Isaac could not move.
For a moment, the world narrowed into the thin space between his breath and the mirror.
The creature's voice still echoed through the house, settling into the walls like cold smoke.
"Isaac Abidan, we finally meet."
Isaac stared at the figure inside the glass, his eyes wide, his throat dry. His body refused every command his mind desperately sent. His fingers trembled at his sides. His knees weakened beneath him. The air in the room seemed to grow heavier, pressing down against his shoulders, his chest, his lungs.
He had outlived wars.
He had survived accidents that should have torn his body apart.
He had watched plagues take children, old age take lovers, and grief take the strongest men he had ever known.
He had stood before death more times than he cared to remember.
And yet, in that moment, facing the thing smiling at him from the mirror, Isaac Abidan was afraid.
Not of dying.
He had stopped fearing death a long time ago.
What frightened him was that this creature looked at him as though it knew why death had never claimed him.
The figure inside the mirror tilted its head. Its smile widened, not with warmth, but with the kind of amusement one might show upon finding something misplaced after a very long search.
"I've been looking for you for a very long time," it said.
Isaac's breath hitched.
The words did not sound like a greeting.
They sounded like a sentence.
He took one step back, but his heel caught the edge of the rug beneath him. His balance gave way. He dropped heavily onto the floor, one hand striking the cold tiles as he tried to steady himself. Pain flashed through his palm, brief and sharp, but he barely noticed it.
His gaze never left the mirror.
The creature remained there, half-hidden in the distorted reflection, its form shifting like smoke trapped beneath water. It had the shape of a man, perhaps, or something that had once learned how men were shaped. But there was something wrong with the way it held itself. Something too fluid. Too deliberate. Too pleased.
Isaac wanted to speak.
Who are you?
What are you?
How do you know my name?
But no words came out.
Only a broken breath escaped his lips.
The creature chuckled softly.
"Ah," it said, its voice carrying a strange, mocking tenderness. "After all these years, that is how you greet me?"
Isaac's hand curled against the floor.
The house was silent except for the rain outside and the sound of his own uneven breathing. The storm had not ceased. Drops continued to strike the windows in uneven rhythms, each one sounding louder than it should have.
The creature lifted one hand from within the reflection.
Isaac's body stiffened.
At first, the movement seemed impossible, nothing more than a trick of the light. The creature's fingers pressed against the inner surface of the mirror, flattening against the glass from the other side.
Then the mirror rippled.
Isaac's heart seemed to stop.
Glass should not ripple.
The surface bent inward and outward like dark water disturbed by a hand beneath it. The frame groaned against the wall. A thin line of silver light spread from the point where the creature's fingers touched.
Isaac pushed himself backward.
"No," he whispered.
The creature's smile sharpened.
The tip of one finger pushed through.
The house shuddered.
It began as a faint vibration beneath the floor, so subtle Isaac might have mistaken it for thunder. But then the windows rattled. The framed photographs on the walls trembled. Somewhere in the kitchen, a glass fell and shattered.
Isaac flinched at the sound.
The creature grimaced, not in fear, but in effort. Its shoulders tensed. Its jaw clenched. The single finger that had pierced through the mirror trembled violently, as though the very act of crossing into Isaac's world required more strength than its body could bear.
The mirror's surface stretched around it like skin refusing to tear.
Isaac watched in frozen horror as another finger emerged beside the first.
Then another.
The creature exhaled sharply.
The house shook harder.
The lights above Isaac flickered once.
Twice.
Then dimmed.
Isaac's breath came faster. His back struck the leg of a table, stopping his retreat. He looked around wildly, searching for anything that could make sense of what was happening, anything that could explain why the walls were trembling, why the mirror was bending, why something that should not exist was forcing itself into his home.
But there was no explanation.
Only the creature.
Only the mirror.
Only the hand slowly being born from glass.
"Stop," Isaac said, but his voice barely rose above a whisper.
The creature heard him anyway.
It laughed.
Not loudly. Not cruelly. But knowingly.
As if Isaac had said something amusing.
"You have no idea," it murmured, forcing its fingers farther out. "No idea how long I have waited for this."
The knuckles emerged next.
The creature's hand was pale, though not with the pallor of illness. It seemed almost colourless, as if light itself refused to stay on its skin. Long fingers clawed at the empty air between them, trembling with the strain of reaching beyond the mirror.
Isaac pressed himself harder against the table, his eyes fixed on those fingers.
They were coming for him.
Not merely reaching into the room.
Reaching for him.
The floor jolted.
A crack crawled up the wall beside the mirror.
The house groaned as if something enormous had placed its weight upon the roof. The old wooden shelves shook. Books slid from their places and fell open onto the floor. The photographs in the living room rattled violently inside their frames, faces of the dead trembling behind glass.
Isaac's stomach twisted.
The faces of his wife.
His children.
His grandchildren.
All of them shaking.
All of them watching.
The creature pushed again.
Its wrist tore free from the mirror.
Isaac could not help the sound that escaped him then—a sharp, strangled gasp that was almost a cry. He tried to stand, but his legs failed him. His body had become useless beneath the weight of terror.
The creature's arm emerged inch by inch.
The mirror resisted, dragging around the limb like a wound reluctant to open. The creature's smile faltered for the first time. Its face contorted with pain, but still it continued.
Still it reached.
"Almost there," it breathed.
Isaac shook his head.
He did not know whether he was denying the creature, the impossible scene before him, or the sudden, terrible certainty growing inside his chest.
This was not a dream.
This was not grief breaking his mind.
Something had found him.
Something that had searched for him.
Something that had waited.
The creature's arm stretched farther into the room, elbow now pressing through the liquid surface of the mirror. Its fingers opened and closed in the air, grasping, searching.
