Ira's trembling hand turned the brass knob. The door to the Mirror House swung open without a sound, revealing not the familiar, damp smelling gloom of their home, but a hallway filled with soft, warm light. The air that drifted out smelled of lemon polish, beeswax, and clean, sun dried linen—the scent of a life they had never lived, but that Lio distantly remembered from his earliest childhood.
"Ira, no," Sera pleaded one last time, her voice a strained whisper.
But he was already stepping across the threshold, mesmerized. Defeated, and with a shared look of dread, Sera and Lio followed him in. Mina, ever the curious observer, trailed behind them, her footsteps silent on the polished floorboards.
The inside was an even more profound violation than the exterior. It was their home, but curated and perfected by an unknown, meticulous hand. The floorboards, which Lio knew to be softened and warped by years of encroaching damp, were here a rich, polished honey gold. The water stains that had mapped their decline on the walls were gone, replaced by smooth, freshly painted plaster. On the mantelpiece above the fireplace, a series of family photographs were neatly arranged—not the faded, curling ones they'd left behind, but crisp, bright images of them all, younger, happier, untouched by fear.
Ira walked through the rooms in a dreamlike trance, his calloused fingers tracing the edges of dust free furniture. He touched a perfectly preserved armchair, the one whose leg had rotted through years ago. "I remember..." he whispered, his voice thick with unshed tears. He was not seeing a house; he was seeing an absolution.
Lio felt a rising tide of panic. This perfection was a sacrilege. It was a denial of their struggle, an erasure of the truth of their lives. The real history of their family wasn't in the smiling photographs; it was in the cracks and watermarks this house had so neatly erased.
"Something's wrong," Lio said, his voice tight. "It feels wrong."
Sera was a statue of tension, her arms wrapped around herself, her eyes darting around the room as if expecting an attack at any moment. "We should not have come in," she said, her voice low and shaky.
It was then that Lio saw the painting.
Hanging in the place of honor above the mantelpiece, where a cheap, faded seascape had once been, was a large, formal portrait in a heavy, ornate frame. It was painted in a classical, oil on canvas style they could never have afforded and had certainly never sat for. The subjects, posed with a stiff, old world formality, were unmistakably them.
Lio drew closer, a cold dread seeping into his veins. He saw his father, his face unlined by obsession, looking proud and solid. He saw his mother, a serene, gentle smile on her lips that he hadn't seen in a decade. He saw himself, a boy of perhaps ten, with a curious, innocent expression. He studied their faces, their clothes, the uncanny realism of the artist's work. And then he counted.
One. Two. Three.
Three figures on the canvas.
His heart stopped. He counted again, his eyes scanning the painting with frantic desperation. Father. Mother. Son.
Mina was gone.
She was not just painted poorly or obscured in shadow. She was absent. There was a space on the canvas beside the painted version of Sera, an artfully composed bit of empty background where a small girl with quiet eyes should have been. The family inside the painting was a trio.
"Where is she?" Ira whispered, his blissful trance shattered. He stumbled forward and stared at the portrait, his face a mask of utter confusion. "It's not right. It's not finished."
Sera let out a soft, choked cry and turned away, pressing her face into her hands as if she couldn't bear the sight. Her shoulders shook with silent, painful sobs.
Lio felt frozen, his gaze locked on the empty space in the portrait. It was not an omission; it was a statement. A deliberate, terrifying declaration from whatever intelligence had built this place.
Mina, who had been quietly observing, walked up to the painting. She stood on her toes, reaching up her small hand with the red mitten to trace the empty space on the canvas where she should have been. She showed no fear, no sadness, no confusion. She looked at the void in their family portrait with a calm, unnerving acceptance.
"That's my spot," she said, her voice as clear and untroubled as a bell. "It's just waiting for me."