Mira descended from the attic with the mirror shard wrapped in a torn scrap of her sleeve. Her heart beat against her ribs like it wanted out. Every creak of the stairs beneath her felt wrong, like something was waiting for her to step just slightly out of rhythm.
She didn't go to her room.
Instead, she returned to the hallway—the one with the cracked mirror, the one that had taken her once already.
It was darker here, now. The lightbulb overhead flickered, then died.
The hallway mirror was still cracked, but the fracture had grown. It now curved across the entire surface like a spiral, a broken eye watching her. And at its center, her reflection stood perfectly still—face blank, expression unreadable.
She held the shard in one hand.
The mirror responded—not visually, but internally. Mira felt it. Something inside it stirred, like waking breath behind thin skin.
The shard pulsed faintly in her palm.
One heartbeat.
Then the mirror groaned.
Not cracked glass—bone.
A jagged sliver of the central pane fell free and hit the floor with a musical ring.
Behind it, darkness—not reflective, but deep.
A thin voice whispered from inside:
"You opened the first gate. You've earned the second."
Mira clutched the shard tighter.
And the doorway yawned wider.