The house slept like a held breath.
Outside, fog pressed against the windows in slow, deliberate waves.
Cael lay on his back, listening to the pulse in his chest. It wasn't steady anymore — it drifted, stuttered, then matched the rhythm of something else.
A second heartbeat, quiet and confident, pulsed in the walls.
He turned his head toward the mirror.
At first, it showed the room as it was: dim, ordinary, only the faint lamp-light and the silhouette of his face.
Then his reflection blinked — a fraction too late.
Cael froze.
He lifted his hand. The reflection followed, almost perfect. Almost. The fingers were too smooth, the motion too sure.
He whispered, "Hello."
The reflection's lips moved, but it didn't sound like him when it spoke.
The voice came from behind his ears.
> "You shouldn't greet what's already listening."
Cael's pulse stumbled. He stepped back, but the mirror stayed clear. No distortion, no fog — only the faint shimmer of something patient on the other side.
> "Who are you?"
The reflection tilted its head. Its mouth moved slower this time.
> "Who were you?"
The words echoed like ripples striking glass.
The heartbeat behind the walls deepened. His chest mark began to itch, heat spreading beneath the bandage.
He wanted to call for Aunt Mara, but his voice didn't rise. The air felt thick, syrupy — heavy with meaning.
---
He glanced toward the window. The fog outside pulsed faintly, breathing.
It didn't move like weather anymore. It moved like thought.
Each beat of that hidden pulse made the reflection flicker — first him, then not him, then someone close enough to be a mistake.
For an instant, he saw himself older. Thinner. Eyes hollowed by something vast and secret. The same reflection from the tent's light.
> "You keep asking," the reflection said softly.
"If you keep asking, I'll have to answer."
The words weren't a threat — they were a rule.
---
His mark flared, burning through his shirt. The mirror's surface rippled outward, rings of pale light pushing into the air. The room seemed to stretch, like he was standing between two breaths of the same thought.
He reached for the mirror. The reflection smiled — too wide, too calm — and reached back.
Their fingers didn't meet glass.
They met air that was colder than memory.
Something brushed his fingertips — soft as mist, sharp as thought.
Every sound in the house fell silent at once.
Then, faintly, under the silence, a whisper rose.
> "Do you remember what you forgot?"
---
The question cut through him. It wasn't the reflection speaking anymore — it was something beneath it.
He staggered back, clutching his chest. The mark burned white-hot.
From the corner of his eye, he saw the room twist — walls bending slightly inward, like the world had inhaled.
Shadows pooled where they shouldn't exist.
The air tasted metallic, like the first drop of rain after lightning.
He knew — without knowing how — that this wasn't magic.
It was attention.
Something was paying attention to him now.
---
Miles away, Sera woke suddenly.
Her sketchbook had fallen open beside her, the page with Cael's portrait trembling. Charcoal lines bled, running like ink in water.
She watched, frozen, as the drawn version of Cael began to smile — slowly, deliberately.
Her lamp shattered.
---
Back in Cael's room, the mirror shivered.
His reflection stood completely still now, eyes fixed on his.
Then, with a small, almost polite sound, the glass cracked.
A single line split down the center, dividing his image in two.
> "You found me once," the reflection said quietly.
"Now I'll find you again."
The heartbeat behind the walls stopped.
The fog outside the window drew itself upright, taking the vague outline of a person.
The mirror hummed, its fractured edges pulsing faintly, like veins of light beneath skin.
Cael whispered, "What are you?"
The answer came not from the reflection, but from the air — a voice that used his own tone, worn down and familiar.
> "A question you'll regret asking."
The light in the mirror went out.
---
End of Chapter 5
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