The wind kept tugging at the pages.
Hale wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his wrist. His eyes were half-shut from exhaustion. The air around him felt heavy, like even time had weight now.
He reached for the thirteenth page.
This one had to be different.
But even as he started sketching—with shaky hands and a foggy mind—the window rattled again. The wind howled just enough to get under his skin, and his pencil rolled off the table.
He muttered a curse, picked it up, and slammed the window shut.
The room went still. Too still.
Still, he kept drawing.
Line after line.
Gyroson's figure. The chair. The bloodstain.
Same sketch—but this one felt colder somehow.
His hand cramped. The light in the room shifted. He opened the window again, just to breathe.
And then—
The sketch twitched.
He didn't catch it right away. But something had moved.
He looked again.
Gyroson's shadow wasn't slouching anymore—it was reaching.
Hale froze.
Then, as if reacting, the wind blew the sketch off the table. It fluttered across the room and landed near the mirror.
He stood up slowly, picked it up, and—driven by instinct, frustration, or something deeper—he taped it to the mirror.
Just to see what would happen.
And in the reflection?
The sketch was changing.
Not the way it had before.
This time, it wasn't just moving.
It was remembering.
The lines in the mirror didn't match the ones on the paper he held.
Gyroson's smile?
In the reflection, it had turned into a grimace.
The figure in the corner—Hale—wasn't standing still anymore. He was reaching out.
Same page. Same sketch.
But two different truths.
He blinked. For a second, both versions aligned.
Just for a moment.
And then it hit him.
Not a vision. Not a memory.
A download.
Something slammed into his mind—not words or images. Just pure feeling. Cold. Sharp. Foreign.
Like someone else's pain had carved its way behind his eyes.
His knees buckled. He dropped to the floor.
His nose started to bleed. Heavy.
He reached up, hand shaking, trying to wipe it away—but the sketch stayed still in the mirror. Frozen now.
"Hale?"
It was Ivy. He hadn't even heard her come in.
"What the hell—what happened to your—" she stopped.
She saw his reflection first.
He looked pale. His face smeared with red. Eyes glassy.
"Oh my god—Hale?!"
He didn't respond.
He couldn't take his eyes off the mirror.
"Hale!" she shouted, rushing forward. "You're bleeding! What is that thing—what are you staring at?!"
But when she looked at the sketch...
She saw nothing but pencil lines. Just a drawing. Ink and graphite. Nothing moving. Nothing strange.
Hale's head slumped to the side. His lips moved.
The words came out low, barely there.
"It's not... just a drawing..."
And then—
He passed out.
Ivy screamed his name, scrambling for her phone with trembling fingers. She dialed emergency.
The call connected just as Hale collapsed completely. Blood spilling from his nose. His chest rising and falling in broken stutters.