The livestream went live at exactly midnight.
No title appeared.
No thumbnail.
No warning to prepare the mind for what it was about to witness.
Just a sudden, silent notification—Live Now—and then darkness.
For the first few seconds, nothing moved.
The chat hesitated, unsure if this was a mistake or a glitch. A few messages appeared, scattered and uncertain.
Is this loading?
Black screen??
Anyone else here?
Then the camera adjusted.
The studio emerged slowly from the dark, as if reality itself were reluctant to reveal it.
The room was larger than it looked on past recordings, its corners swallowed by shadow. Candles burned in a wide, imperfect circle on the concrete floor. Their flames flickered unevenly, bending at strange angles, as though responding to breath that didn't belong to any living thing.
Mirror shards lay between the candles—dozens of them. Large pieces. Small slivers. Curved fragments and jagged edges. They had been arranged with care, forming a fractured symbol that made the eye ache if stared at for too long. Each shard reflected a broken piece of the room: candlelight, darkness, the edge of the camera—never the whole truth.
At the center of it all sat Rhea.
She was barefoot, her clothes dark and torn at the edges, stained where blood had soaked through the fabric. Her hands rested loosely in her lap, palms open, red and trembling but steady. Her face was pale, eyes rimmed with exhaustion—yet there was a calm in her expression that unsettled more than fear ever could.
The viewer count climbed.
Hundreds.
Thousands.
Then tens of thousands.
The chat exploded, messages racing past faster than anyone could read.
Why is she bleeding?
This doesn't feel fake.
My screen keeps lagging.
Something's wrong with the audio.
A soft crackling sound crept into the feed, like distant static—or glass shifting under pressure.
Rhea lifted her head.
When she looked directly into the camera, it felt personal. Intentional. As if she could see through the screen, through the faces staring back at her from bedrooms, buses, hospital rooms, dark corners of the world where people scrolled because they couldn't sleep.
"If you're watching," she said quietly, her voice steady but fragile, "this is not a performance."
The mirror shards trembled.
Not violently. Not yet. Just enough to notice.
A low hum slipped into the audio feed—so faint it almost blended into the background noise. But once heard, it was impossible to ignore. It wasn't mechanical. It wasn't electrical.
It sounded like something breathing.
The chat slowed.
Fear has a way of silencing people.
"After tonight," Rhea continued, "you must forget me."
The words hit harder than a scream.
Messages surged again, frantic now.
WHAT DO YOU MEAN
TURN THIS OFF
THIS ISN'T FUNNY
MY MIRROR JUST MOVED
Rhea swallowed. Her throat burned, but she didn't look away.
"These reflections are not monsters," she said. "They are memories that were never allowed to rest. They are pieces of people who were seen only when they were breaking—only when it was too late."
The hum deepened.
One of the mirror shards cracked cleanly down the center.
"They survive because we look," she said softly. "Because we listen. Because we remember."
Behind her, the shadows thickened.
They didn't crawl. They didn't rush. They gathered—slow and deliberate—pulling together like spilled ink drawn toward a single point.
The Collector emerged.
It was clearer than ever before.
Taller. Heavier. More defined.
Thousands of eyes anchored it now, shaping its form, giving it weight. Its surface rippled like dark glass, and within it flickered countless distorted faces—watchers, victims, memories layered on top of each other until individuality dissolved.
"You cannot erase yourself," it said gently, its voice layered with echoes that did not belong to one throat. "You are already seen."
Rhea smiled.
Not with relief.
Not with fear.
With acceptance.
"Then watch," she said.
Her hand moved slowly, deliberately, toward the largest mirror shard.
It pulsed under her fingers, warm and familiar, as though it recognized her touch. For a brief moment, her reflection stared back—not broken, not distorted. Just Rhea. Tired. Human. Afraid—but resolved.
She pressed the shard against her chest.
The mirrors screamed.
The sound tore through the livestream—sharp, metallic, alive. Silver light erupted outward in violent waves, flooding the room. Screens across the world flickered. Phones overheated. Glass cracked in bathrooms and bedrooms and hospital wards.
The Collector recoiled, its form shuddering as the reflections binding it were ripped away.
Faces collapsed inward.
Memories unraveled.
Everything it had gathered—every whisper, every stolen reflection—was pulled toward Rhea like a storm collapsing into a single point.
She didn't scream.
She closed her eyes.
The livestream dissolved into static, then cut to black.
No outro.
No explanation.
Just silence.
The world woke up quieter.
Mirrors returned to glass.
Screens reflected only what stood before them.
No faces lingered. No movements followed.
The whispers were gone.
Hospitals reported sudden calm. Panic attacks stopped mid-breath. People woke with headaches and the strange sense that they had dreamed something important—and forgotten it moments later.
News outlets spoke briefly about the incident.
A hoax.
A viral stunt.
A mass panic fueled by suggestion.
Within days, no one could find the video.
Rhea's name stopped appearing.
Search results failed.
Images corrupted.
Saved files refused to open.
It was as if reality itself had agreed to erase her.
Only Aarav remembered.
Even that memory weakened with time.
He remembered her voice more clearly than her face. Her resolve more than her smile. Sometimes he caught himself turning to speak to her—only to stop, confused, unsure why his chest suddenly hurt.
When he tried too hard to remember, the details slipped away. Eye color. The exact sound of her laugh. The way she used to sit with her knees pulled close when she was thinking.
Weeks later, he returned to the studio.
It was empty.
No broken glass.
No candle wax.
No shadows out of place.
The space felt untouched—like nothing terrible had ever happened there.
He stood before the window, staring at his reflection. It stayed still. Obedient. Normal.
As he turned to leave, a quiet ache filled his chest—soft, nameless, unbearable.
"I feel like I forgot someone," he whispered.
There was no answer.
Far beyond memory and reflection, something that had once been Rhea let go.
The silence she gave the world remained unbroken.
The end.
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