Chapter Three: Through the Mirrors breath
1168 Words
Eliora didn't wake to the sound of wind or the creak of old wood.
She woke to the hush of her own name being whispered.
Not from inside the room.
But from inside the mirror.
The whisper crawled into her ears like silk, soft and hot and barely audible, but it wasn’t imagined. It couldn’t have been. Her skin rippled with goosebumps, and her breath caught in her throat. She sat up, slowly, and glanced at the sheet-covered mirror across the room—the only one she hadn’t dared uncover since that night.
But the sheet was no longer there.
It lay crumpled on the floor like someone had yanked it off. And there he was.
A man.
No longer just a blur in the glass, not just some peripheral illusion—he was real. In the mirror. Inside it. Watching her.
He didn’t move. He didn’t speak again.
But he didn’t disappear.
He stood there, head tilted slightly, his eyes the color of dusk just before a storm. Pale skin, like stone carved by moonlight. Dark, disheveled hair that looked like it had been dragged through centuries. A shirt unbuttoned at the collar. Hands pressed lightly to the glass. His face unreadable. Curious. Focused.
And he was beautiful in a way that shouldn’t exist.
She swallowed. Her voice broke through the stillness.
“Who are you?”
The man blinked slowly. Then he lifted a single finger to his lips and pressed it there, a silent command.
Don’t speak.
She shivered.
And yet she didn’t run. She didn’t scream. Something deeper than fear curled in her chest. Fascination. Obsession. Desire laced with dread.
She blinked, and he was gone.
The mirror was empty again.
But from that moment, everything began to unravel.
---
Eliora didn’t tell anyone. What could she say? That a ghost—or something worse—was trying to communicate with her through a mirror?
She felt him now. Everywhere.
His presence lingered in the corners of the house like smoke. She heard his footsteps late at night, soft and heavy, crossing the upstairs hallway when she knew no one else was there. Lights flickered. Doors she’d locked were suddenly open. Her dreams were no longer hers.
In them, he stood in mirrors that bled silver and ink. Sometimes he reached for her. Sometimes she reached back.
One night, she traced the mirror’s edge with her fingertip. “Are you real?” she whispered.
Her breath fogged the glass. And when it cleared—
He was there.
Closer.
His hand lifted. He touched the same spot she had.
Glass to glass.
And though they didn’t touch skin to skin, she felt it—like electricity sliding up her spine, heat pooling low in her belly. She gasped and backed away, heart hammering like she’d done something sinful.
Because it felt like she had.
She spent the next day wandering Dovenhill. Anything to escape the house’s pull. But even outside, she saw him. Reflected in puddles. In store windows. In the reflection of her phone screen.
He was following her.
Watching.
Always from the other side.
When she returned, she found a single white rose laid at the base of the mirror in her bedroom.
---
The house had rules now. Unspoken ones.
She no longer tried to cover the mirrors.
She left her bedroom door cracked open at night.
She lit candles and placed them by the glass, waiting.
He came more often. Sometimes just to watch her. Sometimes to echo her movement—lifting a hand when she did, tilting his head when she did, breathing when she breathed.
And sometimes… he did things that made her heart twist and her thighs clench.
A smile.
A low, rumbling laugh that came from nowhere.
Or the feel of warm breath on her neck when she knew no one was there.
---
She stopped wearing so many layers in the house. Something about the heat that built up inside her, the constant awareness of being seen—it made her body ache. She lay on her bed one evening in just a camisole and shorts, her hair undone, her skin flushed.
And there he was.
In the mirror across the room. Closer now. Kneeling.
Like he was at her feet.
Her breath stuttered. Her legs curled beneath her.
“I can feel you,” she whispered.
His mouth curved into the faintest smirk.
“I’m not afraid,” she added.
The mirror fogged where his lips should have been.
Good.
She leaned forward, almost touching the glass with her own mouth, her pulse fluttering wildly.
“Tell me your name.”
The mirror trembled.
Kael.
She whispered it like a secret: “Kael…”
Something sharp echoed behind her ribcage.
And then she heard it—his voice, deep and sensual, not in the air but in her mind.
“You called me, Eliora. I came.”
She jolted back, spine pressing into the mattress.
“I didn’t—”
“You wanted to be seen. You wanted to be known. Now you are.”
Her skin burned with shame and thrill. Her thighs pressed together. His voice was like ink, staining every part of her.
“I didn’t mean—”
“But you did.”
He touched the glass again. And she could swear she felt his fingers graze her jaw. Her breath hitched.
“Why me?”
“Because you believe in the things no one else sees.”
She didn’t sleep that night.
She sat on the floor in front of the mirror, waiting.
And he stayed. For hours. Watching.
Until morning crept into the windows and the glass turned cold.
---
Days passed. Nights blurred. She no longer knew what was real.
Kael began speaking more often. Whispering things she couldn’t repeat. Dark things. Beautiful things. Things that made her knees weak and her lips part.
He told her stories of the house. Of how it had once been his. How he’d died within it. How the mirrors were built not to reflect—but to trap. To bind. To hold what shouldn’t exist.
“Are you dead?” she asked one night.
He only smiled.
“Will you ever come out?”
His eyes burned. “Would you let me?”
She didn’t answer.
Not yet.
But she wanted to.
So badly it hurt.
---
That evening, she drew him. Again and again. Every curve of his mouth. Every shadow beneath his cheekbone. Every cruel, perfect detail of his stare.
And when she finished the final sketch, she pressed her lips to the paper.
And in the mirror—Kael groaned.
Like he felt it.
Like he wanted more.
And Eliora, trembling, whispered into the night:
“I want to touch you.”
The candle beside the mirror flared.
And Kael—Kael’s voice wrapped around her like velvet and thorns.
“Then come closer, little flame. Let me burn.”
---
To be continued in Chapter Four... 🔥
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