind may have stopped the true terror of the abyss from taking its toll.
"E-each way? What do you mean?"
"I mean," Stormcaller said, her smooth voice cool as ever despite the tension in her posture, "you just swam through a portal."
==Chapter Three - The Beholder==
==Chapter Four - The Mines==
==Chapter Five - The Mountain King==
==Chapter Six - Eden's Grief==
==Chapter Seven - Messenger Bird==
==Chapter Eight - Haunted Sleep==
==Chapter Nine - His Open Grave==
~
=Act Two=
==Chapter Ten - A Little Piece==
==Chapter Eleven - Lonely==
==Chapter Twelve - Engraved Bones==
==Chapter Thirteen - The Scent of Jasmine==
==Chapter Fourteen - The Ballad==
==Chapter Fifteen - Into The Night==
==Chapter Sixteen - Howling Beast==
==Chapter Seventeen - Laid To Rest==
==Chapter Eighteen - The Light==
~
==Epilogue - The Cyclical Nature of Existence==
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