The door is exactly where the mirror showed it would be.
Tucked behind a wall of ivy and grief, buried under the weight of the house's oldest silence. Alira doesn't need to force it open. She brushes the vines aside, and the wood sighs beneath her touch like it's been waiting for her.
Inside: a room untouched by dust.
Lit only by the pulse of something not quite alive.
---
There are journals. Dozens.
Leather-bound, glass-covered, stitched with wire and wax.
There are photographs — old, newer, impossible. Some of Lucien. Some of Irlenne. One of Mara, dated before Alira even arrived.
And one — deeply wrong — of Alira herself.
But she's not alone in it.
In the image, her hand is in someone else's.
A girl with eyes like mirrors.
Mara. But not.
And Alira realizes — with a nauseating twist of dread — that the mirror doesn't only show the future.
It records versions.
---
There's a desk in the center of the vault.
Carved from obsidian. Cold to the touch. She opens the drawer.
Inside: a letter sealed in red wax with an M.
She breaks it. It isn't addressed to her, but the words burn in her throat like they know her anyway.
---
> "To the Girl With the Shifting Name,
If you are reading this, then the house has begun to dream again. That means you've found it — the vault of versions, the memory trap I built when I still believed we could control truth.
We can't.
You must understand: the mirror is not cursed. It is not haunted. It is simply honest, and the honesty of feeling is the most dangerous magic there is.
Every time someone looked into the mirror with fear in their heart, I recorded what I saw. I wrote them down. Photographed them. Tried to study them.
I thought I was building a map.
But I was building a prison.
You are standing in it."*
> — D. V. Merrowe
---
Alira's knees tremble. She sits before she can fall.
The walls pulse faintly — lined with fragments of people who almost were. Versions of Lucien who chose Mara. Versions of Irlenne who walked away. A version of herself that never escaped the life before the manor.
One mirror.
Infinite truths.
Only one she can live in.
She shivers.
This is no longer about betrayal. No longer about love.
This is about what survives.
---
She turns another page and finds the word THEDA carved deep into the parchment.
Under it: diagrams. Notes. A timeline.
> "The girl who sees the seams. Must not be allowed to break them."
Alira gasps and drops the page like it burned.
What had Lucien's father done?
What had he tried to protect?
Or worse — trap?
There's a final journal at the end of the shelf.
It doesn't have a title, just a single name:
> IRENNE — underlined in ink so dark it looks like dried blood.
But the handwriting… isn't his.
Alira flips it open and her breath catches.
The words are Irlenne's.
---
> *"I don't remember when I stopped being real.
Some days I wake up and I'm someone else's version of me.
Mara's. Lucien's. The mirror's.
But never mine.
If you find this, please remember:
I was not always this fragile.
I once loved someone with a heart full of stars.
And that love cracked me open.
Not because it was false —
but because it was too real for the shape of this world."*
---
Alira clutches the book to her chest.
She knows now: the story isn't finished.
Irlenne is still breaking — somewhere, somehow.
And the mirror is not done showing her what she needs to see.
---
Behind her, something shifts.
The air chills.
She turns — and for a split second, she sees herself in the wall-length mirror on the far side of the vault.
Only it's not her.
It's a girl with glass-blown eyes.
Cracked fingers.
And a smile that is almost Mara's.
The mirror shudders.
Then goes dark.
POV: The Mirror
"The Girl Who Didn't Work Away"
---
She stays.
In this version, Irlenne doesn't run when she hears Mara whispering lies.
She doesn't cry. Doesn't beg Lucien to see her.
She stands in the hallway, barefoot and backlit by moonlight, and listens.
Then steps into the room and says:
> "Tell her to leave."
Lucien blinks. Mara smiles.
Neither of them expect it. Not this version of her.
---
The mirror drinks it in — this alternate heartbeat, this fork in the road.
Mara reaches for Lucien's wrist like she always does.
But this Lucien flinches.
Steps away.
Irlenne doesn't smile in victory. She simply says:
> "I know what you've been doing."
---
She holds out a shard — broken from this very mirror, in a version of the house that no longer exists.
> "I found this in your drawer," she tells Mara. "It whispered things to me."
Mara doesn't answer.
The mirror wants to — but in this vision, it can only watch.
Lucien's voice is hoarse.
> "Irlenne—how long—?"
She looks at him, soft and sharp all at once.
> "Long enough to know love shouldn't need proof to be real."
---
In the corner of the mirror's memory, Mara fractures.
Her illusion slips. Just for a moment. Her reflection in the glass shows a girl with hollow eyes, teeth too white, a heart made of cracked quartz and envy.
She looks at Irlenne not with hatred — but hunger.
> "You were always supposed to break," Mara whispers.
---
And Irlenne?
She tilts her head. Steps closer. Unafraid.
> "Then you should've made sure I didn't learn how to bleed pretty."
---
The mirror blinks. That version ends.
It flickers.
And shows a different one.
---
✦ Mirror Vision 2: "Lucien Never Loved Her"
Irlenne is alone in the garden of mirrors.
She presses her hand to the cold glass.
Lucien never chose her in this version.
He stayed with Mara. Believed every lie.
Never touched her skin like it held constellations. Never whispered her name like it was a spell.
And still — Irlenne glows.
A soft, feral light that comes not from being loved but from surviving it.
The mirror records her smile.
> "Even in the stories where you break me," she says, "I come back sharper."
---
It cannot look away.
---
✦ Mirror Vision 3: "Mara Becomes the Mirror"
In this version, Mara never got caught.
She kept twisting the truth until Lucien forgot what real even felt like.
Irlenne withers. Lucien drifts.
And Mara? She stares into the mirror too long.
She begins to merge with it.
A voice. A presence. An echo.
The mirror doesn't resist.
She becomes its favorite version.
A girl so good at lying, she could rewrite reality.
---
> "They don't deserve truth," she whispers into the glass. "Just the version that hurts the least."
But the mirror does not lie.
It only reflects.
And Mara — even as a ghost in the glass — cannot bear to see her true face.
Eventually, even she shatters.
---
✦ Final Vision: "The Mirror Watches Itself"
A version where no one enters.
No one breaks. No one bleeds.
The mirror sits untouched.
Still. Silent.
Empty.
It begins to dream of people. Of Mara's envy. Of Irlenne's fury. Of Lucien's half-love and velvet eyes.
And somewhere in the cracks of its silver heart, the mirror begins to feel.
Not as an object.
Not as magic.
But as a witness that loved them all.
And knew none of them could survive each other.