The day dawned with a thin mist over the city.
It was unusual. São Paulo usually devoured its mornings with haste, traffic, and metallic sounds. But that Thursday, something felt… suspended.
Lucas arrived at the precinct just before 7 a.m.
He had slept less than two hours.
Or maybe not even that—it was hard to tell when sleep mixed with projections.
Erick was waiting for him with a cup of coffee and a confused expression.
"We've got a strange case," he said directly.
"Are any of our cases not strange?" Lucas tried to smile, but the exhaustion weighed heavily.
Erick placed a folder on the desk. Inside were printed photos, preliminary reports, and a handwritten letter.
"A woman disappeared last night in front of a pharmacy. The security camera caught everything. But when you watch it…"—he hesitated, then continued—"she just stops reflecting in the windows."
"What do you mean?"
Erick handed him a tablet. The video began with the woman walking down the sidewalk. Her reflection was visible. Everything normal.
Then suddenly, as she passed a polished aluminum storefront, her reflection vanished.
She kept walking. Her real body continued. But the image wasn't in the glass.
In the next frames, she stopped.
Looked around.
As if she sensed something.
And then… vanished from the main image.
Lucas frowned.
"She disappeared from the camera?"
"No. She disappeared from the street. No shoes, no purse. Not even a shadow."
The detective picked up the letter. Notebook paper. Nervous handwriting.
"They're taking me away from myself. First they took the bathroom mirror. Then the elevator one. Now I can't see my mouth when I brush my teeth. I don't know if I still have a face."
Lucas felt a chill.
It was signed by Inês Watanabe.
The same last name he had heard in his dreams, weeks ago.
And the same name as the station where it all began.
—
Later that morning, Lucas visited the scene.
The pharmacy had already reopened. The manager was hesitant to speak, but the night shift attendant was still there—a young woman in a lilac uniform, wide-eyed.
"She stopped right there," she pointed, voice trembling. "She was looking at the glass. But the glass…"
"Yes?"
"Was… looking back at her. You understand?"
Lucas understood.
More than he cared to admit.
On the sidewalk, right in front of the window, something was scratched with the tip of a key:
A rudimentary spiral symbol.
Poorly drawn. But present.
Lucas touched it with his fingers.
And, for a moment, saw his own reflection in the glass move its eyes before he did.
He stepped back.
Looked at Erick, who stood near the store entrance.
"We need to find out where those who vanish from reflections go," Lucas murmured.
"How?"
"By going to the edge of our own."
There was a small psychiatric clinic in the northern part of the city.
Discrete, old, with white tile walls and a constant smell of disinfectant.
There, in room 12, lived a man once known as Brother Samuel, a Third Degree member of the Vigil of the Pale Flame. But today, he was simply "Samuel," institutionalized under the diagnosis of "systematized delusion with strong identity rupture."
Lucas knew the reports.
But not the man.
When he entered the visiting room, he found an older man in a worn brown suit, shoulder-length gray hair, and eyes that never fixed on one point.
Samuel stared at the window's reflection—but was clearly talking to it.
"So you came to fetch me?" he asked without preamble.
"I came to ask for help."
Samuel laughed.
"Help? From me?"
"You saw what no one else saw, Samuel. And paid the price."
The former Brother sighed.
He gently touched the edge of the table, as if measuring reality around him.
"The problem with reflections, detective, isn't what they show. It's what they refuse to show after they've learned."
"And what do they learn?"
"Our fears. Our hollows. They sense where the soul is loose."
Lucas remained silent.
Samuel continued:
"I saw the other side. Just for a second. And what I saw… saw me back."
He leaned forward.
His eyes, once scattered, now stared at Lucas with clarity absent from the medical records.
"They're taking people inside. But not as prisoners. They're replacing the empty spaces with copies that don't know they're copies."
"Inês Watanabe…"
"She was taken, yes. But maybe she's still fighting. If she left a symbol on the sidewalk, it means she still has traces of the original."
Lucas pulled out a small notebook and showed the imperfect spiral he had found.
Samuel examined it closely.
Closed his eyes.
Then murmured:
"That's a spiral of reversal. A desperate attempt at partial anchoring."
"Partial anchoring?"
"A last act to avoid complete disappearance. Like a rusty nail stuck in a mirror's frame."
"Can it be used to bring someone back?"
"It can be used to find where they haven't completely vanished. But it comes with risk."
