Chapter 5: His Reflection Lies
677 Words
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Kael stared at her, waiting. But Elara couldn’t speak.
The mirror behind him still held his reflection — still, rigid, wrong. It didn’t move with him. Didn’t blink when he did. It stood there like a shadow caught in time.
“Elara?” he asked again, stepping closer.
She stepped back.
“I saw something,” she said quietly. “In the mirror. It wasn’t you.”
Kael turned to look, but the moment he did, the reflection flickered — then followed. Just like it should.
“You’ve been down here too long,” he said, though his voice lacked certainty.
“No,” Elara said. “It’s not just the mirror. It’s you.”
Kael flinched. “You think I’m not real.”
“I think…” She swallowed. “I think there’s something inside this school that twists people. And I think it’s trying to twist you.”
He didn’t argue.
Instead, he walked toward one of the older mirrors on the far wall — tall, oval, and cracked down the center. He reached toward it slowly, like testing a surface that might bite.
The glass rippled.
Kael froze. “It reacts to me.”
The mirror shimmered again, and an image formed: Kael as a child, sitting in a hospital bed, alone. Machines beeped beside him. A woman stood in the corner, crying silently into her hands.
“That’s… my mother,” he whispered. “This isn’t a memory. It’s… a wound.”
Elara stepped beside him. “These mirrors — they don’t show reflections. They show pain.”
Kael nodded. “And they feed on it.”
Suddenly, another mirror lit up. This one showed Elara.
She was twelve, standing in a field behind her house, screaming for someone. A girl with her same face ran ahead, laughing — Isobel.
And then the scene changed.
The same field. Same sky. But Elara was alone.
Digging.
A small grave.
She turned away from it, tears in her eyes.
“I never buried anyone,” Elara whispered. “That never happened.”
“The mirrors lie,” Kael said. “But sometimes they tell the truth first.”
They moved quickly after that, past mirror after mirror, deeper into the chamber. The air thickened with whispers — voices layered like leaves, brushing past their ears.
“Elara,” one said.
“Help me,” another cried.
“She’s not gone,” a third hissed.
And then, without warning, the mirrors all went black.
Darkness.
Then light.
And Elara was alone.
The chamber had changed — twisted. The walls were tighter, the torches burning blue instead of orange. Kael was gone.
“Kael?” she called. Her voice echoed too many times.
No answer.
She turned in a circle, panic rising. The mirrors stared back, empty. Silent.
Then one lit up.
It was her — standing in the hallway outside her dorm, the night she arrived. Watching herself knock. Watching the door open.
Except this time, it wasn’t her in the room.
It was Isobel.
Alive. Smiling. Holding out her hand.
“Come back to me,” Isobel whispered through the mirror.
Elara touched the glass.
It burned.
She yanked her hand back — blood blooming across her palm in a perfect circle.
Then — a voice. Real. Close.
“Elara!”
She turned. Kael was running toward her, breathless, terrified. Behind him, the mirrors exploded one by one — glass flying into the air like shards of light and shadow.
He grabbed her hand, pulling her away from the final mirror just as it cracked straight down the middle.
The entire chamber shook.
“We have to go,” he said.
They ran back the way they came, breath coming fast, glass crunching beneath their feet. When they reached the door, it groaned open without a touch — like the catacombs were letting them leave.
But just before they stepped through, Elara looked back one last time.
In the shattered mirror, among the broken pieces…
Was her own face.
Smiling.
But she wasn’t.
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- Writer
