Chapter Seven: Deleterious Mission
1110 Words
The rain began again just past midnight, soft and patient as if it had been waiting for the world to fall quiet before it returned. Wrenmore Manor, drenched in silver gloom, shivered beneath the weather, and Ellora Hayes stirred from restless sleep.
She didn’t remember falling asleep, but she woke with her skin cold and her sheets tangled like vines. The mirror across the room stood still, but not silent. It hummed softly now. It had begun humming two nights ago.
Each night since, her dreams had deepened—and so had her reflection.
It wasn’t just her anymore. Not fully.
When she looked into the mirror, sometimes she saw herself—but younger. Or older. Or fractured. And sometimes, the reflection would smile… when she didn’t. Or blink… just a second too late.
Kael’s presence had changed everything.
They were closer now. Too close. And somehow still too far.
She walked through the manor barefoot, the stone cold beneath her feet. There was a magnetic pull leading her—not to Kael’s usual mirror in her bedroom, but the one near the old study.
The one with the gilded black frame and the rose-shaped cracks in the bottom corner.
She stood in front of it.
“Kael,” she whispered.
The surface didn’t shimmer. It didn’t shift.
It pulsed.
And then, he stepped into view.
Kael’s form was sharper than before. Not a ghost, not a shadow—him. Solid-looking, his silver-blue eyes glinting like moonlit steel. His lips parted slightly, as though he were trying to say something he hadn’t spoken in centuries.
“You’re clearer,” she said, almost breathless.
“So are you,” he answered softly.
She touched the mirror, fingers trailing along the cool glass. He did the same on his side. For a moment, it felt like their fingertips met. Her breath hitched.
But then—pain. White-hot. She flinched back. A cut formed on her finger, blood beading.
Kael’s eyes darkened. “It’s starting,” he said grimly.
“What is?”
“The bleed. Between realms. Between souls.”
He began to remember things he hadn’t spoken of since his death. The way his father had cursed the glass. The other girl who had stood where Ellora now stood, and had made the same mistake.
“You look like her,” he said.
Ellora’s heart twisted. “Your past?”
“My punishment,” he corrected. “She tried to set me free. And failed. She became part of the glass. It’s how The Watcher was born.”
The name sent chills through her. She had felt it. The presence. Watching her more boldly now. Sometimes from the corners of the mirror. Sometimes behind her own eyes.
“It’s watching us now,” Kael added, voice almost tender. “Because it knows what’s happening between us.”
Ellora stepped closer. Her voice shook. “And what is happening?”
Kael didn’t answer with words.
Instead, his hand reached out again. This time, when the mirror flickered, his hand came through—only up to the wrist, ghostly, half-there.
She gasped.
He touched her cheek. His hand was cold, but real. Her skin burned under the contact.
They stood like that, frozen in wonder, in fear, in want.
Then the mirror cracked.
Just one hairline fracture, like a warning.
Kael pulled back instantly.
“We can’t do that again.”
“But I—”
“No. Not yet.” He swallowed hard. “If we keep crossing the veil like this, The Watcher won’t stay trapped. It will step through... like I just did.”
She turned away, pacing. Her own reflection now shimmered oddly. For a moment, she saw a second version of herself standing beside her—not mimicking, just watching. And it smiled.
“Kael,” she said. “My reflection isn’t me anymore.”
“I know.”
They stood in silence.
Then Kael said, “I remember something else now. A doorway. A ritual. My father performed it before he died. There might be a way to trap the Watcher again. But it will cost us.”
“What cost?”
He didn’t answer. But she saw it in his eyes.
Her.
That night, she dreamed again.
She was in a mirror.
Not her reflection. Her. Trapped inside. Screaming.
And Kael stood outside, blood on his hands, whispering her name.
“Ellora.”
“Ellora.”
The Watcher’s voice was layered over his. Twisted. Hungry.
When she woke, the mirror was fogged.
And someone had written across it:
WE BLEED TOGETHER.
The days blurred. Kael appeared less often now, his form dimmer, his voice faint. But the reflection in Ellora's bedroom grew stronger. It studied her like a stranger. It mimicked her movements out of sync. She’d turn away from the mirror and still feel her reflection watching.
In the hallway one evening, Ellora passed a mirror that wasn’t supposed to be there. It had never been there. But now, a tall freestanding mirror stood, and within it—Kael. His expression was pained, frantic.
“Ellora, listen—there’s a room. Below the manor. Behind the wine cellar. A place my father sealed before his death. You have to go there. You’ll find the truth. And the book.”
“What book?” she asked.
Before he could answer, the mirror shattered. Splinters scattered across the floor like glass raindrops. The hallway went dark.
Later that night, she found the door.
Dusty, wooden, rotted slightly at the edges. A heavy iron key was already in the lock, as though waiting for her. She turned it slowly and descended into darkness.
The basement beneath Wrenmore was vast and damp. It smelled like ash and secrets.
At the far end, under a torn canvas sheet, she found a mirror unlike the rest.
It was framed in black iron, carved with runes, and its surface pulsed like skin. Within it, she saw not herself—not even Kael—but hundreds of other faces. Some screaming. Some laughing. Some completely still.
A book lay at its base.
Bound in cracked leather, sealed with a strip of red cloth.
She opened it.
The writing was in Kael’s hand. Younger, more desperate.
Pages and pages of rituals. Of ways to seal souls. Of ways to bind The Watcher.
At the final page, a note:
“Only one love can break a curse. And only one blood can awaken it. If she finds this, I’m already gone.”
Ellora closed the book slowly. The mirror’s surface rippled.
And for the first time, she saw her reflection smile back with Kael’s eyes.
- Writer
