His reflection wavered as if underwater, features bending and recoiling with each flicker of flame. Not the expected absence he'd learned to manage across centuries of mirrors, the simple void most reflective surfaces showed him. Something worse. The house couldn't reconcile his existence. It was rejecting him at a gut level, the way a body rejects poison in the blood, trying to expel him, to deny his presence in this sacred space.
He turned slightly, fighting the urge to look away. Another mirror. And another. Small hand mirrors on sideboards. Polished glass in the upper corners of the room, all treated with substances that bent light in sick ways, mutating his reflection as though it refused to acknowledge him. In one, his face appeared skeletal, flesh stripped away to reveal the death