Samuel stood up.
Came too close.
And whispered:
"You'd have to cross… not the mirror. But the sound the mirror still holds."
Lucas stared at him, unsettled.
Samuel stepped back, laughing again.
"Every mirror carries the echo of the last glance. If you go to it at the right moment, you can hear what was left behind."
—
Leaving the clinic, Lucas jotted down one phrase:
"The sound of the last glance."
Something inside him told him there was a way to provoke that sound.
But it would require returning to the place of disappearance… alone.
And that night, he would return.
Not to find Inês.
But to see if there was a sound waiting for him too.
11:18 p.m.
Lucas returned to the pharmacy.
The street was nearly deserted. The mist had returned, thicker than that morning. The streetlights flickered in imperfect sync, as if something disrupted the city's rhythm.
He stood before the window.
Where Inês had left the symbol.
Where she had vanished.
Where the glass no longer reflected her.
Lucas took a deep breath.
He pulled a small analog recorder from his pocket—his grandfather's, used in investigations.
Not for the tech, but for the white noise.
He remembered Samuel's words:
"Every mirror carries the echo of the last glance."
He turned on the recorder and placed it against the glass.
Kneeled.
With a small piece of red chalk, he redrew the imperfect spiral on the sidewalk.
He stayed quiet.
Closed his eyes.
For minutes, nothing happened.
Then…
A subtle pop from the recorder.
Then static.
And then, a voice.
But it wasn't Inês's voice.
It was his own.
"You saw me. But you didn't bring me back."
Lucas froze.
The sound continued, broken:
"You left the door ajar… You left the door ajar…"
"…and now we are inside you…"
He turned off the recorder. The air around him felt dense, rippling around his shoulders. The glass before him began to fog—without breath.
Then, he saw.
The reflection wasn't him anymore.
It was Inês.
Pale. Dirty. Still in her work uniform. Eyes wide.
She banged on the other side of the glass.
Silent.
But desperate.
Her mouth said: "Wake up."
Lucas touched the mirror with his palm.
And felt—
Not the cold of glass. But another hand.
A pull.
Strong.
A vertigo.
Everything around collapsed into liquid shadows.
—
He awoke standing.
But in another place.
Still on the street—or what seemed to be the street. But now… everything was inverted.
Buildings hung upside-down, held by invisible wires.
People walked faceless.
Cars slid with no engines.
And there was no sky. Only a mirrored ceiling, infinitely high, where reflections walked above like free shadows.
Lucas stumbled.
He felt a different weight in his body. As if his spine had been turned inside out.
He couldn't scream.
Only think.
This is the other side. Where reflections live when they're not watching us.
He heard footsteps.
Turned.
Inês stood there.
Still.
But different.
Her eyes were still hers.
But the rest… didn't move in sync with her body.
"Lucas?" she said, with a slight tremor.
He tried to step forward.
But then he saw.
There was another reflection of her, behind her.
And it… smiled.
The reflection behind Inês moved with meticulous calm.
Every step synchronized with hers… until it wasn't.
It started as a shadow, but soon became more solid.
More defined.
More alive than it should be.
Lucas felt his vision waver. The world around stretched like an image in curved glass. The edges of space twisted as the reflection gained presence.
Inês screamed:
"It's not safe here! They see us better than we see ourselves!"
She tried to run.
But her reflection… ran too.
Not like a mirror.
Like a predator.
Lucas rushed forward.
At that moment, he saw his own reflection appear on a glass panel suspended from the upside-down ceiling.
He was being watched too.
Inês's reflection reached out.
Its hand stretched like black mercury.
Trying to touch her skin, like someone testing warmth before wearing it.
"If it touches you, you become part of it!" Lucas shouted.
Inês stumbled. Fell.
Lucas pulled out the ritual charcoal he still carried in his pocket. Not a weapon. But a symbol. And on the other side, symbols meant action.
He drew a spiral with four diagonal lines on the inverted ground.
The symbol glowed briefly—like it pierced space.
The reflection hesitated.
Stepped back.
But as it did, it smiled with Lucas's face.
"You want to switch too. To be where you can see everything… without having to feel."
Lucas's stomach turned.
It was like that voice had come from inside him.
Suddenly, everything stopped.
Time bent.
Inês's reflection shattered.
At the impact's center, a silver stone with incomplete markings.
Lucas knelt and picked it up.
