The mirror still showed him.
Rei.
A man who shouldn't exist beyond dusty portraits or the margins of a forgotten notebook. But there he was—motionless, dressed in black, with the deepest eyes Yuki had ever seen. His reflection didn't blink. Didn't breathe. But it did speak.
"Don't leave me again."
The voice didn't come from the mirror. It was in the room. In the air. In his bones.
Yuki stepped back. Then another. The gas lantern flickered, casting dancing light across the book-covered walls. He turned around. No one. Not a soul. But the air smelled different: old, like extinguished incense, like something that had waited too long to be remembered.
"Who… are you?" Yuki asked, barely above a whisper.
No immediate reply. Just a faint tremble in the stained-glass windows, as if someone were walking outside the house. But there was no "outside." Not anymore. Just that living mist, that void.
The mirror was now empty.
Yuki approached it cautiously, expecting to see that figure again. But he only saw himself: pale, disheveled, with dark circles under his eyes he didn't remember having. He touched his face, as if needing to confirm he was still real.
He went back to his room. He needed to lock himself in. Breathe. Think.
But when he opened the door, he didn't find his room.
It was another chamber.
One with blue curtains, a double bed, and a black wooden dresser carved with strange symbols. The room smelled of fresh humidity and dried roses. Everything was clean. Too clean. As if someone had just left. A book rested on the bed: "The Body and the Soul: Eternal Bonds." It was open to a page marked with a crow feather.
"When the soul refuses death, it seeks a body that still remembers."
Yuki slammed the book shut. He stepped out. Returned to the hallway. Looked both ways. Tried the next door. Again: not his room. Every time he opened one, it was something different: a sitting room with chairs draped in gray sheets, a cold and empty kitchen, a children's playroom where dolls watched him from the shelves as if they knew his name.
The house had changed. Or worse: the house was guiding him.
He finally found a narrow staircase leading to the basement. He didn't remember seeing it before. Something inside begged him not to go down. But his feet disobeyed. As if an invisible cord was pulling him downward.
Step by step, the darkness swallowed him.
At the bottom, he found a stone underground gallery. Lit candles floated in the air without any visible base. Yuki walked slowly, each step echoing deeply.
At the end, a figure stood with its back to him. The silhouette was familiar—tall, slender, long hair falling down the back.
"Rei…" Yuki murmured.
The figure didn't move. But a voice—the same one from the mirror—filled the space without lips.
"I knew you'd come."
"What are you?"
"The real question is: what did you do to me?"
Yuki frowned.
"I don't know you."
"Not yet. But you will. They all do. Sooner or later."
And then the figure turned.
Rei was… beautiful, in a spectral way. His skin had a faint blue glow, like a pearl underwater. His eyes, black as void, swallowed light. His mouth, slightly parted, exhaled a soft mist every time he spoke.
Yuki couldn't move.
It was like standing before a living painting, a being that didn't belong to this world or the next. Something inside him broke and reassembled all at once.
"What do you want from me?"
Rei stepped closer. Yuki, as if hypnotized, didn't back away.
"You're not here by chance. The house chose you. Just like it chose the others."
"Others?"
Rei lowered his gaze. For a moment, he seemed… sad.
"All those who came before you. But none could stay. None… was enough."
"Enough for what?"
Rei drew even closer. Now just a meter away. Yuki could see impossible details: a faint scar on his neck, like from an ancient knife, and a worn silver ring on his left hand.
"Enough for me to remember who I am."
Silence.
Yuki felt that if he spoke, he'd break something. An invisible tension. A line not yet meant to be crossed.
Rei raised a hand. He didn't touch him. Just let it hover near Yuki's face.
"You… saw me. That means you still have something inside that hasn't been taken. Something the house wants."
"My soul?"
Rei smiled, for the first time.
"No. Your will. The only thing I can't steal."
Yuki stepped back.
"Do you want to steal it?"
"I don't desire to. But… the house needs it. And I… am part of it."
A cold wind swept through the basement, extinguishing the candles. Yuki dropped to his knees, trembling. Darkness enveloped him completely.
And in that blackness, he felt hands that weren't his. A presence clinging to his back, his neck, his chest.
And then he heard Rei's voice one last time that night, just before passing out.
"Don't resist. Not yet. I need you to see everything before you hate me."
Yuki woke up in his bed. His real bed.
The door was closed. The lantern off. The book on his chest.
As if nothing had happened.
But in the mirror, beside his reflection, stood Rei.
Smiling.