The crack remained.
Even after Teo vanished—no scream, no trace, not even a flicker of heat where he'd stood—the fractured line across the mirror wall refused to fade. It shimmered faintly like a wound that hadn't finished bleeding.
No one spoke for a long time.
Not even Jace, whose nervous chatter had filled the room earlier.
Elara stood at the edge of the mirror's broken section, her own reflection fragmented into disjointed versions of herself. The crack didn't just distort her face — it split it. One eye larger than the other. One side smiling faintly, the other blank.
Behind her, Harper finally whispered, "He didn't even lie."
"We don't know that," Kemi said flatly, but her voice lacked conviction.
Dorian crossed his arms, still facing the mirror like it might attack again. "He said he painted murals in L.A. That could be true. But maybe the why was a lie."
"He said they tore them down," Elara recalled. "Maybe they didn't."
"Maybe he didn't paint them at all," Coyle murmured. "Or maybe he lied about his name. Or something smaller. Memory can't always be trusted."
"That's not fair," Harper said. "That's not fair at all. If this place punishes people for things they believe are true…"
She didn't finish.
They were all thinking the same thing.
How could they survive a place that punished belief?
Minutes passed.
Elara paced near the wall where Teo had vanished. She felt the tension crawling through her chest like static. The floor didn't shimmer again. The mirrors were quiet. But something about the silence made it worse.
"The rules," she muttered, mostly to herself. "Lie once, mirror cracks. Lie twice, you disappear. We saw the crack. Then we saw…"
She couldn't say "death." It didn't feel right.
"Erasure," Kemi offered. "More accurate. A deletion of presence. Instantaneous."
"I don't buy that," Dorian said. "Nobody just disappears. There's a mechanism. A floor trap. Gas. Something."
"Did you see a mechanism?" Jace snapped. "'Cause all I saw was a kid vanish like he blinked out of existence."
Coyle finally stood from where he'd been seated, calm as ever. "We don't gain anything panicking. The trial said one of us lied. It didn't say who. But the punishment suggests someone crossed the line."
"Unless that was the test," Elara said. "To see if we'd turn on each other."
No one replied.
They spent the next hour testing the walls again. Every square inch. Kemi ran her fingers across the cracked mirror with gloves made from strips of her own blazer, mumbling about surface tension, electromagnetic pulse reactions, density shifts. Dorian attempted to punch another wall, until Coyle warned him:
"If you break the second mirror, you might trigger another disappearance."
The message was clear: Do not test the rules.
It wasn't until Harper began crying in the corner that they paused their investigations.
She wasn't loud. Just quiet, shuddering sobs, trying to hide them in her sleeves.
Elara sat beside her without a word. Sometimes comfort was just proximity.
"I saw his art," Harper whispered. "I've been to L.A. I saw that mural. The one with the silver birds and the broken window. He wasn't lying."
"Then the room is broken," Elara said.
"No," Harper said, lifting her tear-streaked face. "We are."
She pointed at the mirror.
All their reflections watched, silent.
"But they aren't."
That night — if night could be measured in this eternal mirrored glow — the first shift occurred.
It wasn't loud.
No voice announced it.
No countdown began.
But the room changed.
Elara noticed it first, because she was staring into her own reflection when it blinked.
Not her.
Her reflection blinked.
But she didn't.
Her breath caught.
She didn't move. Just watched.
The reflection blinked again. Tilted its head.
She didn't.
"Elara?" Kemi asked.
"Don't move," she whispered. "Just—just look."
Everyone turned.
Seven reflections. Seven people. But in one mirror panel, Elara's reflection moved half a second after she did. Slight lag. A delay. Like… a playback.
Or something watching her.
Then it smiled.
And Elara wasn't smiling.
The group backed away as one.
Harper whimpered.
"What the hell is that?" Jace asked.
"Desync," Coyle murmured. "The mirror is no longer reflecting. It's mimicking."
"That's not better!" Dorian snapped.
Kemi stepped forward. "It's testing reaction times. Our awareness. Possibly psychological thresholds."
Elara kept her eyes on the smiling version of herself.
"I think it's showing us what we could become," she said. "Or what's already inside."
Then the mirror reset.
One blink.
Back to normal.
Her reflection moved perfectly again.
Like it had never changed.
But they all saw it.
And it was only Day One.
They tried to sleep.
No beds. No darkness. No change in temperature or light.
Elara curled in a corner, using her jacket as a pillow. Jace hummed to himself. Harper murmured quietly in her sleep. Dorian sat with his back to the wall, eyes half-closed but still watching.
Coyle did not sleep.
He watched them instead.
Elara pretended to sleep, but her mind spun.
Coyle had known the institute. Maybe worked there. Maybe ran something inside it. She hadn't connected it before, but now it burned in her skull — the articles, the redacted names, the memory trials.
Her sister's name had appeared in the footnotes of a leaked file.
Right next to the initials "L.C."
"Why us?" she whispered into the air.
The mirrors answered with silence.
But something had shifted.
The floor beneath Harper shimmered faintly.
Elara's eyes snapped open. She lunged forward. "No!"
Harper stirred. "Wha—?"
Elara grabbed her arm and yanked her out of the shimmer.
The glow vanished instantly.
Jace and Dorian leapt up.
"What was that?"
"The same ripple," Elara said, breathing hard. "Like with Teo."
Harper looked like she'd been pulled from a nightmare. "I—I was dreaming. Of him. Teo. He was in the mirror. He was trying to say something."
"What?"
Harper shook her head. "I couldn't hear. He mouthed something. Over and over. One word."
Kemi stepped closer. "What word?"
Harper looked at her — and for the first time, Harper looked afraid of her.
"You," she said. "He mouthed your name."
Kemi stiffened.
The room turned colder.
"That's not possible," she said.
"You built something," Harper said, trembling. "Something for them. For the place that did this. You made the walls."
Kemi opened her mouth, then paused.
Everyone was watching.
The mirrors were watching.
"Lie once…"
She could deny it.
But if she lied…
Her jaw tensed. "I worked on a memory simulation interface. Years ago. For a private contract. I didn't know what they were using it for."
"And now?" Elara asked.
"I recognize the structure. The layout. It's not architectural. It's… a digital framework. Simulated physical space layered over memory patterns."
"In English?" Jace snapped.
"It's a house built out of our minds."
The mirrors pulsed.
Just once.
Like a heartbeat.
Or an acknowledgment.
Then a new message scrolled slowly across the cracked wall:
"The next lie will break more than mirrors."
Elara barely slept after that.
She curled near Harper, whose dreams had grown louder — murmured names, broken sentences, soft whimpers.
The others drifted into uneasy silence.
Coyle, still watching.
Jace, pacing.
Dorian, fists clenched.
Kemi, eyes flicking toward the corners of the mirrors, as if counting invisible patterns.
Elara traced her fingers across the mirrored floor and whispered her sister's name.
"Sera."
No reply.
Just the endless gaze of her fractured self.
But for a moment — just one second — she thought she saw a second reflection behind her own.
A little girl.
Wet hair. Blank eyes.
Standing just behind her.