A Stone of Echo—unstable, belonging to no Path.
Inês was crying.
Not out of fear.
But recognition.
"I was almost taken. But I hid my name…"
"In the symbol?"
"No. In the sound. The sound I left in the mirror."
Lucas nodded.
Took her hand.
Looked up.
The mirrored ceiling trembled.
Time there was running out.
He closed his eyes.
Connected with the still-glowing symbol.
And whispered:
"Every reflection is a memory. But some still want to come back."
Space folded.
—
Lucas and Inês woke at the same time.
Lying on the sidewalk in front of the pharmacy.
Dawn's gray light was rising.
Erick was running toward them, with a patrol car.
"Lucas! What happened?"
He just looked at the window.
There, two reflections watched them.
But smiled and vanished before the light reached them.
—
Later, in Lucas's apartment, he examined the Echo Stone.
It didn't glow.
Nor move.
But had a whisper inside, which he heard every time he closed his eyes.
And something in him said that stone…
wasn't a gift.
It was a marker.
Two days later, Lucas felt the stone's weight in every silence.
It remained in a small wooden box on his desk, wrapped in black cloth and coarse salt—common procedures of the Vigil of the Pale Flame for unstable items.
Yet still, the object pulsed in his mind, as if trying to learn the language of his thoughts.
That morning, he didn't go to the precinct.
He went instead to the top floor of the regional Order's headquarters, to a forgotten room used only for cross-continental record checks.
There, he typed keywords into the restricted Vigil terminal:
"silver stone – unstable reflection – uncatalogued entities – failed anchoring"
One result.
Just one.
A digitized manuscript, no listed author, titled:
"Fragments of the Shared Eye"
Lucas opened the file.
The text was broken, full of gaps, as if pulled from a mind already collapsing. But among the fragments, some lines stopped his breath:
"The stones are not natural. They form the moment a reflection tries to escape itself."
"They are seeds. Spores of the glass."
"The Order of the Broken Glass needs no temple. Every reflective surface is an altar."
Lucas stepped away from the chair.
Order of the Broken Glass.
Never officially recorded. No symbol, no identified members.
Only traces.
Voids left in cracked mirrors.
Victims who vanished with no mystical trail.
And stones that whispered even after being severed from the world.
He went down to the Archivists' Room.
Showed the stone.
Showed the text.
The eldest among them, a man known as Brother Ítalo from the Central Vigil in Coimbra, stared at Lucas:
"You're dealing with a force that predates even the concept of Paths."
"What do you mean?"
"This stone… doesn't belong to any Path. Not yours. Not anyone's."
"Then why did it choose me?"
"Because you started seeing things before they knew how to be seen."
Lucas closed the box.
Brother Ítalo stopped him:
"Listen closely: if three echo-stones emerge close in time and space, it'll be the sign."
"Sign of what?"
"That the Order of the Broken Glass has left the reflection. And entered the world."
—
That night, as Lucas tried to sleep, his phone vibrated.
It was Erick.
"They found a missing woman in Manaus. Same description as Inês."
"She's alive?"
"Sort of. She… she has no reflection."
Lucas sat up.
"Anything else?"
"Yes. In her hand… she was holding a silver stone."
Lucas hung up.
Stood.
And whispered to himself:
"Just one more."
The city of Lages, in Santa Catarina, was rarely the stage for anything mystical.
The constant cold, the silence between pine trees, and the distance from major capitals seemed to protect it from occult interference.
Seemed to.
Lucas arrived in the late afternoon, after receiving an encrypted report from the Vigil of the Pale Flame:
"Six-year-old child missing. Reflected in water, but not in mirrors."
The family lived in a modest neighborhood duplex. The girl's room, called "the butterfly room" by her parents, still held traces of her presence: scattered toys, drawings taped to the walls, a coloring book… and in the center of the dresser mirror, a charcoal drawing.
It wasn't childish.
It wasn't colorful.
It was pure symbol.
A spiral — but inverted.
This time, the lines seemed to pull the gaze inward.
Lucas approached.
Ran his fingers over the mirror.
The surface was warm.
"This is recent," he murmured.
The mother, desperate, watched from the doorway.
"She said someone was calling her from the mirror. That it wanted to play. I thought it was just imagination…"
"Did she say a name?" Lucas asked.
The woman hesitated. Then whispered:
"She called him 'the Man of the Shattered Shine.'"
