It began with a fragrance.
Sickly-sweet. Like roses boiled in gold. Like perfume left too long in a locked drawer. The kind of scent that clings to bone and breathes centuries. It drifted through the haveli's broken ribs just as Ryan stepped into the chamber—one arrogant footfall at a time, cocky with caffeine and excavation theory.
The walls sweated with age. Dust clung to the carved lintels like it was mourning something.
Rasmika was already inside, crouched with her back to the mirror, cross-referencing floor markings on her slate. She was muttering to herself about fault lines and soil compression when the scent hit her first.
She froze mid-word.
A shiver peeled down her arms like she'd walked into a different century.
Then the plants moved.
Not a breeze. Not some trick of ventilation.
The vines—those brittle, sun-drenched things wedged between the stone—curled inward. Slowly. Carefully. Terrified.
One vine snapped back from the base of the mirror like it'd been burned.
Rasmika's eyes rose.
The mirror… glowed.
At first, it was just a suggestion—an old moonlight glimmer across dead glass. But then it pulsed. Brightened. Shivered with life. A low, luminous flickering, like it was breathing.
And in its heart, Ryan's reflection began to change.
Not all at once.
It happened like erosion—fast and impossible, but slow enough to register dread.
His shirt dissolved into armor—blackened steel etched with symbols he couldn't read but somehow recognized. Sanskrit, or older. His smirk was gone, replaced with helmeted stillness. A breastplate bloomed over his chest, pitted with ash and time.
His eyes—still his, unmistakably—burned with something ancient. A haunted knowing. Like they'd seen a war not yet named.
Ryan blinked. "What the hell—"
The mirror hummed.
Not sound. Vibration.
Not in the air. In the bones.
Like time grinding backward.
The walls shrank. The world narrowed. The air went thin.
Rasmika stumbled into the stone archway, her fingers digging into cold sandstone. Her breath stuttered. She couldn't speak—wouldn't have known what to say if she could. Ryan staggered backward, his foot cracking through a loose tile, eyes wide and white.
The mirror pulsed once more. Then stopped.
Stillness.
The glow faded.
The vines unfurled.
The light fell flat.
And in the mirror, they saw only themselves.
Pale. Shaken. Unmoored.
Two students. Two skeptics. Two bodies breathing too loud in a room that remembered them before they'd arrived.
They didn't speak. Not right away.
Ryan opened his mouth—closed it again. Finally:
"Did you…?"
He didn't finish the question.
She didn't nod.
But she knew. She'd seen it too.
No one else saw it.
No one else ever would.
But for a second, time had cracked.
And something old had reached through to look them in the face.
RYAN
The mirror has always been honest. Cruel, maybe. But never a liar.
That's why I trusted it. Why I leaned in.
Why I didn't flinch when it flickered.
We're not in the chamber anymore.
We're in the hallway near the art room—months ago or years from now, I don't know. She leans in to fix her hair, I lean in to grab my sketchbook. We're laughing about charcoal dust and how stupid boys look in smocks.
Then the light splits.
Not sunlight. Not lamplight. Something else. Something colder.
The mirror hums again.
Not in the ears. In the chest.
A frequency like memory. Like regret.
And then—
Not me.
Not this hoodie-wearing boy with graphite-stained fingers and smudges on his jeans.
Not this version of Ryan.
I see armor.
Silver, yes. Baroque, yes. But scarred. Each dent a history. Each etching a curse. A lion curling into fire across the shoulderplate. A sword I know how to hold though I've never touched one.
The eyes staring back are mine. But older. Bloodied. Grief-held. A soldier's eyes.
My hand is his hand. Heavier. Gauntleted.
He lifts it. So do I.
I don't breathe.
Neither does he.
Then—
Rasmika gasps beside me. Like she's remembered something she never lived.
And it's gone.
Gone like mist. Like heat after lightning.
The glass only shows us now. Us, and no one else.
But I know something was there.
And worse—I know it still is.
RASMIKA
It flickers like a thought you're not supposed to think.
It doesn't knock. It doesn't announce itself. It just… arrives. Woven between seconds. Tucked into reflections. Folded in the bones of old buildings.
I wasn't looking for it. I wasn't even listening. Just adjusting my hair clip, minding my business, double-checking survey lines on my slate.
Then the mirror shifted.
Not broke. Not glitched. Shifted. Like it was waking up. Or exhaling. Or remembering.
And Ryan—
Ryan wasn't Ryan.
He stood like a painting from a forgotten war. Shoulders squared. Hands tense. Armor rust-kissed and prayer-bound. That crest—the lion and fire—I've dreamed that before. I think I used to draw it in the margins of my textbooks.
His face was still his. But sharpened. Distilled.
Angled by grief. Crowned by silence.
A warrior's face. A leader's face.
Like he'd lost something sacred.
And would burn the world to find it.
And still, somehow… he looked like mine.
Not in the way girls mean when they're in love. In the way ghosts mean when they've followed you through lifetimes.
I felt sick. Or homesick. For a place I couldn't name.
Then it vanished.
Just the mirror again. Just us again. But something in me knew:
We weren't alone in there.
We'd never been.
He looked at me like, Did you see that?
And I looked back like, Yes. I saw you.
But we didn't say it out loud.
Because speaking would have made it real.
And because the truth would ask for more than either of us were ready to give.
They won't talk about it. Not today. Not tomorrow. Maybe not ever.
But the mirror has spoken.
It remembered them before they did.
It offered a glimpse—not prophecy, not fantasy—remembrance.
A soldier who doesn't yet exist.
A war that loops in circles.
A history stitched with fire and recognition.
Somewhere, in a timeline coiled like a serpent, he raised a sword.
She carried the map.
Together, they either saved a world or let it burn.
This wasn't fate.
Wasn't love.
Not even destiny.
This was recognition.
Of what the soul remembers when the body forgets.
And when the mirror showed them who they were, they didn't scream.
They didn't run.
They just stared back.
Like soldiers taking silent orders from something older than gods.
You only panic when the truth is too strange to be a lie.
And sometimes, your reflection isn't yours.
It's a warning.
A memory.
A wound carved backward into time.
The mirror doesn't lie.
But it doesn't comfort either.
It shows you what waits beneath your skin—
what history hasn't yet demanded from you.
And when it calls again—because it will—
you won't be ready.
But you'll recognize yourself.
And you'll answer.
Even if it costs you everything you are in this life.
Because the truth isn't coming.
It's remembering.