The tram rocked slightly as it pulled into motion.
Kael stood near the rear, one hand looped casually through the overhead grip rail, visor dimmed, coat zipped halfway.
He wasn't watching the people.
Or the stations.
He was watching the glass.
The tunnel blurred by outside — lights flickering in a rhythmic sequence: white, white, red, white, white—
Behind the pane of glass across from him, he watched his own reflection.
Tired eyes.
Tight jaw.
Cracks still faint beneath the gloves.
Nothing strange.
Nothing yet.
A child in a green jacket bumped into him.
He shifted slightly, nodded at the mother.
Didn't speak.
Didn't blink.
Eyes back on the reflection.
Back on the blur.
And then it broke.
Just for a second.
In the tunnel glass — not the tunnel itself, but its mirrored wash on the window's inside curve — something appeared.
A figure.
Tall.
Too tall.
Hunched slightly, as if it had too many vertebrae.
Cloaked in something that shimmered between cloth and code — not solid, but not transparent either.
Where its face should've been: nothing.
A mask?
A screen?
Empty.
Still.
Perfectly motionless as the tram roared by.
Kael didn't move.
Didn't breathe.
It hadn't appeared in the real tunnel.
Only in the reflection.
Only in the glass.
One beat.
Two.
It didn't blink.
Didn't flinch.
But its head was turned — just slightly — toward him.
Like it knew.
Then the lights changed.
White.
White.
Red.
Flash.
Gone.
Kael's heart thudded once — heavy.
He didn't move.
Didn't react.
Not in front of the other passengers.
But he opened a command window in his HUD behind the scenes.
[RECORD BUFFER: LAST 20 SECONDS]
[FRAME ANALYSIS: TUNNEL REFLECTION / RIGHT PANE]
[RESULT: NULL]
[TRACE: REAPER] — NO SIGNAL DETECTED
Nothing.
Just glass.
And memory.
Kael sat cross-legged in the forgotten storage mezzanine above the raid prep terminal. Dust coated the corners, and a dead diagnostic drone lay cracked in the vent shaft nearby.
He liked it here.
No auto-sync.
No guild taps.
No one watching.
Except, maybe…
He pulled the footage up again.
Overlaid the reflection data.
Magnified the tunnel pane.
Slowed the buffer to x0.02 speed.
Frame 409: just tunnel light.
Frame 410: blur.
Frame 411: the faintest outline.
Frame 412: gone.
He tapped rewind.
Ran it again.
Nothing stuck.
The log didn't register anything abnormal. No latency glitch. No heat signature. Not even a shimmer of devcode breach.
System thinks I'm lying.
He opened the glyph monitor again — not the default one. The deeper one.
The one he wasn't supposed to have access to anymore.
And there it was.
[GLYPH TRACE: SYNC THREAD — ACTIVE]
[LOCATION: NON-INSTANCE ENVIRONMENT]
[TYPE: PASSIVE FLUX]
[LINK: UID K.AEL-1922]
[WARNING: TRACE IS SPREADING]
Kael stared.
Spreading.
The crack beneath his glove pulsed once — like something tiny under the skin shifted.
He clenched his fist.
Stood up.
Killed the feed.
There was no point in looking at the footage again.
No one else saw it.
Not the system.
Not the logs.
Only him.
He wasn't sure if that made it better…
or worse.
The apartment smelled faintly of soup and candle wax when Kael stepped back in.
Late afternoon light stretched long across the floorboards.
Senna sat cross-legged in the middle of the living room rug, humming quietly, her fingers black with charcoal dust. Paper sheets were scattered around her — some crumpled, some half-drawn, all in shades of gray.
Kael shut the door softly behind him.
Liora looked up from the couch.
"You're home early."
"No cooldown timer on transport today," he said, trying to smile.
She smiled back.
Didn't ask more.
She trusted his quiet.
Kael walked toward Senna.
Kneeling beside her, he glanced at the page in her lap.
And froze.
It was a bedroom window.
Hers.
Drawn perfectly — the way it faced the old communications tower across the alley, complete with the little crack in the glass she always asked to tape over.
But the view wasn't empty.
Outside the window, centered in the charcoal void, stood a figure.
Tall.
Cloaked.
No face.
No features.
Just presence.
Just watching.
Kael's voice came out too quietly.
