CHAPTER FIVE
For a long moment, May doesn't move.
She stands there, hand still hovering near her heart, eyes fixed on the mirror that refuses to be just a mirror anymore.
The room is silent, but the silence isn't empty.
It feels… occupied.
Her breath fogs in the cold air.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The echo inside her chest deepens, syncing with something she can't see — something just beneath reality's surface, like a creature pacing under thin ice.
She steps toward the mirror.
Slow. Careful.
The floorboards creak in protest, as if warning her.
Her reflection stares back, pale and shaken.
But behind it — if she tilts her head just slightly — the glass warps.
Not visibly.
Not fully.
Just enough to make her skin crawl.
"Nathel…?" she whispers.
The name tastes strange, like she's speaking a memory that isn't fully hers.
The room exhales.
A faint ripple shivers across the mirror's surface.
And then—
A handprint blooms in the center of the glass.
Not hers.
Larger.
Sharper.
As if the fingers belonged to something that had once been human… and then evolved into something else.
May stumbles back, hitting the desk. Charcoal rolls onto the floor, leaving a black smear across her ankle.
Her pulse spikes.
The handprint presses outward, stretching the glass like soft breath against frost.
She chokes on a gasp. "No—no, this can't—"
The mirror gives a low, resonant groan, the kind glass makes right before it shatters.
May backs away until her spine hits the wall.
"Nathel… if you can hear me—stop."
The echo in her chest answers.
Thump. Thump.
Slow. Heavy.
A response.
Her vision blurs for a second — a pull, a tug, like invisible fingers hooking into her ribs.
She squeezes her eyes shut.
Not again.
Not like last time.
When she opens them—
The handprint in the mirror is gone.
The glass is calm.
Smooth.
Innocent.
But the room isn't.
The air is still cold.
Still watching.
Still waiting.
And in the faintest sliver of the mirror's corner, almost too quick to trust—
She sees him.
A tall shape.
A shadow with shoulders.
A presence.
Not breaking through.
Not yet.
Just leaning in from the other side, silently marking the moment he finally found her again.