Chapter 8: The Wrong Reflection
1027 Words
Elira stirred in the early hours of morning, tangled in a cold sweat.
Lucien lay beside her, breathing softly. The comfort of his nearness should have calmed her. But something felt wrong.
Off.
Watched.
She sat up slowly, eyes drawn to the tall mirror at the end of the room. The glass was clean, undisturbed, yet the reflection in it—
Wasn’t hers.
Elira blinked, heart spiking.
In the mirror, the woman had her face—but her eyes were wrong. Too wide. Too dark. And smiling when Elira wasn’t.
The smile grew, then cracked, revealing jagged teeth like broken porcelain.
Elira stood and approached it, pulse pounding.
“You’re not me,” she whispered.
The reflection tilted its head.
“You gave me a name,” it said.
Its voice was wet, like speaking through water.
“You’re supposed to be gone,” Elira snapped. “I buried you.”
“You buried Eleanor,” it said sweetly. “But she’s not done with you.”
Elira raised a trembling hand to touch the glass.
The reflection didn’t mimic her this time.
Instead, it leaned forward—mouth pressed to the inside of the mirror.
> “Let me in.”
A cold hand gripped Elira’s wrist.
She turned—
Lucien.
Awake, eyes wide with fear.
“Don’t touch it,” he whispered.
---
They covered the mirror with a sheet.
Burning it didn’t work. The fire simply wouldn’t catch.
Lucien moved it to the shed behind the cottage, buried it beneath old boards and nailed the door shut.
Still, that night—
They heard it whispering.
Elira didn’t sleep.
She sat by the window, staring at the dark woods beyond the garden.
They looked like they were breathing.
Lucien brought her tea and kissed her shoulder.
“We’re safe now,” he murmured.
But the look in her eyes said: Are we?
---
At the town’s library the next day, Elira searched for anything—anything—on name curses, mirror spirits, tethering rituals.
The librarian, a hunched woman with faded gray eyes, watched her from the front desk.
“You’re looking for the girl in the glass,” she finally said.
Elira froze.
The woman beckoned her closer.
“Come.”
She led Elira through a narrow hallway behind the archives, into a storage room filled with boxes and cobwebs.
From one dusty crate, she pulled a leather-bound book with no title.
Inside: drawings of women with hollow faces, bleeding mirrors, and names crossed out in red ink.
“She takes the names we give up,” the librarian whispered. “She wears them. Becomes them. And hunts what’s left.”
Elira swallowed hard.
“How do you stop her?”
“You reclaim the name. Or you destroy the last place she saw herself.”
“But I don’t remember my name.”
The librarian looked at her closely.
“I think a part of you does.”
---
Back home, Elira stood before the mirror again.
This time, the sheet was gone.
Lucien swore he hadn’t touched it.
Inside the mirror, the other version of her stood in a dim room full of shadows.
She smiled.
> “He’ll forget you, too.”
Elira pressed her palm to the glass.
“What do you want?”
The reflection leaned in, closer.
“To become.”
Then the mirror shattered—from the inside.
Glass exploded outward. Shards flew into Elira’s arms, her face.
Lucien pulled her back too late.
Blood smeared across her hands.
And inside the frame—
No glass.
Just a black, swirling surface like water.
And from its depths—
She began to crawl out.
---
Lucien didn’t scream.
He grabbed Elira and yanked her back.
But the thing—the reflection, the false Eleanor—was already halfway through the frame, her limbs too long, her bones cracking as she pulled herself into the world.
She opened her mouth wide and screamed a single word:
> “MINE!”
Lucien grabbed the iron poker from the fireplace and swung.
It struck her face.
She shattered like glass, fragments scattering across the wooden floor.
But she didn’t stay gone.
The shards twitched.
Wriggled.
Pulled themselves back together like bugs forming a body.
Elira stared in horror.
“She’s not a ghost,” she said. “She’s a copy.”
“She’s what’s left,” Lucien added.
“Of who I used to be.”
---
They ran.
Through the woods.
To the old stone well behind the Blackvale ruins.
Elira remembered it from a dream she thought she'd forgotten.
The girl in black stood beside it already.
“I was waiting,” she said.
“She’s here,” Elira said. “The reflection.”
The girl nodded.
“She took the name. But not the soul. You still have that.”
“Then help me destroy her.”
The girl held up a mirror.
This one was round, cracked, small enough to fit in Elira’s hand.
“Show her who she really is,” she said. “Show her the part she’ll never be.”
Elira clutched it and turned as the trees shook—
And the thing stepped into the clearing.
Half her face was Lucien’s.
Half was Margaret’s.
The rest was Eleanor, twisted and wrong.
She hissed.
“I was you. And now I’ll be better.”
Elira held up the mirror.
“No. You were just what I left behind.”
The creature screamed and lunged—
And Elira held the mirror up to its face.
The reflection didn’t show the monster.
It showed a shadow.
No eyes. No mouth.
Just emptiness.
It saw itself.
And began to rot.
---
The forest shrieked as the thing crumbled.
Lucien held Elira as she collapsed beside the well.
The girl in black smiled faintly.
“You chose,” she said. “Not to go back. But to move forward.”
“And now?” Elira asked.
“Now you finish becoming.”
She pressed her hand to Elira’s chest.
And the name—
Elira—
burned gold beneath her skin.
Etched there, forever.
Not stolen. Not cursed.
Chosen.
- Writer
