The air inside the building pressed down like a memory. Heavy. Familiar, yet hollow.
Arlen stepped through the entrance, and the door closed behind him without a sound. No echo, no creak. Just silence—pure and complete.
He exhaled slowly, as if afraid to disturb something ancient. The hall was dimly lit, but not by any visible source. The light seemed to breathe from the walls themselves, soft and uneven.
Norman followed, each footstep measured. "You lived here once, didn't you?" he asked quietly.
Arlen hesitated. "I… yes. I think so."
"You think?"
Arlen frowned. The words came out before he could stop them. "It feels like I did. But I can't—" He rubbed his temple. "I can't picture the details. I remember the smell of coffee in the mornings, and a cracked mug on the sink… but not the color of the walls. Not the sound of my own door when it closed."
Norman's expression remained calm. "Memory and perception share a mirror, Arlen. Both can fracture."
Arlen turned toward the corridor. The walls stretched longer than he remembered—too long. A narrow hallway that should have ended at his door now seemed to vanish into a faint mist. He blinked once, and the perspective snapped back to normal. His pulse spiked.
He muttered, "This place is wrong."
"No," Norman corrected softly. "It's only revealing itself."
They reached Arlen's apartment. The number plate was gone, the place where it had been leaving a faint rectangular outline, like a missing tooth. He turned the handle and stepped in.
Inside, everything was just as he'd left it—or so it seemed. The coat on the rack. The unopened mail. The photograph frame on the table. But as he moved closer, something shifted. The photograph—he swore it had once been of his parents—now showed only the house behind them. Two faint silhouettes blurred in the background, featureless and gray.
Arlen's throat tightened. "This wasn't like this before."
Norman stepped beside him, studying the photo. "Perhaps not for you. But the world changes when observed differently. You're beginning to see what has always been there."
Arlen turned toward the mirror in his living room—the same one he had hung to catch the morning light. But it was dark. It reflected nothing. Not him, not Norman, not the room. Just a deep, silent void.
He reached out, fingertips trembling. The surface was cold—colder than metal, colder than death. A ripple spread outward, faint but real. His reflection blinked into existence—distorted, like a shadow stretched too far.
Then it spoke.
"Why did you leave me?"
Arlen froze. The voice was his own—but cracked, distant, as though spoken underwater. He stumbled back, hitting the table. The photo frame fell, glass shattering across the floor.
Norman didn't move. His eyes glinted in the dim light, watching with something like approval. "Do not recoil from it. Listen."
Arlen's reflection twisted, its mouth curving into a broken smile. "You don't even remember my name."
"What—what is this?" Arlen gasped.
Norman's tone remained calm. "It's you. The part that remembers when you refuse to. The fracture begins where the truth was buried."
The room darkened. The walls seemed to breathe. Every shadow in the apartment leaned subtly toward the mirror, as if drawn to it. Arlen felt the air grow thick and electric, humming with invisible tension.
He backed away slowly. "I don't want this."
"Want has nothing to do with it," Norman said softly. "You opened the door when you looked."
Arlen stared at the reflection. The other him pressed its hand against the glass. The surface shimmered like water. For one horrifying instant, Arlen felt a pull—an invisible tug in his chest, like the world itself was trying to trade places with him.
Then Norman's voice cut through the tension. "Enough."
The reflection froze. The shadows stilled. The room exhaled.
Arlen collapsed into a chair, gasping for breath, sweat slicking his palms. "What—what just happened?"
Norman looked around the apartment, as if assessing invisible damage. "You made contact. The fracture acknowledged you. It knows you now."
Arlen's voice was hoarse. "It?"
"The other side," Norman said simply. "The side that waits in mirrors, in reflections, in forgotten thoughts. The side of everything we pretend not to see."
Arlen stared at him, mind spinning. "Why me?"
Norman finally turned, meeting his eyes. "Because you already broke once. And only the broken can cross between."
The silence that followed was absolute.
Then, faintly—from the direction of the mirror—came a sound. A slow, deliberate knock from inside the glass.
Three times.
Measured.
Patient.
Arlen's blood ran cold.
Norman's eyes never left the mirror. "And it begins."
Morning didn't arrive so much as it seeped in.
A colorless light bled through the curtains — not golden, not gray, something between the two, like the ghost of daylight. Arlen woke with the faint taste of metal on his tongue and the sensation that someone had been standing beside his bed.
He sat up too quickly. His head pounded, vision swimming. The clock on his bedside table blinked 6:47 AM, the red digits static. No ticking, no hum. Just silence.
He pressed his hand against the clock. It was warm, but dead.
"Norman?" he called softly. No response.
