Riho opened her eyes, she had arrived in the Lesser Mirror. Something was off, was her first impression. She had heard Airu and Mao's description of the void-like spaces, and while certainly it was void-like there were what appeared to be buildings. Or patterns of buildings? It was almost like being inside a painting of a castle done on a black canvas with thin white lines marking out the details. The stark difference of course being that it was in three dimensions, so her vision of the whole space was obstructed by imperceptible black objects as well.

Another unsettling fact she became aware of was the presence of hundreds of shattered silver-framed mirrors hung upon the black stone walls. In the fragments of these mirrors eyes would appear and disappear at random intervals, as though observing her. Occasionally she thought she could hear laughter, but perhaps it was simply the silence pressing down on her. As she climbed a set of stairs, she reached a peak of some kind, from there she could see the outline of a castle proper. It was the brightest thing in the Lesser Mirror, from that peak Riho also saw that it was from the castle the thread she was looking for came.

Taking flight in her Magical Girl garb she made for the closest end of the thread.

Just as she pulled out the Fixed Recovery Disk to begin collecting it, the thread withdrew towards the castle a short way. Riho darted after it, but it continued to withdraw just fast enough to continue to entice her. She followed it dutifully, but a sense of unease was coming over her. It lead her to the roof of one of the castle's towers, the brightest point of the Lesser Mirror.

What she found was a garden made of threads spun into the shapes of flowers, and in the center of it all, a person of similar make! There were gaps in places where Riho could see that it really was just thread wrapped around space in the shape of Yashiro Hina.

The thread-doll Yashiro Hina beckoned her closer. Riho cautiously approached, and noticed another disturbing element. Next to the thread-doll was pitch black mirror with a silver frame, but reflected in the mirror was not the thread-doll but the real Yashiro Hina, though she looked sickly pale and the smile on her face held not a trace of joy. A line of thread, the one Riho had been following floated up parallel to the ground, and began to oscillate.

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“You are Funano Riho,” the voice came from the oscillating thread, it sounded mechanical, or instrumental. A very inhuman voice, but the words were intelligible.

Riho kept her guard up but answered honestly, “I am...”

The empty smile in the mirror slackened a bit, relief. That alleviated some of Riho's anxiety, this whole situation was odd, but at least whatever was before her hadn't gone totally numb to emotion.

“Um, I was supposed to gather the thread of Yashiro Hina-san, do you still need me to do that?” Riho asked.

“Please hand me that, zzt, disk...” the reflection and the thread-doll reached out towards Riho. Disturbingly, the two overlapped, the hand extending outside of the bounds of the mirror, the reflection's hand going inside the thread-doll's like a glove.

Riho had plenty of misgivings, but she had come here to restore Hina, if anything happened it should be that the thread-doll and garden were absorbed into the disk. Hesitantly, she placed the Fixed Recovery Disk into the outstretched hand. The oscillating string made a sound like a sigh, then suddenly the entire Lesser Mirror went dark as the thread snapped into the disk all at once!

But the hand in the mirror didn't vanish, at least not immediately. The reflection smiled at Riho, but since the thread was gone it said nothing. The hand withdrew into the mirror, taking the disk with it.

“W-ait! Where are you going!?” Riho cried.

The reflection put a finger to her lips, then pointed deeper within the mirror she was withdrawing into.

“Can I go with you?” Riho asked, not sure of what she was asking, but feeling that it would be bad to let the reflection walk off alone.

The reflection tilted her head, then nodded, and reached out her free hand to Riho. Riho took it, and was pulled into the mirror.