Diath stood in front of the mirror uneasily. The silver surface was slightly smeared where someone had half-heartedly polished it, the coarse brown of tarnish had started to settle in at the corners and across the middle so that he looked as though he had flecks of dirt across his skin. It was a simple looking glass with an ornately carved frame that had been knocked into so many things that notches were bitten out of the varnish and into the wood. Like most of the furniture in his tavern room, it was certainly showing its wear and tear but it was still useable.

He'd been stood in front of the mirror for over ten minutes, looking down at the floor, up at the ceiling, at a stain on the wall. Anywhere and at anything that wasn’t his reflection. A heavy weight was sitting in his stomach, making him feel nauseous and uncomfortable. But now that he was looking, all he saw was exactly what he’d dreaded.

So much had changed since Barovia. He was no longer the high spirited young man he had been, in fact there was no trace of what he once was. It was like looking at a creature, hollow eyed and marred. No part of him had been left untouched. His pallor was paled and washed out, as though all the life had left him. Brown locks tumbled to his neck, a knotted, tangled mess with frayed and split ends, only serving to make him appear sicklier.

His body was a map of pain and suffering, documenting stories told and untold. Regrets and foolishness embedded permanently upon his person. The oldest scars were pale slips of silver but most were newer or poorly healed, angry red marks that never seemed to be mending right and some still bled slightly under the skin whenever he pushed himself too far. Dull aches pulsed deep in the joints of his left arm where some of the worst damage had been done.

The burn from Ironslag would never properly heal, he knew, both mentally and physically. His flesh about the shoulder and down to his elbow was warped and ruined, the nerves either dead or sensitive to touch where the flames had tasted him. It pained him to look at it, this stark reminder of stupidity, of rash decisions made with caution blown to the wind. How much it had cost him.

What had happened to that brighter boy from Waterdeep?

His dull green eyes gazed forlornly at the wound, echoing memories of what it was like to stare into scorching hot flames and acrid smoke. He still wakes some nights to searing pain dancing over the damaged skin, consuming him down to his bones. Though it is nothing compared to the screams of dying dwarves. But he supressed all that, smothered it and forced it as deep down as he could bear until it sat like a lead weight in his stomach, dragging down and down and down so far that he felt he may collapse in on himself all together. Because if he didn’t, then how could he possibly ever stand to look at himself again?

He didn’t recognise the face staring back at him, gaunt and coarse with stubble. Whatever this thing was, it had no love of itself. It was a monster that fears what it is. What a bitter irony.

His hand came up tentatively, as though in a trance, and grazed perhaps the worst scar of all. It was one thing to be responsible for the deaths of those he did not know, but to be responsible for those of his friends made him want to tear himself from that body, that creature, because it is not him. That thing can’t possibly be him. He longed to pull away his skin, claw all the mistakes that cloy at him, and find what once was underneath.

But what he had once been was lost forever, drowned under a torrent of painful mistakes and overwhelming sadness. Crushed under the weight of it all and broken, never to be whole again. He was certain now that even if he found that happier once-upon-a-time it would not be as he remembered it. His wounds ran deep, so much so they would have tainted whatever good was left. Diath knew he was not redeemable.

Dead eyes looked back at him and he cannot help but search deeply into them. Surely there must be some glimmer of that other self still there. He looked intensely but found nothing to reassure him, only guilt and agony that screamed through shades of green. The creature staring at him through the glass was a piteous wreck and Diath could not help but feel repulsed by it. Though it copied his every move, his every expression, there was a harrowed, haunted look in its eyes that spoke of something long dead. And that was not him. It could not be him. It was surely some imposter, some pathetic attempt at mimicry, because he could not bear to think what it meant to admit that he could no longer recognise himself.

A tumultuous writhing mass of anger and fear seized him then and he grabbed the top of the mirror’s frame, slamming it down onto the table it stood on. Shards of shattered glass exploded outwards and crumbled over the table’s edge, scattering on the floor around his feet as he breathed heavily.

How could he not recognise the creature that looked back at him?

When had he truly become so alien to himself?

He stared at the glass on the ground, the small reflective surfaces showing green eyes staring back. All of them hollow. All of them sorrowful. All of them unfamiliar.