The Mirror Appears

Deborah placed the mirror between her bookshelves with the care of someone introducing a relic into their sanctuary, a kind of private cathedral built from books and stray paper and the quiet rituals of a solitary life. The mirror was tall and unnervingly elegant, the kind of object that seemed not merely found but summoned—its silver frame dulled by time and tarnish, the vine work etched into its surface twisting in upon itself like secrets written in a forgotten alphabet. Serpents curled along the edges, mouths open in silent hisses, and the entire surface gave off an inexplicable warmth, as if it retained the memory of other hands, other rooms, other worlds.

Subtle Shifts

Even in the absence of light, it shimmered faintly, as though moonlight lived inside it, and caught the soft glow of her desk lamp the way still water catches the reflection of stars. At first, it was nothing more than an aesthetic indulgence, a whimsical addition to her otherwise joyless apartment, which smelled faintly of old coffee and neglected dreams. A nod, perhaps, to the fantasy novels stacked on her shelves and the tarot cards she never quite learned to read. Just a little magic, she told herself. Something beautiful to break up the monotony.

But within days, something subtle shifted, as though the mirror were not merely a surface but a threshold, and her reflection—so obedient, so familiar—began to misbehave in the smallest, most disconcerting ways. There was a pause. A breath of hesitation. She would reach for a pen or turn her head and catch, from the corner of her eye, the disquieting sense that the figure in the mirror was only pretending to mimic her, following her actions not out of instinct but out of calculated performance, a half-second too slow.

The Wink

She told herself it was fatigue. The mind playing tricks in the liminal hours between wakefulness and sleep. After all, she hadn’t been sleeping well. She hadn’t been doing much of anything well.

Then one night, it winked.

Her reflection—her, and not her—winked with deliberate slowness, with an almost indulgent grace.

A Vision of Power

Deborah had not moved.

She stood frozen, rooted to the floorboards, unable to look away, her breath caught somewhere between her ribs and her throat, where it lodged like a stone. The woman in the mirror wore robes of such deep black they seemed to absorb the light around them, and her shoulders were draped in shadow. In one hand, she held a staff carved from something that glimmered like bone under glass, etched with runes that squirmed and rearranged themselves when she tried to understand them.

Behind her, the apartment had vanished, replaced by a cavernous stone hall that rose into darkness, its stained-glass windows shedding unnatural light in colors that made her stomach churn, and torches guttered with violet fire along its walls.

Then, in an instant, it was just her reflection again—Deborah, plain and exhausted, with ink smudges on her fingers and a hoodie stretched thin from years of wear, standing amid the clutter of books and unopened mail.

The Pull of the Mirror

But the image stayed with her, lingered like a dream that refused to be shaken off. She found herself returning to the mirror night after night, no longer out of curiosity, but need—a deepening hunger for something she could not name. Each night, the mirror version of herself reappeared, a figure of impossible power and uncanny grace, soaring above burning cities, conjuring beasts from smoke and ash, casting spells with a language that burned on her tongue even in silence.

Sometimes, a voice—rich and low and honey-slick—spoke to her in thoughts not entirely her own: You could be me.

And slowly, day by day, she began to believe it.

Abandoning the World

She stopped going to work, let her email rot unopened, and ignored the mounting pile of messages from concerned friends and unpaid bills. She let the outside world crumble into static while the mirror world bloomed in color and flame. The reflection began to teach her things—chants that slithered off her tongue like live things, sigils she traced on fogged glass that made the lights flicker and hum. Her houseplants sprouted and withered in the space of an afternoon. Water boiled without heat. Her own skin began to feel too warm, feverish, as if it were preparing to shed.

She smiled more often, but the smile was crooked now, unfamiliar, not quite anchored to her own bones.

Crossing Over

Then, one night, the mirror changed. It pulsed—not with light, but with intent, as if it were breathing, exhaling some unseen mist that made the air in the apartment dense with promise. Her reflection stepped forward, closer than it had ever dared, and extended a pale hand that shimmered like moonlit marble. Deborah, trembling and hollowed out by longing, raised her own hand to meet it.

Her fingers passed through.

The sensation was an immediate wash of scalding heat followed by a suffocating cold that spread across her limbs like frostbite blooming from the inside. She gasped. Somewhere, her heart pounded like a warning bell. But it was too late.

She stepped through.

A New Prison

There was no ground beneath her.

Only falling.

She plummeted through a tunnel of stars and wind and memory, through a screaming sky that twisted and broke and reformed around her. Time unraveled. Her thoughts scattered like ashes.

And then—silence.

When she opened her eyes, she was back in her apartment. The same bookshelf. The same lamp. But something was wrong. She could see, but she could not move. Could not blink. Could not scream.

Because she was inside the mirror.

And the other Deborah—the one in black robes, with calm eyes and a smile as sharp as glass—stood where she had once been. She turned her head, adjusted her hair, and walked to the door with the effortless ease of someone who had always belonged in that body. When Garret knocked and asked if she was okay, the new Deborah opened the door and laughed lightly, telling him she’d simply been tired.

Inside the mirror, the real Deborah watched, screaming silently as the doppelgänger slid into her life with elegance and grace, as if she had been rehearsing this moment for centuries.

The mirror no longer shimmered.

It pulsed, faintly, like a heart slowly dying.

 

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