Zero Kael awoke not to the comfort of familiarity but to a subtle wrongness, like a sentence missing its last word. The ceiling fan above spun too fast, chopping the air with a rhythm that felt offbeat, uneven. It wasn't the kind of wrong you could name—not loud, not sharp. Just... wrong. As if someone had rearranged the furniture of his reality and hoped he wouldn't notice.
His head pulsed with a pressure that sat behind the eyes, a hum like low-frequency static droning beneath every thought. He blinked slowly, focusing on the calendar across the room. It took a moment for the date to register.
June 23rd.
No. That couldn't be right.
His last memory was of June 20th—late evening, walking home from a philosophy midterm through a misting rain. He'd stopped at the vending machine on campus. Watched raindrops trail down the Plexiglas. He remembered seeing his reflection in the machine—dim, warped, but staring back. Then there was a flicker.
And now—this. Three full days missing.
He sat up slowly. The light filtering through the blinds had an artificial tone, too blue for morning. He turned to his desk. His philosophy textbook was open to the same page it had been on before the midterm. The lamp was on, buzzing faintly. Had it been on for three days?
His laptop screen was still active. No sleep mode. A document was open—an essay? The title bar read: "Final_Revision_Seven.docx"
He didn't remember opening that.
The air felt dry, stale. He moved to stand, and a rustle of paper caught his attention—a sheet tucked under his pillow.
It was blank.
Except for the faint impression of handwriting, barely visible under light. He tilted it.
"You weren't supposed to wake up yet."
The ink had faded as if it had been erased—or perhaps had never been real.
He blinked again, and the impression was gone.
In the kitchenette, his roommate Alden was crunching on cereal, hunched over his tablet.
"You finally up," Alden said, not looking up. "You were out cold, man. For like, what—two days?"
Zero stood in the doorway, heart in his throat. "Two days?"
"Yeah," Alden said with a shrug. "I figured you were sick. You cooked that weird curry, remember? Day before yesterday. Made the whole floor smell like cloves and battery acid."
Zero stared. "I... made curry?"
Alden looked up. "Yeah, dude. We talked. You were quiet, but normal. Studying. Said something about reflection theory and shared consciousness. Even helped me fix that printer bug."
"I don't remember any of that. Not the cooking. Not the talking. Not anything after Monday."
Alden raised an eyebrow. "You even submitted your paper early. Professor Ganesha seemed impressed."
Zero's blood ran cold.
"What paper?"
"Midterm essay. You emailed it Tuesday night. Said you had a flash of clarity."
Zero didn't respond. He turned and walked back into his room, closing the door slowly behind him.
The hallway leading to the lecture wing felt longer than usual, as if the walls had been stretched slightly in the night. The lights above buzzed intermittently—never in sync. He passed a girl he didn't recognize who nodded at him with a strange familiarity.
She whispered as she passed, but he only caught part of it: "You're not supposed to see it yet."
When he turned, she was already gone.
He quickened his pace.
The lecture hall felt colder than usual, the edges of the room strangely unfocused. Professor Ganesha stood at the front, distributing printed assignments with clinical efficiency.
When she reached Zero, she paused.
"Mr. Kael," she said, setting the stapled sheets down gently. "You've always had a talent for abstraction, but this... was unsettling."
He looked at the title:
The Death of the Self in Mirrorless Cultures
Grade: 17/20.
He didn't remember writing it.
Yet as he skimmed the pages, he saw his own words, his familiar turns of phrase. Even his typical typos—"affect" instead of "effect," em dashes instead of commas.
He flipped to the final paragraph:
"When a society eliminates reflection, it eliminates narrative continuity. Memory becomes communal. Identity fragments. The self dies."
He had underlined that line. In red ink.
But he didn't own a red pen.
He checked the margins.
There was a note written in handwriting slightly too neat to be his:
"Don't trust what remembers you."
He looked up sharply, but no one else seemed to notice anything strange.
That night, the dream came.
A corridor stretched into infinite white, floor glossy like water, walls without seams. A single mirror stood at the center. Tall, oval, cracked down the middle.
In the reflection stood Zero.
Except... it wasn't. The figure grinned as he frowned. Its eyes glinted silver. It wore the same clothes, but slightly wrong—collar reversed, watch on the wrong wrist.
It raised its hand. Zero mirrored it.
But then it stopped. Tilted its head.
And mouthed a word.
"Seven."
The corridor splintered, mirror shattering outward with a soundless boom.
He awoke gasping, clutching his sheets.
07:14 AM.
Exactly like the previous morning. Exactly the same.
He stumbled to the bathroom. The fluorescent light flickered overhead. The mirror above the sink was spotless.
But it didn't show him.
It reflected the stall doors. The broken soap dispenser. The mop in the corner.
But not his face.
He waved a hand. Nothing.
He stepped back.
The mirror blinked—then caught up, suddenly showing him standing still. But in the reflection, his mouth was moving.
He wasn't speaking.
The reflection whispered:
"You're not the first."
The reflection's eyes rolled back.
Zero stumbled out of the bathroom.
[System Log - Fragment Observation | ID: 07]
Loop cycle integrity compromised. Memory bleed confirmed.
Subject is manifesting premature awareness.
Reset required. External engagement prohibited.
[Observer: Do Not Intervene]
Back in his room, Zero opened his drawer. Inside, beneath his notebooks, was a photo he didn't recognize: himself, standing with five other people. Blurred faces. Only one detail was sharp:
A digital clock in the background: 07:14
He had never seen those people before.
One of them looked like him.
He flipped the photo over. A message was scribbled on the back:
"Kill the reflection before it kills you."
His phone buzzed.
Unknown Number:"Don't look into the mirror tonight."
He dropped the phone.
That night, he opened his laptop. The wallpaper had changed. A cracked mirror over a lake. His browser history was filled with unfamiliar searches:
"reality fragment recursion theory"
"mirror psychology cognitive anchors"
"is my reflection me?"
"how to remember a life you never lived"
At the bottom of the browser history:
Last visited: June 21, 02:17 AM
But the laptop's internal clock said it had been continuously active for 72 hours.
He stared at the screen until static crawled in from the corners.
A new window opened by itself.
Welcome back, Fragment Seven.
Do you wish to observe or engage?
Two options.
[Observe][Engage]
The cursor hovered.
He hadn't moved the mouse.