When the light died, the silence came rushing in to fill it.Not the kind of silence that simply is, but the kind that watches.
The house had stopped breathing.
For a few heartbeats, none of them dared to move. The dark was total—a living, sentient thing, pressing against their eyes. They couldn't even see each other, only hear the small, animal sounds of panic: quick breathing, a shift of fabric, the scrape of a shoe on warped wood.
Noah whispered, "Is everyone here?"
Evan's voice came from somewhere near the stairs. "I'm here."
Marcy's voice followed, faint. "Ben?"
A pause. Then—nothing.
She tried again, louder this time. "Ben!"
A long creak answered, deep in the dark. Boards flexing under a new weight.
Noah's hand found hers in the blackness. His palm was cold and slick with sweat. "Don't let go."
The air changed again—not wind, exactly, but movement. Something stirring through the dark like a tide. The faint scent of iron and oil returned, thicker now. It carried a whisper with it, too faint to make out, like words spoken underwater.
Then—light.
Just a faint glow at first, thin as candlelight seeping through a doorframe. The source was ahead of them, down the corridor. Evan lifted the dead lantern instinctively, as though it might remember what it once was. The glass reflected that faint light back at him—just enough to shape the outline of his face.
Except the reflection blinked before he did.
He froze. "No," he whispered. "No, that's not—"
The reflection smiled. The same face, same hair, same half-shadowed eyes, but wrong—too precise, like a wax figure pretending to breathe.
Marcy took a hesitant step forward. "What is that?"
The light brightened slightly, revealing what stood beyond: a tall mirror, its frame carved from dark wood, glossy and baroque, the kind that looked as if it had grown rather than been built. The glass was ancient—imperfect, rippling faintly, like a pond just touched by rain.
But the reflection inside was clearer than reality.
Evan moved closer despite himself. The mirror showed all four of them standing together, but in the reflection, Ben was with them, smiling faintly, his hand resting on Clara's shoulder.
Clara.
Marcy gasped. "Oh my God. That's her."
Noah shook his head. "It can't be. That's—" He didn't finish. The version of Clara in the mirror turned her head, looking directly at him. Her eyes were dark and still.
Come back.
The whisper wasn't in the air this time—it was inside the glass.
Evan stumbled backward, bumping into the wall. The plaster pulsed under his hand, faintly warm, faintly alive. "We're leaving," he said. "Now."
But there was nowhere to go. The hallway behind them had changed again. What had been a single corridor now split in three directions, each passage lined with mirrors, each mirror flickering with a faint, unsteady light. The walls bent slightly inward, giving the impression of being watched by one's own reflection.
Marcy pressed her palms to her temples. "It's copying us again."
Noah raised the lantern, though its flame remained dead. "No," he said slowly. "It's remembering us."
The glass nearest him rippled. His own reflection tilted its head in curiosity—then stepped forward, until its nose nearly touched the inside of the mirror. The light behind its eyes pulsed once, twice, in time with the faint heartbeat of the house.
Then the reflection whispered, "Remembering isn't the same as knowing."
Noah dropped the lantern. It hit the floor with a metallic crack but didn't break. The sound echoed unnaturally long, as if the hall itself were swallowing it, turning noise into memory.
Marcy reached out before she could stop herself, fingertips grazing the surface of one of the mirrors. It was cold, but not like glass—soft, almost yielding, like the surface of chilled skin. When she drew her hand back, a perfect print remained.
In the reflection, however, her mirrored self did not move. It stayed where it was, palm pressed flat, lips slightly parted.
Then it smiled—too wide, too wrong—and whispered something she couldn't hear.
Behind them, the floorboards gave a deep, wet groan.
Evan spun toward the sound. The house was moving again—slow, measured breaths echoing up through the floor, matching the tremor of their own lungs. The mirrors vibrated faintly with each inhale, like strings of an unseen instrument being plucked.
The reflections began to shift.
The four of them in the glass turned away from their counterparts and began walking deeper into the mirrors, toward something unseen. The light behind them flickered with each step, as though the reflected house had its own storm brewing.
Noah whispered, "It's not copying us—it's ahead of us."
The reflections stopped suddenly.
All four turned at once, looking out from the glass.
And smiled.
Then the hallway went cold.
Not the ordinary chill of fear, but a deep, old cold, the kind that felt like being watched by the earth itself. Breath turned visible. The air glittered faintly, as though filled with dust made of light.
Marcy backed up until her shoulders hit the wall. "They're not us. They're something else."
Evan's reflection leaned forward, placing a hand against the inside of the mirror. The real Evan's breath hitched—he could feel the faint vibration through the air, as though the barrier between them were thinning.
"Don't," Noah said sharply. "Evan, don't touch it."
But he couldn't move away. The reflection was whispering now, its words too soft to hear clearly. His own voice, turned inside out. He tilted his head, trying to make out the sound.
We already left the house, Evan.You're the one still inside.
The glass fogged slightly between them. The reflection's breath left marks on the inside, forming shapes—letters—until the message became clear.
LOOK BEHIND YOU.
Evan turned.
Nothing there.
When he looked back, his reflection was gone.
Only empty space.
And for the first time, the mirror showed no reflection at all—only the faint outline of something large and coiled, slumbering in the depth of the glass.
The air hummed low and steady, like the prelude to thunder.
Marcy took Noah's hand again. "We need to move."
They began backing down the corridor, step by step. The mirrors followed, though none of them moved. Their light traveled instead, gliding along the walls as though something unseen were carrying it.
Behind them, a new sound began. A heartbeat—but not the house's. Slower. Human.
Ben's voice came faintly from nowhere and everywhere at once.
You can't leave what remembers you.
The mirrors flickered once, twice, and then every reflection in the hall turned to face them.
Their own faces looked back—older, wrong, eyes too bright.
And as the mirrors began to hum, the house drew a long, patient breath.
The corridor darkened.
The last thing they saw before the light vanished entirely was their mirrored selves raising a hand in unison—
—not to wave,but to knock.
Once.Twice.Three times.A fourth.
And the house exhaled.