The moment Etan stepped through the glass, the air shifted again; colder and heavier, like the whole place had exhaled. The ripples of his exit clung to me, thin silver threads I couldn’t shake. I didn’t sleep here.
I wasn’t sure if anyone did.
The Mirror Realm didn’t have night or day. The light was always dim, like the moment before a thunderstorm, and the shadows never stayed where you left them. Sometimes they curled upward along the walls like smoke. Sometimes they stretched toward me.
I’d been walking for what felt like hours. My legs ached, but there was no real sense of time there. The streets were copies of Hallowell Bay, but hollow, every window black, every storefront empty. The sound of my footsteps didn’t echo. It just stopped.
I saw them in reflections before I saw them in the street, shapes that bent the light wrong. They weren’t all like Etan. Some slunk low to the ground, with arms that bent too many ways. Others stood tall and still until I blinked, and then they were closer.
One followed me for blocks, its face a blank sheet of glass that kept catching pieces of my reflection. A hand here, my mouth there, stitched together in the wrong order.
I’d noticed something about the streets here, certain corners felt thinner, like the air was stretching. Whenever I walked past one, my vision blurred for a second, and the sound what little there was dropped away completely.
I slowed my pace, pretending to be tired, and let the thing gain on me. Its long, glassy arms didn’t swing so much as tilt, like they were on invisible hinges.
At the next seam, I pivoted just before stepping through. The creature lunged — right into the wavering air. For half a heartbeat, its body stretched, then folded in on itself like a reflection being wiped from a mirror.
When the air stilled, the street was empty.
I didn’t know where it went. I didn’t want to know. But I’d just bought myself a little breathing room and maybe, if I found Jess, I could tell her how to use these seams against him.
I thought about diving through after it — but I’d seen what happened to reflections without an anchor. The seams didn’t take you home. They just… spit you out somewhere else in the dark.
The second thing I learned was that they knew Etan.
Two figures with rippling glass skin and no faces stepped out of a warped doorway, blocking the street. Their bodies didn’t move right. They were too fluid, like they were made of reflections poured into a shape. One leaned close enough that its surface caught my reflection, stretching my eyes until they filled half its head.
“You’re not fading as fast as you should,” the glass-skinned figure said. “The thief is feeding you just enough to keep his own anchor strong.”
“Where is he?” it asked, though its mouth didn’t move. The voice was layered, like three people speaking at once underwater.
I swallowed hard. “Who?”
The two shapes tilted in unison, like they didn’t believe me.
“The one who wears your face,” the layered voice said. “The one who left.”
“He’s gone to my world, to my life.”
They stepped back slowly, almost reverently.
“He’ll come back,” the other added. “They always come back.”
Then, they melted into the nearest window, rippling out of sight.
The third thing I learned was that the Mirror Realm didn’t want me to leave.
I tried to follow the streets back to the school or where the school should’ve been, but they kept looping. I’d walk past the same cracked shop sign three times, even though I’d been turning in different directions.
Once, I saw a crowd up ahead. People, or copies of them, standing perfectly still in the middle of the road. When I got closer, they all turned their heads at the same time, their faces shifting through a dozen expressions that weren’t theirs.
I ran.
By the time I stopped, I was in the middle of what looked like the boardwalk. The ocean was there, but different. It was as flat as glass, no smell of salt, no sound of waves. Under its surface, however, I saw movement.
Not fish. This was nothing natural.
Dozens of pale, human-shaped figures pressed just beneath the water, their silver eyes opening in unison to look at me.
