The cloth was softer than it looked. Dust clung to it in a thin film, and as his fingers pinched its edge, it felt almost damp—like it had soaked up something that wasn't moisture. He didn't know why he expected resistance. In his mind, the act of pulling it down should have felt monumental, like tearing open a wound. But it wasn't. The fabric came down with a whisper, falling to the floor like it had been waiting to be released.
The mirror behind it was ordinary. Oval. Framed in tarnished brass, speckled by age. For a long moment, it reflected nothing but the room: the crooked desk, the bed, the crumpled envelope still lying like an accusation. The boy stood in front of it, waiting for something to happen, but the glass gave him nothing. No face. No silhouette. Not even the ghost of motion.
He leaned in. Still nothing. No breath fogging the surface. No mimicry. The mirror remained dead.
Then, slowly, like a ripple blooming outward from the center, it began to shift.
At first, it looked like the glass was warping. A subtle distortion, the sort that comes when heat dances above asphalt. But the longer he stared, the more the ripples settled into shape—not an image, but a space. A corridor. Stone walls. Shelves that went on forever. The Archive.
But this wasn't a memory. He wasn't remembering the Archive. The mirror was showing it to him. Right now.
He took a step forward. The image stayed fixed. Another step. The room didn't change, but the mirror drew him in anyway, like gravity that had forgotten it wasn't supposed to bend indoors.
Somewhere in the reflection, a figure moved between shelves. Tall. Familiar.
The Archivist.
And though the boy was certain he wasn't there, couldn't be there, the Archivist turned his head—slowly, as if sensing a dream watching from the outside—and looked straight into the mirror. Into him.
The boy recoiled. His heart stuttered. The mirror went dark.
Not cracked. Not broken. Just… off.
It no longer showed the room. No longer showed anything. Just a depthless black, as if someone had painted over it from the inside.
He staggered backward, his breath thin, hands trembling. That wasn't a vision. It wasn't memory or metaphor. It had been real. Somehow. Somewhen.
He glanced at the cloth on the floor, but didn't move to pick it up. He didn't want the mirror covered again. He wanted to see it return to stillness. Or worse—change again. Anything but this void.
A thought came to him then, uninvited: What if mirrors don't reflect who we are? What if they show us what we're missing?
The moment the idea surfaced, it started to fade. Already, the edges of the vision were softening in his mind. He couldn't recall what exactly he'd seen in the Archive—what shelf the figure stood next to, what books were open, what page was held. Only that it had felt real. And close. Too close.
He sat down on the edge of the bed, eyes still fixed on the mirror. The blackness remained. Unmoving. Unbroken.
He whispered, not to himself this time, but to whatever was listening through the glass, "What are you trying to make me remember?"
There was no answer.
But for the first time, he thought he saw something shift behind his own eyes.