Lily padded across the cold wooden floor of her room, the pads of her feet whispering against the boards. The storm outside had stolen the warmth from the air, and the house groaned with every gust of wind. Her room was dimly lit by the small, flickering lamp on her nightstand, and the shadows it cast seemed to stretch and crawl up the walls like bony fingers.

She hated the dark. It always felt like it was watching her, waiting for her to slip, to let her guard down. The old mirror that stood across from her bed didn’t help. It loomed, tall and foreboding, its tarnished frame reflecting the sparse light in strange, distorted ways. Her mother had told her it was an heirloom—“a beautiful antique”—but to Lily, it felt like something that belonged in nightmares.

She moved to stand before the mirror, her eyes scanning her own reflection, the smallness of her frame enveloped by the dark behind her. She reached up, her fingers brushing the ends of her hair, her gaze focused on her own face. But something felt wrong, an itch beneath her skin, an instinct that made her pause.

The reflection didn’t move.

She stood frozen, her arm suspended in mid-air, her eyes wide, her breath caught in her throat. Her mirrored self stood with her arm at her side, head slightly tilted, eyes staring directly into hers—too directly, unblinking, too intent. It was as if it was studying her, dissecting her with its gaze.

A chill slipped through her, like ice trickling down her spine. She swallowed, the sound loud in the silence of her room, and slowly, ever so slowly, she lowered her arm. The reflection did not follow. Instead, it smiled.

The smile was wrong, stretched too wide, the lips pulling back to reveal teeth that seemed too white, too sharp, a flash of something alien. Lily felt her knees weaken, a tremor shaking through her entire body as her reflection’s grin widened, its eyes unblinking, glassy, filled with something that looked like hunger.

The lights flickered. Once. Twice. The room plunged into darkness, and she could feel her heart pounding, the blood rushing in her ears, her breath quickening, ragged. When the light returned, it was dimmer, struggling, as if fighting against the shadows that had gathered in the corners of the room. Her reflection hadn’t moved, but something was different—its eyes.

They were no longer hers. They were darker, hollow, as though the darkness behind the glass had seeped into them, turning them into pits that pulled at her, drawing her in. She couldn’t look away, her own eyes locked with the void that stared back at her.

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The smile never faltered. It grew, impossibly so, the corners of its mouth splitting, the skin tearing, the lips stretching until they curled back into something monstrous, something that should not be. She could almost hear it—the wet, tearing sound, the soft pop of sinew snapping, like meat pulled from the bone.

The light flickered again, and the room plunged once more into darkness, the kind of dark that felt alive, that seemed to press in around her, suffocating, closing her in. She could feel it, the cold from the mirror radiating outward, brushing against her skin like icy fingers. She heard a whisper then, faint, like a breath of wind, her own voice but not, twisted, echoing from the glass.

“Come closer.”

Her body moved without her consent, a marionette pulled by unseen strings. Her bare feet stepped forward, the cold wood leeching the warmth from her skin, her eyes fixed on the mirror, on the twisted smile that awaited her. The closer she got, the more she could see the face, the details—her face, but wrong. The skin was too pale, the veins beneath it too dark, branching like cracks in porcelain.

She stopped inches from the glass, her breath fogging its surface. She watched as her reflection lifted its arm, fingers unfurling, pressing against the inside of the mirror, as if it were a window, as if it were trying to break through. The glass rippled, a dark shimmer beneath her doppelgänger’s touch, and Lily’s heart pounded in her chest, her body trembling with terror.

The hand pushed, the glass bending outward, stretching like thin ice beneath too much weight, until she could see the cracks spiderwebbing across the surface, hear the groaning creak of it straining. She tried to move, to step back, to run, but her feet were rooted, her body held captive by the void in the reflection’s eyes.

The light flickered again, longer this time, the darkness swallowing her, the air thick, pressing against her, filling her lungs with something cold and acrid. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, the fear paralyzing, and when the light came back, dimmer still, the reflection was gone.

But the mirror wasn’t empty.

The darkness shifted, something moving, a shape crawling within, something with her face, her eyes, her smile. It pressed its hands against the glass, and this time, the glass shattered, the sound sharp and sudden, a thousand shards raining down, and Lily screamed, her voice tearing from her throat, her body finally breaking free, stumbling back, falling.

She landed hard, pain jolting through her, her eyes wide, staring at the now-empty frame, the glass scattered around her like glittering stars, the reflection gone. The room was still, the only sound her ragged breathing, her heart pounding.

But then she felt it—a cold breath against the back of her neck, the soft rustle of movement behind her. She didn’t dare turn around, her eyes fixed on the broken mirror, on the darkness that seemed to spill from it, reaching for her, swallowing the light.

The whisper came again, her own voice, closer now, so close it brushed against her ear, cold and cruel.

“Come closer.”

Lily’s scream was swallowed by the dark, the lights flickering one final time before the room went black, and all that was left was the sound of her breath, and then nothing at all.