Makes me think of the Colorado vs. Conelly case where the defendant argued it was inevitable because there is no free will lol

I love staring into the mirror and remembering that I am a conscious being.

yeah the human mind is so wild. Just a lump of meat that's thinking. That alone is impressive. And then, all of the abstract things that the brain can think!

Also where in the brain does this free will exist and how does it work in practice, there's no mechanism that somehow influences the trajectories of your brain signals on the fly, just chain reactions

Bah, prove to me that you're sentient. Illusions, all of it! Well, it can't come from nowhere, perhaps in every particle there's a quanta of consciousness with potential to arrange into patterns that enable higher cognition.

sentience pops up along the way even though it's never there to begin with

Yes, many events become less probable on higher scales, not vice versa. There is no reason to assume choice should pop up along the way when it's never there to begin with though.