The nightmares stopped. For two weeks, everyone slept like normal people. Kira learned to lower her volume knob. Felix wrote three new songs. Marcus burned only two batches of pancakes.
Then the mirrors appeared.
Not real mirrors. Reflection fragments. Floating discs of silver light that showed not what was, but what could have been.
Lily found the first one in her room. She looked into it and saw herself—older, alone, still in the Vault.
“That’s not me anymore,” she said. The mirror cracked.
Mira found one in her notebook. It showed her as a toddler, before the fragment, playing with a dog she never had.
“I could have had a normal life,” she whispered.
Felix’s mirror showed him as a banker. No music. No fragment. No friends. Just a desk and a tie.
“That’s not a nightmare,” Felix s
