Every reflection holds a memory.
Some are ours.
Some are what others want us to believe.
And some — terrifyingly — are both.
---
The train to Strathmoor hissed into motion as the city's skyline fell away behind him, swallowed by mist and distance. Jalen Thorn sat alone near the back, a notebook in his lap, untouched. Outside, trees blurred past like brushstrokes on a ruined canvas.
His reflection in the window stared back.
Not Edric Vale.
Not quite.
Jalen's eyes were a shade darker. His jaw a little softer. The scar above his brow — the one he'd gotten from that bar fight at twenty-three — gone. And yet, something in the way the reflection sat, head low, breath shallow, hands clutching a book too tightly—
That was him.
That had always been him.
He pressed his forehead to the cool glass.
He wasn't here to hurt her.
Just to see. To look her in the eyes.
To understand.
Why?
Why did she destroy him?
---
Strathmoor was a quiet city with a bleeding heart. You could see it in the red ivy curling across brick facades, in the way the streets curved like question marks, and in the eyes of those who wandered the rain-slicked roads.
Jalen pulled his coat tighter as he stepped off the platform. The sky threatened more rain, and the wind bit through layers like it had a grudge.
The library was only four blocks away.
He didn't need a map.
He remembered this city too well.
Strathmoor had once been theirs.
---
The Library of Mirrors wasn't its real name. But that's what Edric had called it — once — in a poem only Liora ever read.
It was real name was Strathmoor Grand Library, but its architecture was all glass and echo. Vast panes reflected each other, creating an illusion of endless corridors. You could stand in the atrium and see yourself twenty times over, all at once, fading into the vanishing point.
Like memory.
Like fame.
Like him.
---
He stepped inside, boots clacking against marble.
There she was.
Liora Mireille.
Standing beneath a skylight that poured gold across her raven-black dress, her hands clasped gently in front of her. Her hair was longer now, curled at the ends. Her eyes were the same: sharp, intelligent, watchful.
She was smiling.
And people adored her for it.
The reading hadn't started yet. A crowd gathered around in small constellations — readers clutching her latest novel, journalists scribbling in notepads, interns from publishing houses pretending to look casual.
Jalen slid to the back, behind a row of bookshelves, half-hidden in the poetry section.
Coward, a voice whispered.
But even courage has rules.
And this was a funeral for something sacred.
---
When she began to speak, the room hushed.
Her voice hadn't changed. It still carried that soft, magnetic cadence that once made him fall in love through a locked door.
She read from her newest book — The Glass Bride.
The title stung.
A recycled metaphor.
One he had used in a forgotten draft three years ago.
> "And when they buried him, they didn't use dirt.
They used stories.
Stories sharpened like knives, until he couldn't bleed anymore."
The audience leaned in, hypnotized.
Jalen's pulse raced. His hand clenched tight around his notebook.
That line…
He had written it. Not word-for-word, but in soul. He remembered the midnight it spilled out of him. Remembered reading it aloud while she lay curled beside him in their apartment, eyes closed but listening.
He felt sick.
---
When the reading ended, applause cracked through the air.
Liora smiled and thanked them graciously. Cameras flashed. Her publisher — a man in a gray coat with wolfish eyes — stood beside her like a sentry.
Jalen turned to leave.
But her gaze snapped to his corner.
Their eyes met.
Just for a second.
And something passed between them.
Not recognition. Not fully.
But a… rupture.
Her smile faltered. She blinked — once, twice.
Then she looked away, resuming her mask as a reader approached for a signature.
Jalen ducked into the next aisle. His heart hammered.
Did she see him? No. She couldn't have.
He hadn't seen her in three years. There was no way.
And yet…
He lingered at the end of the row, caught in a trance of half-memories and silent fury. The light filtered through the glass above, casting fractured reflections all around him — and in one of them, just behind his shoulder, he saw—
Himself.
Or rather, the way he looked in an old interview clip: Edric, in a dark shirt, smiling faintly, leaning into a mic.
But he hadn't worn that shirt in years.
He turned sharply.
No one there.
The reflection was gone.
---
He left the library shaken.
The city breathed heavy with dusk. Streetlights flickered on. A bus rumbled past, and the wind howled like it remembered him.
Jalen sat at a bench under a rusting iron archway, trying to breathe.
He wasn't insane.
He hadn't imagined it.
That line. That reflection. That look in Liora's eyes.
She saw something.
Not just a stranger.
A shadow.
A possibility.
---
A soft voice broke through his spiral.
"Do you mind if I sit?"
He looked up.
A woman in a long navy coat stood before him. She had dark curls, wind-tangled, and a tote bag slung over her shoulder. There was a pen behind her ear. Her eyes were observant, curious, cautious.
Jalen nodded.
She sat.
They didn't speak for a moment.
Then, she glanced at him and said, "You looked like you'd just seen a ghost."
Jalen stiffened. "Maybe I did."
She smiled slightly. "Liora has that effect on people."
He blinked. "You were at the reading?"
She nodded. "I'm covering her tour for an independent journal. I don't work for the big houses. Too much… filtering."
He didn't know what to say. She extended a hand.
"Mira Elwood."
He hesitated.
Then shook it. "Jalen."
---
They talked.
About books. About the reading. About stories that meant more than they should.
She was sharp. Gentle, but unafraid to prod.
At one point, she asked, "What did you think of the last passage? The one about stories being knives."
Jalen's voice came quiet: "I've heard it before."
Mira tilted her head. "Really? It sounded new to me."
He didn't answer.
Instead, he stood. "I should go."
"Wait," she said. "You… you look familiar."
He froze.
"I don't mean that in a bad way. Just—" She frowned. "Have we met before?"
"No," he said. Too quickly.
But she didn't press. Only nodded.
As he turned to leave, she called out, "You have a writer's hands."
He stopped.
"What?"
"Your hands." She pointed. "Ink on your wrist. Thumb callus. You fidget with your pen like you're afraid of losing it. Writer hands."
He chuckled, hollow. "Maybe in another life."
She watched him walk away.
---
That night, back at his apartment, Jalen sat before his desk.
The copy of Crimson Winter lay open again — but not by his doing.
This time, the torn slip of newspaper had changed.
Now it read:
> Truth returns like a ghost through the pages.
It will haunt the ones who silenced it.
And it will write its name again.
Jalen stared at the words.
Not printed.
Handwritten.
In his own old scrawl.
But he hadn't touched the slip since the first night.
Something — or someone — was helping him.
The ashes weren't just metaphor anymore.
They were waking.
And soon, so would the world.
---
🌑 To Be Continued...