Arlen stood, unsteady. The floorboards felt softer than usual — not spongy, exactly, but alive, faintly shifting beneath his bare feet, as if the building itself were breathing.
He walked to the mirror above his dresser. His reflection looked drained, skin pale under the dim light. But his reflection didn't mimic his movements right away. When he raised a hand, it lagged by a fraction of a second. When he blinked, the reflection smiled.
Arlen stumbled back, heart thudding. He glanced around the room — everything looked normal. The books stacked near the bed, the cracked mug on the desk, the faint hum of the refrigerator down the hall.
He forced a shaky laugh. "Just exhaustion," he muttered.
From the kitchen, something clinked. A spoon stirring inside a cup.
His chest tightened. He stepped into the narrow hall, every shadow stretching longer as he moved. The sound was faint but unmistakable — porcelain, slow and rhythmic, like someone gently stirring coffee.
When he reached the kitchen, it stopped.
Empty table. No cup, no spoon, nothing. But in the center lay the letter — unfolded, though he remembered leaving it sealed.
The handwriting shimmered faintly, as if wet ink were still drying. The words rearranged themselves, letter by letter, pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat.
SEE WHAT SEES YOU.
Arlen froze. "No… no, no." He blinked hard — and the words returned to normal.
He snatched the page up. The back was blank. He turned it over again — normal. His pulse wouldn't slow down.
That was when he noticed something else: the faint fog gathering on the hallway mirror.
At first, it was just condensation, like someone had breathed on it. But then words began to appear, drawn by an invisible hand:
LOOK BEHIND YOU.
He couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Every instinct screamed don't turn around.
His throat felt dry as dust. "Norman?"
No answer.
He turned — slowly. Nothing. Just the stillness of his apartment.
And then, softly, from within the mirror — his own voice whispered, "Look behind you."
The sound didn't echo; it folded inward, as if it came from somewhere too close to be real. His reflection's mouth moved independently, eyes dark and hollow.
Arlen stepped closer despite every rational thought screaming not to. The air near the mirror felt heavy, thick, charged. His reflection tilted its head slightly, studying him.
"Who are you?" he whispered.
The reflection smiled faintly. "You already know."
The words didn't come from its mouth — they came from inside Arlen's skull, vibrating in his bones.
He stumbled back. "You're not real."
The reflection's expression warped into something cruelly amused. "You think you're real?"
Then it began to move — slow, unnatural. The head tilted to one side, and the reflection placed its hand flat against the glass. The surface rippled.
Arlen reached for the nearest thing — a chair, a weapon, anything — but the mirror pulsed before he could act, the fog spreading outward like a wound.
And then—
"Don't," came a calm voice behind him.
Arlen turned sharply — Norman stood in the doorway, holding a steaming mug of coffee. He looked like he'd been there for hours.
"Where did you—how did you get in here?" Arlen demanded.
Norman sipped the coffee. "The boundaries are thinner now. Doors are suggestions."
Arlen stared at him, shaking. "What the hell is happening to me?"
Norman's eyes flicked toward the mirror. "You looked too long. You believed. The fracture notices belief."
Arlen sank to the floor. "It talked to me. It knew me."
"That's because it's you," Norman said, setting the mug down. "A reflection is never passive, Arlen. It's a record of what you were, what you might have been, and what you tried to forget."
The mirror darkened again, absorbing light instead of reflecting it. Arlen's shadow stretched toward it, bending unnaturally, like it wanted to step inside.
"Norman…" Arlen's voice was barely a whisper. "There's something in there. I saw something behind me."
Norman's gaze hardened. "Describe it."
"I—I don't know. It looked like… a horse, I think. But wrong. Its body was cracked, like glass. Like it was breaking apart just by existing."
Norman exhaled. "Then it has taken form."
"What do you mean?"
"The fracture's messenger," Norman said quietly. "Every reflection manifests differently. Yours has found its shape."
Arlen looked back at the mirror. The fog inside began to swirl. Shapes moved just beneath the surface — outlines of hooves, shards of mane, fragments of something too broken to be whole.
A low sound began to echo through the apartment — not from any direction, but from everywhere at once. A deep, resonant thud, slow and deliberate.
Hooves.
Arlen's pulse synced with it — one beat for each step. His vision blurred at the edges, walls trembling faintly.
He grabbed Norman's arm. "Make it stop!"
Norman didn't move. "You can't stop what you invited. The fracture recognizes you now."
The sound grew louder. Louder. The mirror pulsed in rhythm, faint cracks webbing across its surface. Arlen's reflection stood perfectly still now — but behind it, the horse-like shape was closer. Its eyes — if they were eyes — burned faintly like amber caught in darkness.