Lucas felt his spine freeze.
The phrase made no sense to a common mind.
But to a Fifth-Degree Observer, as he now was, those words carried mystical vibration. "Shattered Shine" was an ancient way to describe the sound of a mirror breaking from the inside.
He asked to be left alone in the room.
Waited for silence to take over.
Lit a candle.
Placed the silver stone — the second — in the center of the room.
And then he heard it.
A dry cracking sound.
As if the window glass had fractured.
But there was no crack.
He turned.
In the room's corner, someone stood.
Tall. Thin. Faceless. Dressed like an old shop clerk—but the uniform was entirely made of shattered mirror fragments.
Each movement creaked like glass rubbing against glass.
The being spoke.
But not with sound.
With moving images on surrounding surfaces.
In the vanity mirrors, the creature's reflection divided into light-written words:
"She wasn't taken. She offered herself.
Children understand the reflected silence.
And we do not force. We only mirror what they hide."
Lucas pulled the chalk and drew the expulsion symbol.
But the Messenger smiled with a child's mouth.
Extended its hand.
And revealed.
In its palm: the third stone.
Before Lucas could act, the being vanished—not breaking space, but dissolving like glass dust.
On the floor where it had stood, one last reflection remained for seconds.
The girl—the real one—was still on the other side.
But she smiled too much.
—
Lucas collected the third stone.
They glowed in unison.
As if they had been waiting for this moment.
He knew what came next.
Brother Ítalo had warned:
"Three echo-active stones in the same cycle awaken the Eye of the Glass. When that happens… reflections will no longer be passive."
And in that moment, Lucas saw, for a brief instant, his own reflection in the bedroom window.
But it wasn't still.
It was waving at him.
—
Lucas arrived at the headquarters of the Vigil of the Pale Flame shortly after 2 a.m.
There was no movement on the street, nor nearby.
But walking the corridor leading to the hidden entrance, something was different.
The floorboards… reflected light with no source.
He pressed his palm to the wall.
Warm.
Like feverish flesh.
Unlocked the door with the pressure sequence and ritual words.
As soon as he entered, he felt it.
The mirrors in the headquarters were lit.
Not just reflecting.
Emitting.
Every glass surface in the entry hall—mirrors, goblets, old book covers—trembled, as if a presence from the other side was trying to breathe through the reflection.
And then the sound.
A single sharp crack, like glass snapping under tension.
And all the reflections froze.
For one second, Lucas saw dozens of Vigil members…
But their reflections no longer mirrored them.
They moved on their own.
As if they had gained autonomy.
On the central wall, the old symbol of the Order—a flame wrapped in circles—cracked.
The crack spiraled downward.
Lucas ran to the Anchoring Room.
Inside, Brother Ítalo and two other monks were kneeling, forming the triangle of vigilance, trying to keep the spiritual structure stable.
"We're being invaded from inside!" one shouted, eyes wide in panic.
Lucas entered with the three silver stones.
Placed them at the center of the protective seal on the floor.
Instantly, all three glowed simultaneously.
The room's ceiling folded.
And Lucas's reflection fell from it.
But not as a shadow.
As a copy.
Wearing identical clothes, perfect features… but with no soul in the eyes.
Like an actor playing Lucas… without ever understanding who he was.
The copy lunged.
Lucas dodged, rolled, and pulled the chalk.
He drew on the floor the Seal of Line Separation—a ritual exclusive to the Fifth Degree of the Path of the Observer.
The symbol activated.
The echo-reflection hesitated.
Its features trembled.
As if trying to remember who it was.
Then it spoke:
"You opened the Eye of the Glass.
Now it will never close again."
With a voiceless scream, the reflection shattered into shards of light and memory.
The stones went dark.
Brother Ítalo collapsed, exhausted but alive.
The other members began to regain control.
—
Hours later, in a restricted meeting, Lucas reported:
"The Order of the Broken Glass doesn't want to destroy us."
"What does it want then?" one of the leaders asked.
Lucas hesitated.
Then replied:
"To take our places."
"With reflections?"
"With everything we left unresolved at the bottom of the mirror."
—
That night, Lucas returned to his apartment.
Sat in front of the bathroom mirror.
The surface was still cracked since the initial symbol.
He stared at himself for long minutes.
Then asked aloud:
"You're already here with me, aren't you?"
The reflection blinked.
In sync.
But…
Lucas did not blink.