The world snapped shut like a trap.
Leila gasped as the ground folded over her, swallowing the street, the cars, the sky. Her scream came back to her a second later, warped and lower-pitched, like it had traveled through something thick. She landed hard — but not on pavement. On something soft. Breathing.
The floor beneath her shifted. It wasn't ground. It was made of tangled bodies, pale and pulsing like roots beneath a forest floor. And every single body was her.
Dozens of Leilas, hundreds maybe, their chests rising in eerie sync. Some were asleep. Some were whispering in a language made of static. A few turned their heads toward her — jerky, insectlike — and smiled.
Above her, the mirror city pulsed. No longer upside-down. It was inside now. In here with her. A seamless loop of lightless towers and bone-white streets curved overhead like the inside of a ribcage.
"Welcome home," said a voice.
Leila spun. The real Leila stood at the center of it all, or what had once been her. This version wore no hoodie. She wore something like skin stretched too tight, and her smile moved half a second after her lips did. She wasn't breathing.
"You've been falling since you were made," the reflection said. "We built you for this. To bring them through."
A cold shiver threaded through Leila's bones. "I'm not you."
The other Leila tilted her head. "You're not anything."
Around them, the sleeping bodies began to stir. Eyelids peeled back, revealing black voids. They rose, not like people, but like marionettes on invisible strings.
The mango core throbbed in Leila's hand again, hotter, faster, as if sensing what she finally understood: she was never meant to survive this. She was a beacon. A lure.
The ground began to pulse with the rhythm of a giant heart. Somewhere beyond the ribcage sky, something vast was pushing through. Its shadow blotted out the mirror towers. Fingers — wrong, jointless, endless — pressed against the membrane of reality like claws through wet paper.
And then the twist hit her like a gut punch.