The next morning, the world felt wrong.
The sky was dull and heavy, like the clouds themselves were holding their breath. Joy hadn't slept. She barely moved. The words in the diary haunted her: "She wore your skin once. Now she wants it back."
What did that mean?
She looked over at the spot where Tony had stood last night. There were faint footprint...bare footprints leading to her window. But the window was locked from the inside.
Joy grabbed her phone and checked the footage from last night.
But there was nothing.
The whole video was static.
Only one second of audio played: a soft voice whispering, "The hour is broken."
***
At breakfast, Tony acted normal. He laughed, joked, even asked for seconds. His eyes looked like his again...almost. But something inside Joy knew he wasn't the same.
"Did you sleep okay?" their mother asked, sipping coffee.
Tony nodded with a grin. "I dreamt about the hollow."
Joy's spoon paused midway to her mouth. "What hollow?"
Tony turned to her, voice eerily calm. "The one behind the mirrors. That's where Elsie lives."
Their father laughed it off, but Joy's blood went cold.
The hollow.
Joy excused herself from the table, her appetite gone.
In her room, she flipped through Elsie's diary again, rereading every entry, every desperate scribble. She noticed something new this time,a faint drawing on the back cover. It was a symbol: a circle, broken at the top, with a dagger in it.
It was labeled in shaky handwriting: "Seal of the Hollow."
A chill ran down Joy's spine. What if the diary wasn't just a warning… but a key?
She took out her mirror the only one in the house still intact and angled it to look behind her. For a second, everything was normal.
Then movement.
The reflection flickered. She leaned in.
Behind her, barely visible, was a figure crouched in the corner of the room. It was watching. It had no face.
Joy spun around nothing there.
Her breathing quickened. She turned the mirror back and saw it again. This time it crawled forward on all fours.
"No… no… this isn't real," she whispered.
The mirror cracked in her hands.
She dropped it, heart racing, and backed away.
Just then, the hallway light outside her room began flickering. Footsteps echoed slow, dragging but no one was there.
Joy stepped into the hallway. The air was cold, heavy. Her breath fogged up in front of her.
And at the end of the corridor stood was Tony.
Or what looked like Tony.
He was staring into the large hallway mirror.
Joy called his name, but he didn't respond.
She reached for him but his reflection turned to face her before he did.
Her stomach dropped.
"Tony…?" she asked carefully.
The boy turned slowly, eyes glowing faintly, lips curling into a grin that wasn't his.
"She said you'd come," he whispered. "She wants you to see. To remember."
Suddenly, every door in the hallway slammed shut at once. A powerful gust of wind blew through the corridor, extinguishing the lights.
Joy ran, dragging Tony with her.
They locked themselves in her room.
Tony collapsed , unconscious.
The diary on her desk opened by itself, flipping to a new page that hadn't been there before. A fresh line of ink appeared, as if written by invisible hands:
"The Hollow breaks through at thirteenth crack of a mirror, count carefully."
Joy turned slowly toward the last intact mirror in the corner.
One more crack… and it would open.