Mia began to understand her role in fragments.
The letters no longer terrified her. They arrived each week, some with names, some with stories, some with old photographs where faces had been scratched out—people someone had tried desperately to forget.
But Mia remembered.
She carried those stories in a small leather journal, the pages now thick with ink and pressed flowers from cemeteries she'd visited. Each entry was a life reclaimed, a memory restored.
Yet, the weight was constant.
Each name she remembered made her feel heavier, as if she was slowly absorbing the forgotten pain of the world.
Leah called less often. Her memory was slipping again, but this time Mia didn't fight it. The debt required forgetting. It was the only way to pass it on. It was the only way to protect them.
Daniel had fully buried the past. He rarely answered her messages now, his new life blossoming without the shadows of their childhood home.
Mia accepted that.
Someone had to hold the weight.
One letter came with no name, no address, only a single sentence:
"Look in the mirror."
Mia had grown used to the games, the riddles, the veiled instructions. She sat in front of her hallway mirror that night and waited.
For hours, nothing happened.
Until the reflection blinked when she didn't.
The figure in the mirror—her figure—stepped forward, pressing a palm against the glass.
Mia hesitated, then reached out, touching her own palm to the cold surface.
"You have carried well," the reflection whispered. "But the burden can be shared."
The glass shimmered, rippling like water.
"Are you ready to pass it on?"
Mia swallowed, thinking of Elliot, thinking of the woman she met, thinking of the generations who had carried this quiet weight.
"Not yet," she whispered. "Not until I've remembered them all."
The reflection smiled softly, the same tired, knowing smile she had seen in the woman's house.
"When you are ready, you will know."
Mia lowered her hand, the mirror settling back into ordinary glass.
She turned, picking up her journal, and wrote the next name, the next story.
She would continue.
Because some debts… were meant to be carried a little longer.
And she was strong enough to carry them.