Isaac tried to crawl away.
His palm slipped against the floor. His shoulder hit the side of the table. Somewhere above him, a light fixture swayed violently, throwing shadows across the walls.
The creature's fingertips brushed the air inches from his face.
Isaac stopped breathing.
The smile returned to the creature's mouth.
"There you are," it whispered.
Then the window shattered.
A deafening crack split through the room.
Isaac jerked sideways as shards of glass exploded inward, scattering across the floor like ice. A bullet tore through the rain-darkened air and struck the creature's hand.
The creature screamed.
It recoiled violently, its pale fingers spasming as dark silver fluid scattered across the floor. Something small slipped from one of its long fingers, striking the tiles with a sharp metallic sound before rolling beneath the edge of the table.
Isaac's eyes followed it for only a heartbeat.
A ring.
The creature's arm jerked backward, but the bullet did not fall into Isaac's house. It disappeared into the trembling surface of the mirror, swallowed by the place beyond the glass as if the wound between worlds had dragged it through.
Before Isaac could understand what had happened, a second shot rang out.
This time, it struck the mirror.
The glass burst apart.
The creature's scream was swallowed by the sound of shattering. Silver fragments flew from the frame, glittering in the dim light before raining down onto the floor.
The force that had gripped the house vanished all at once.
The walls stopped shaking.
The lights steadied.
The floor fell still beneath Isaac's trembling hands.
Silence crashed into the room.
Only the rain remained.
Isaac sat frozen on the floor, surrounded by broken glass, fallen photographs, and the scattered pieces of a mirror that no longer reflected anything whole.
His chest rose and fell in shallow, uneven breaths.
The creature was gone.
The hand was gone.
The voice was gone.
But the window was broken.
The mirror was shattered.
And beneath the table, half-hidden in the dark, the ring remained.
Somewhere outside his house, someone had fired the shots that saved him.
For several seconds, Isaac did not move.
The house had gone still, but the silence did not bring him peace.
It only made the damage louder.
Rain blew in through the broken window, darkening the floor in uneven patches. The curtains stirred weakly with the wind. Broken glass glittered across the tiles like scattered ice. The photographs that had once watched over the living room lay face down or crooked against the wall, their frames cracked, their memories disturbed.
Isaac could still hear the scream.
Or perhaps it was only the ringing in his ears.
His hands trembled against the floor. Tiny cuts marked his palms where shards of glass had bitten into his skin, but the wounds had already begun to close.
They always did.
His body repaired itself with the same cruel faithfulness that had kept him alive for more than a century.
He stared at his hands.
Then at the mirror.
What remained of it hung from the frame in jagged teeth. The creature was gone. Its voice was gone. The impossible pressure that had bent the room around itself was gone.
But something had been left behind.
Beneath the table, half-hidden in shadow, the ring lay where it had fallen.
Isaac's breath caught.
It was small enough to be mistaken for an ordinary piece of jewellery, but nothing about it belonged in his house. Its metal was dark, not black exactly, but the colour of something that had once reflected light and had since forgotten how. A faint line of silver ran around its band like trapped moonlight.
Near it, the dark fluid from the creature's wounded hand smoked softly against the floor.
Isaac swallowed.
A ring should not have frightened him.
This one did.
Still, he shifted forward.
Glass scraped beneath his knee. His fingers hovered above the floor as he reached for it, every instinct in him recoiling even as his hand moved closer.
He needed proof.
Proof that grief had not finally broken him.
Proof that the thing in the mirror had been real.
His fingertips were inches away when a voice cut through the rain.
"Don't."
Isaac froze.
The word had come from outside the broken window.
His hand remained suspended above the ring, trembling.
"Unless," the voice continued, calm and low, "you want them to find you again."
Them.
The single word crawled down Isaac's spine colder than the rain.
Slowly, he turned his head toward the window.
Beyond the torn curtain and shattered glass, someone stood beneath the storm-dark sky. Isaac could not see the figure clearly at first. Only a silhouette. Small. Still. One hand lowered at their side, holding the shape of a gun.
Isaac forced air into his lungs.
"Who are you?"
His voice broke on the last word.
For a moment, the figure did not answer.
Then she stepped closer.
The rain revealed her piece by piece.
A pair of mud-stained shoes. A dark coat too large for her narrow frame. A pale hand wrapped around the grip of a pistol. A face that looked too young to carry the expression it wore.
She could have been just a teenager.
No older than eighteen, perhaps nighteen, if Isaac trusted what his eyes were telling him.
But Isaac had long ago learned that faces could lie.
His own had been lying for more than a hundred years.
The woman lowered the gun.
"Someone who arrived late," she said.
Isaac stared at her, unable to speak.
Her eyes moved past him, toward the shattered mirror, then to the ring beneath the table. The calm in her face tightened.
"It has been difficult finding you," she said quietly. "And now they have found you first."
Isaac's throat dried.
"They?"
The woman looked back at him.
There was urgency in her gaze now. Not panic. Not fear. Something older than both.
"We need to leave," she said. "We have to return to Habhay now."
Isaac's mind caught on the unfamiliar word.
Habhay.
It sounded like a place.
It sounded like an answer.
It sounded like another sentence being passed over his life without his consent.
He shook his head slowly.
"I don't know what that is."
The woman's expression changed.
For the first time since she had stepped out of the rain, she looked almost sorry.
"I thought so," she said quietly. "If you knew, you would have returned."
She paused.
"You were supposed to help us."
Isaac looked from her to the shattered mirror, then to the ring still waiting beneath the table.
The house that had once held every life he had lost suddenly felt less like a home and more like the last room of a prison whose walls he had never seen.
"What are you?" he whispered.
The woman did not smile.
"Same as you," she said. "Only I remember where I came from."