"...what's that?"
Senna glanced up, as if the answer should be obvious.
"He was looking at me."
"When?"
"This morning. When I was coloring."
"You saw him?"
"Uh-huh."
She turned the paper, tapping the window.
"He was just standing right there."
Kael's eyes flicked toward the actual window across the room.
No balcony.
No ledge.
Just open space.
Three stories of empty air.
He whispered, "Did he say anything?"
Senna frowned. "No."
"Did you feel scared?"
She paused. Tilted her head. "No… he was just... quiet."
A beat.
She added softly:
"But he knew I saw him."
Kael stood too fast.
His foot knocked over one of the drawing pages.
The smudge pattern on it looked like eyes — but not human.
Too tall.
Too wide.
Too still.
He clenched his hand behind his back before Senna could see it shake.
"Papa?"
He crouched again. Forced his voice level.
"I love it," he said.
Then took the page gently and folded it, careful not to smear the lines.
"I'm going to… save this one, okay?"
Senna nodded and returned to her sketchpad like nothing had happened.
Kael rose.
Liora watched him from the couch — brows slightly drawn.
Not suspicious.
Just sensing something had shifted.
The apartment was quiet.
Liora had taken Senna to bed an hour ago. The hallway light still glowed faintly from under their door — a golden sliver of warmth Kael didn't deserve.
He stood in the bathroom.
Alone.
Lights off.
A single pocket-glow crystal sat on the sink beside him, flickering like an unsteady candle.
In his hand: the smallest mirror in the house.
Senna's old travel mirror — cracked in one corner, thumb-smudged and matte.
Kael didn't raise it to look at himself.
He turned his back to the mirror.
Then held it up slowly.
Angled.
Tilted.
Waited.
The glyph crack along his wrist pulsed once — a whisper of heat beneath the skin.
The room stayed silent.
In the glass, he could just barely make out the doorway behind him… the edge of the kitchen… the hallway shadow—
And then it shifted.
Something tall.
Something cloaked.
Something standing behind him, just beyond the hallway light.
Still.
Unmoving.
No face.
No breath.
No sound.
Kael's body went ice-cold.
He didn't move.
Didn't blink.
Only stared at the reflection.
A pulse of static shimmered through the mirror.
And then — it was gone.
Gone like it had never been there.
He turned.
Fast.
Nothing.
Empty hallway.
No door creak.
No whisper.
Just the air.
Dead still.
Kael lowered the mirror.
Hands trembling.
He turned to the sink and flicked the water on.
Splash.
Cold.
Real.
But it didn't matter.
Because now he knew.
It wasn't trapped in the raid zones.
It wasn't waiting for the next breach.
It was already here.
In the reflections.
Watching.
Waiting.
Maybe feeding.
[OPEN DEVLOG: "For Her"]
[CREATE ENTRY: v0.01b — Non-Instance Anomaly]
Kael sat in the dark.
Not his usual rooftop.
Just the quiet of the hallway, outside Senna's door.
He stared at the open log.
Typed slowly.
Manually.
As if any kind of autopilot might erase what had happened.
Title: Reaper Reflection Sightings
Location #1: Inner District Tram Line / Tunnel Pane (Frame 411)
- Figure visible in reflection only. Zero presence in physical tunnel. No passengers reacted. No system trace. Vanished after 0.2s.
Location #2: Home — Senna's window sketch
- Subject drew tall robed figure outside 3rd floor window. No physical platform. No visible presence from street view. Claimed "it was watching."
Location #3: Bathroom Mirror Test
- Controlled environment. Figure visible behind user in mirror only. Glyph trace pulsed at moment of visibility. Vanished instantly. Confirmed via sync crack glow.
He paused.
Typed slower now.
Conclusion:
These are not gate breaches.
These are perception breaches.
They appear only in reflections — not glass. Not screens. Not AR overlays. Reflections.
Visual only. No heat. No EM. No system ping.
System is blind to them.
I'm not.
He hesitated again before adding the last line.
But he typed it anyway.
"The rollback didn't just bring me back."
"It brought them with me."
He saved the entry.
Closed the file.
Sat in silence, listening to his daughter's soft breathing behind the door.
And on the blank wall across the hallway, his own reflection stared back at him.
Just him.
Alone.
This time.