Mira didn't move for a long time.
She just lay there, on the hallway floor, watching her blood bead on the wooden planks beneath the cracked mirror. The cut on her palm pulsed in sync with her heartbeat—fast, unsteady, too loud in her ears.
The crack in the glass ran straight down the center, splitting her reflection into two distorted halves. Neither looked quite like her anymore.
And neither blinked.
She sat up slowly, her muscles stiff, her breath thin. It was morning now—or something pretending to be. Pale light filtered in through the window, but it didn't warm her. It never did in this house.
She didn't feel rested. She felt shifted. Like she'd been rotated a few degrees off of herself.
Her hand throbbed as she stumbled into the bathroom to wash the cut. The faucet hissed, then coughed up cold water laced with rust. She stared into the sink as it pooled pink around her fingers.
Then her reflection moved.
She jerked her head up.
But the mirror showed only her. Disheveled. Pale. Hollow-eyed.
Except… the bruising on her arm was gone. Completely.
And in the reflection, her shirt sleeve was rolled up when in reality it wasn't.
She raised her hand. Her reflection didn't mimic her. It just watched.
"You're getting worse at hiding," Mira muttered.
The mirror smiled.
And then blinked in unison with her.
Gone.
She dried her hands with shaking fingers and fled the room.
The attic called again.
She didn't want to go, but some instinct—buried, stubborn—drew her like a lodestone to iron. She needed answers. Needed to understand who the stitched-mouthed version of her had been, and why she remembered none of it.
The climb up was colder than before.
Dust stirred around her feet like it recognized her return.
At the far end of the attic, the ornate mirror still stood—uncracked, pristine, humming faintly with that same pulse she now felt in her veins.
Her reflection was already waiting.
The other-Mira stood still, but alert. No longer mocking. She looked tired.
"You're remembering," the reflection said, voice flat.
"A little," Mira said. "Enough to be afraid."
"Good."
Mira stepped closer. The air tightened. The attic darkened around her peripheral vision.
"You called me Myrah," she said. "Why?"
The reflection said nothing for a long time. Then, quietly:
"Because that was your name. Before the forgetting. Before she took it."
"Who?"
A pause.
Then, the mirror rippled like heat.
And behind her reflection—just for a second—Mira saw her mother.
Younger. Crying. Kneeling at a cellar door. Whispers rising from beneath it.
"I had to," her mother said, as though speaking across time. "She was too strong. She remembered too much."
The attic darkened again.
The reflection's eyes flicked to the side. "She's looking for you now. The part of the house that feeds."
Mira swallowed hard. "The house is alive."
"No," the reflection said. "The house is a tomb. What's inside it—that's what's alive."
Mira turned away from the mirror and noticed something she hadn't before: an old wooden trunk tucked beneath a dusty sheet.
It hadn't been there yesterday.
Heart pounding, she approached it and pulled the cover off. Dust exploded into the air.
The trunk was locked.
But the key—a small, brass thing shaped like an eye—sat neatly on top.
Her fingers hovered over it.
Don't remember, something inside her whispered.
But you have to.
She took the key.
It fit the lock perfectly.
With a click, the trunk opened—and inside were fragments.
Photos.
A child's shoe.
A music box shaped like a coffin.
And at the very bottom—
A mirror shard.
The same obsidian black as the chamber she'd seen in her vision.
The second she touched it, it cut her thumb.
Blood dotted the surface.
The shard drank it.
And Mira saw a flash—her mother, dragging something down the cellar stairs. Her own voice, younger, screaming her lungs raw. The stitched-mouth girl trapped behind wood and iron.
"She buried me," the voice echoed again. "And then buried the memory."
Mira snapped back to the present.
The shard was still. Her thumb throbbed.
Behind her, the mirror flickered.
The other-Mira stared at her like she was seeing something begin.
"You've opened the first gate," she said. "The house won't let you stop now."
"Gate?" Mira asked. "To what?"
"To yourself."
The reflection faded.
And the attic light blew out.