Arlen's voice trembled. "It's coming through."
Norman's tone was calm, almost reverent. "Then watch. Learn how truth enters."
The mirror screamed — not with sound, but with pressure, the air vibrating so violently Arlen felt it in his teeth. The cracks spread wider, glass shivering, bending the light around it.
For one second, he saw himself inside the mirror — standing where the reflection should be, watching his real body from the other side. The other Arlen raised a hand, palm against the glass, matching his own.
And whispered:
"Let me out."
Arlen stumbled back. "No—no, this isn't—"
The reflection pressed harder, the cracks splintering outward. The horse's silhouette reared behind it, fragments of its form flickering like lightning.
Norman stepped back, eyes fixed on the mirror. "It's begun."
Arlen screamed as the glass shattered outward — a burst of light, cold and blinding. He shielded his face, falling against the table.
When he opened his eyes, everything was quiet again.
The mirror was gone. Nothing but a blackened outline where it had hung.
But on the floor — among the shards — lay something wet. Dark. Thick.
Arlen crawled closer, heart pounding. It wasn't glass dust. It was blood, smeared across the tiles.
And reflected in its surface, faintly, he saw the reflection's eyes still staring back at him — from inside the blood.
Then, from somewhere in the apartment — far, far too close — came the sound:
Tap. Tap. Tap.
The sound of hooves.
Arlen turned toward the hallway — and froze.
A single, glimmering crack had appeared down the wall, glowing faintly like molten glass.
And from inside it, a voice whispered his name.
"Arlen."
The mansion's corridor seemed to stretch forever, folding back into itself like a thought Arlen couldn't finish.
His footsteps echoed with a hollow patience, the air thick with dust and the scent of burned oil. Each door he passed looked identical—wood warped by time, hinges whispering. Somewhere behind him, something clicked, as though the house were closing its eyes.
He stopped before a doorway that glowed faintly at the edges, light breathing through the cracks like a pulse. He pushed it open.
Inside waited a room the color of fog. Nothing lived here—not furniture, not life, not even sound. The only thing that stood in its center was a mirror, taller than the doorway, framed in tarnished silver vines. Its surface rippled faintly, like a lake holding its breath.
Arlen's reflection stared back, uncertain, weary. But as he stepped closer, he noticed it—the reflection wasn't moving in sync. It hesitated when he didn't.
He blinked; his reflection didn't.
A tremor slid through the floorboards. The mirror's light warped.
The face in the glass blurred… shifted… became someone else.
The stranger looked about Arlen's age, perhaps a year older, though the weight in his eyes felt decades older. His hair was dark and carefully combed back, a touch of the 1950s in its neat precision. He wore a long, charcoal coat buttoned to the throat, his collar crisp, his gloves immaculate—even his stillness was deliberate.
And yet, the mirror caught something wrong about him, as if he were drawn slightly out of time.
The man's lips moved first.
"Arlen?"
Arlen froze, blood stuttering. "Who are you?"
The man's eyes widened—gray, reflective, almost silver under the light.
"This is my house," he said slowly, his voice low and cultured, carrying that 1950s cadence—careful diction, soft restraint. "How did you get in here?"
Arlen took a step forward. "Your house? No… it's mine. My family built this place."
The stranger frowned. "That's not possible."
A thin line of light traveled up the mirror's surface, bright as a vein of lightning trapped in glass. Their reflections overlapped—one younger, raw and unsteady; the other older, composed, shadowed by something unreadable. The mirror began to hum, vibrating gently as if resisting the existence of both.
Arlen whispered, "Who are you?" again, but it came out like a plea.
The man—Nathaniel—blinked, confusion giving way to something like recognition. His expression softened, though his voice cracked slightly when he spoke:
"Arlen… I know that name."
Before Arlen could reply, the mirror convulsed—a shimmer of light and darkness splitting the image into fragments. Behind Nathaniel, for an instant, Arlen saw a flash of another hallway lit by lanterns, the world tinted sepia, the faint silhouette of a horse-drawn chariot waiting in rain.
Then the vision was gone.
Their eyes met again through the trembling glass.
Nathaniel lifted a gloved hand, palm open. Arlen mirrored the gesture. Their fingertips touched the surface at the same time. The glass pulsed cold under Arlen's skin, almost alive.
For a heartbeat, he felt another pulse matching his—steady, calm, not his own.
Nathaniel's voice came faintly through the hum:
"Who are you?"
The mirror vibrated harder, the room trembling with it.
Arlen whispered, "I don't know anymore."
The mirror shuddered—and went dark.