The mirror won't stop humming.
It isn't music, exactly. More like the sound of something old remembering how to breathe. The noise haunts the edges of Irlenne's hearing, like a whisper brushing the back of her neck.
She's stopped trying to sleep.
Sleep means dreams. And the dreams mean Mara.
Not the Mara who smiles with too-white teeth and lavender perfume.
But the Mara who never blinks in the mirror. The one whose eyes are always open — even when Irlenne closes hers.
---
Lucien knocks once.
She doesn't tell him to come in. He does anyway.
There's something raw in him tonight. Less armor, less careful quiet. Like he's coming undone but still trying to look sewn shut.
> "You haven't come down in three days," he says.
She shrugs.
> "The house is louder than the dinner table."
Lucien exhales. It might be a laugh. Might be grief.
He walks closer, but not all the way.
> "Alira found something."
"Let me guess," Irlenne mutters. "A prophecy? A blueprint of our misery?"
"A room. Full of versions of you."
That pulls her eyes up.
> "Versions?"
"The mirror records possibilities. Not just what's real. What might've been. What could still be."
"So... not lies."
"No," he says quietly. "Just different truths."
---
She looks past him — at the long, floor-length mirror nailed to the wall.
Her reflection stares back.
But it isn't right.
The eyes are too wide.
The mouth too calm.
And there's a fracture splitting down the center — so thin most people wouldn't notice.
But she does.
> "Do you ever think we weren't meant to love each other?" she asks.
Lucien blinks.
> "No."
> "Not even once?"
He steps closer. The light flickers.
> "Irlenne, I never meant to—"
"You always meant to love me," she interrupts. "You just didn't mean to doubt me."
Silence.
It's not cruel. Just heavy.
Like the moment before the chandelier crashes.
---
> "Mara got in your head," she says. "She curled herself around every crack I didn't know I had."
"I know that now."
"And yet you believed her."
He sits beside her, but doesn't reach out.
> "She didn't lie with words," he says. "She lied with versions. She made me see you differently."
Irlenne closes her eyes.
> "Then maybe you never saw me at all."
---
The mirror hums again.
This time, louder.
Lucien hears it too. He turns his head, frowns.
> "Does it always sound like that?"
"No," she whispers. "Only when it's watching."
---
A crack forms across the glass.
Thin. Delicate. A silver vein of dread.
Irlenne stands, eyes locked on the mirror.
> "It's not just showing us versions anymore."
Lucien is on his feet too.
> "What does that mean?"
Irlenne doesn't answer.
Because the mirror does.
---
From the fractured glass, a voice emerges.
Not a whisper. Not Mara.
A child's voice. Young. Familiar.
> "Irlenne."
She freezes.
> "What did it say?" Lucien asks.
> "Irlenne, come find me."
---
The reflection warps.
Suddenly, she's looking not at herself — but at a version of her, younger. Eight years old. Kneeling beside a bed that no longer exists. Holding a porcelain bird with broken wings.
Lucien's face pales.
> "Is that—"
> "My sister's room," Irlenne breathes. "Before she died."
---
The mirror isn't humming anymore.
It's calling.
The glass glows with a silver-gold heat, like moonlight soaked in grief. And then — impossibly — the surface softens.
It becomes water.
---
Lucien grabs her wrist.
> "Irlenne. You don't know what's in there."
"I know what isn't out here," she replies.
> "What if it doesn't let you back?"
She turns to him.
> "Then tell Alira not to follow."
---
And with that—
She steps into the mirror.
---
✴︎
The inside is not a world.
It's a corridor.
A never-ending hall of doors — each carved with names she recognizes.
Some hers.
Some Mara's.
One says Lucien, but it's been scratched out.
Another says IRENNE in blood-red ink.
---
A girl stands at the far end. Small. Pale.
She looks like Irlenne used to — soft around the edges. Before the mirror, before the mansion, before love had teeth.
The girl tilts her head.
> "You left me here," she says.
Irlenne steps closer.
> "I didn't know you were real."
"I was never real," the girl whispers. "But I remember you."
---
Behind her, the door labeled IRENNE creaks open.
Inside: a vision.
Lucien kissing Mara.
Irlenne watching, unnoticed.
Another crack slices through the mirror-world.
> "How do I fix this?" Irlenne asks.
The girl smiles. Sad and sharp.
> "You don't."
She lifts a hand and points at Irlenne's chest.
> "You feel it. All of it. Until it becomes something you can survive."
---
Irlenne trembles.
Not because she's afraid.
Because she's ready.
---
The mirror behind her shatters.
Light pours through the cracks.
Lucien's voice — faint, far away — calls her name.
> "Irlenne—come back!"
She runs toward it.
Not because she needs rescuing.
But because there's still something left to save.