The reflection didn't vanish.
It waited. Smiling, calm, patient as the night itself.
Elara stood at the edge of the forest pool, her breath trembling in the cool air. The water rippled slightly, though she hadn't moved. The face in the water tilted its head a moment later just enough to be wrong. Its eyes gleamed faintly red, like coals burning under glass.
Her stomach tightened. She took a step back. The reflection did not. It stayed where it was, its grin softening into something almost tender.
"Elara," it whispered.
The voice came not from the water but from within her own skull like the thought had borrowed her mind to speak.
Her knees nearly buckled. "No…"
"You don't have to run anymore."
The ripples in the pool steadied. The water turned black and smooth as a mirror. Elara's reflection now stood upright inside it, perfectly clear, her body glimmering faintly like frost.
She reached toward the surface just a twitch of her hand and the reflection reached back first.
"Stop," Elara hissed, backing away. "You're not...."
The reflection smiled again. "You."
A branch cracked behind her. She turned sharply, scanning the forest. The trees loomed silent and pale, their bark streaked with veins of red light. The ground pulsed faintly beneath her boots heartbeat slow, deep, deliberate.
When she looked back at the water, her reflection was gone.
"Elara."
The voice came again, softer this time, directly behind her ear. She spun...
And there she was. Herself.
Not in the pool standing right there, half-submerged in shadow, a few feet away. Her own face. Same eyes, same trembling lip, same blood on the collar. Only… wrong. The angles sharper. The eyes darker.
"You shouldn't be here," Elara whispered.
"I never left," said the other. "You brought me back when you broke the Veil."
The other Elara stepped closer, her bare feet silent on the moss. "You think you're alive. But you're a fragment. The echo that forgot the sound."
Elara's pulse thundered. "What are you?"
The twin's gaze softened almost pitying. "I'm what's left when the blood remembers."
Elara stumbled backward, tripping on a root, falling hard to the ground. When she looked up again, the double was gone. Only the forest. Only silence.
She exhaled shakily, pressing her palms to the earth and froze.
Beneath her fingers, the soil wasn't cold. It was warm, almost feverish. She pulled her hands back. The earth pulsed again once, twice and with each beat, faint outlines of faces pressed up through the dirt like breath against glass.
Whispers followed. Too soft to catch, yet unmistakably her name.
She staggered to her feet and turned toward the manor in the distance. Its upper floors glowed faintly red, flickering as though fire burned behind every wall. The front doors hung open.
She shouldn't go back. Agnes had warned her. But the reflection's voice echoed in her mind..... You brought me back when you broke the Veil.
The curse wasn't staying still anymore.
Elara stepped forward. One step. Another. The forest's light dimmed, shadows rippling like breath over water. The ground beneath her feet changed with each stride dirt, stone, tile. By the time she reached the front steps, she was already halfway between worlds again.
Inside, the manor was silent. Too silent. No creaking boards, no dripping wax, only the faint hiss of something alive hiding between the walls.
She walked down the main corridor, the air colder than before. Her reflection shimmered in the broken glass of a picture frame but this time, it didn't mimic her. It watched her.
"Elara," it said again.
She turned to leave, but the hallway stretched before her like a tunnel impossibly long, the doors vanishing into shadow.
"Elara, you have to remember," her reflection said.
"Remember what?"
"That we are the same."
The mirror to her right cracked, a thin line running down its center. The reflection reached out from inside, pressing her palm to the surface.
Elara's breath caught as the glass shivered beneath the touch.
Then a voice not hers, not the reflection's whispered through the crack. A man's voice. Low, ragged, familiar in a way that made her chest ache.
"Elara, don't listen to it."
She froze. "Who...?"
The reflection's smile vanished. Its eyes widened, furious. "Don't."
"Elara…" The man's voice again, urgent now. "It feeds when you believe."
Her reflection slammed its hand against the glass. The mirror shattered but instead of breaking outward, it folded inward, like water collapsing into a drain.
From the shards, black smoke began to pour out, thick and cold. It coiled around her feet, winding up her legs. The reflection's eyes gleamed within the storm, growing distant.
The air hummed with the same heartbeat as the forest.
"Elara!" the man's voice cried again.
She couldn't see him, but the smoke began to retreat, pulling back toward the shards. For an instant, she saw a shape within them a figure standing in another place, another time. The faint glimmer of armor. Blood. Fire.
Then it was gone.
Elara dropped to her knees, gasping for air. The smoke dissipated. The mirror lay shattered at her side, its edges bleeding faint light.
But her reflection was still there. Not in the glass this time in the shadows beside her.
It crouched, head tilted.
"You saw him," it said. "Didn't you?"
Elara looked up slowly. "Who was that?"
The reflection smiled not cruelly, but knowingly, with a kind of tragic fondness. "The first."
"The first what?"
"The first to be cursed. The first to remember."
The manor shuddered, dust raining from the ceiling. Ravens screamed from somewhere above.
Elara stood, heart hammering. "Show me," she demanded.
The reflection's grin widened. "Careful, sister. Some truths don't fit in one world."
The walls flickered. For a heartbeat, Elara saw fire dancing behind the wallpaper, saw figures in old robes chanting, saw blood soaking into the floorboards that were now beneath her feet.
And then it was gone again.
The reflection backed away, melting into the nearest windowpane. Only its voice lingered, whispering from the glass:
"Sleep, Elara. And when you dream, you'll remember where the curse began."
The air went still.
The candlelight around her dimmed until only one flame remained and it burned blue. The walls of the manor blurred, becoming trees, fog, and silence once more.
Elara felt her body growing heavy, her vision fogging at the edges. The last thing she saw before darkness swallowed her was her reflection no longer smiling, but watching her with something that looked almost like sorrow.
And then, from somewhere deep below the floor or beneath the ground of both worlds came the sound of chains being dragged across stone.
A voice, faint but clear, whispered through the dark:
"The blood remembers."