Shattered Mirrors,
When I came to, the world was silent—so silent, I could hear my own heartbeat hammering against my ribs. My body felt like it had been flayed and reassembled from scrap metal. Pain radiated from every joint, and my breath came in sharp, ragged gasps. I forced my eyes open and blinked against a harsh glare; fluorescent lights above flickered, casting the room in a stuttering, sickly glow.
I was lying on a narrow cot in what looked like an isolation cell. The walls were pure white, but corners pooled with shadow, as if darkness itself refused to retreat. I tried to move, but my hands were bound together with thick, rough straps. My legs were lashed to the cot's frame, and my shirt had been ripped away, leaving my chest exposed. Dried blood crusted between my shoulder blades where the doctor's needle must have struck.
For a moment, I lay still, listening. There was no chanting—only the distant hum of hospital machinery and the occasional creak of floorboards, as if some creature lurked just beyond the wall. Panic rose in me, but I forced it down. I had to understand where I was.
A door clicked open, and a flood of corridor light washed in. Steps approached, slow and measured. My heart sank when I saw who entered: Dr. Calix stood there, hair disheveled, her white coat stained with sweat—dark and glistening. Her eyes were cold, distant, as though she studied something invisible behind me.
"Satrio," she said, voice devoid of warmth. "You've given us quite the scare."
I strained against the straps. "What… what did you do to me?"
She closed the door and latched it. "You tried to escape. You attacked other patients. You've been self-harming." She spoke clinically, tapping a chart. "Your vitals were spiking. You've been sedated to prevent further harm—to yourself and to others." Her lips curved into a thin smile. "You need rest."
"Let me go," I rasped. "Let me—" My voice cut off as Dr. Calix leaned in. I smelled antiseptic and something metallic, like old blood.
"Satrio," she whispered, "you're dangerous to yourself. The voices you hear—they're just your mind fracturing under stress. You need more time on medication." She tapped a syringe slung at her hip. "It's for your own good."
I stared at her. The bottle on the tray beside her was labeled "Pentothal." Hypnotic. I remembered cold seeping into my veins last time she gave me something like this. I wrenched at the straps. "I'm not insane," I croaked.
She sighed and straightened, as though disappointed. "You'll see. Cherry, bring in the mirror."
Another figure entered—nurse Cherry, a gaunt woman with hollow cheeks. In her arms was a small, cracked hand mirror. She placed it on a cart, and Dr. Calix wheeled it over until the mirror hovered just above eye level. The reflection that stared back at me was… wrong.
My face looked pale enough, but my eyes were blackened at the edges, sunken and rimmed with irritation. My hair—dark and unkempt—fell into my eyes in greasy tendrils. But that wasn't what made it wrong. The left side of my face was twisted into a grotesque grin, as if my cheekbone had been forced upward. A spiral scar—fresh, bloody—coiled along my jaw, ending at my temple. When I opened my mouth, my teeth seemed elongated, fanged.
I jerked my head away, but the straps held me fast. Dr. Calix watched me, expression unreadable. "Look at yourself, Satrio. This is what your mind has done to you. Your delusions have clawed into your flesh." She tapped the mirror. "We need to correct this."
"Stop… stop," I begged. Every nerve in my body screamed. "You're lying. That's not me."
Cherry reached forward with a cloth and wiped the mirror's surface. Instantly, the reflection shifted: my face was normal, albeit haggard and bruised, but intact. The scar was gone. The grin vanished. My throat tightened; relief mixed with horror. Was it real before, or now?
Dr. Calix leaned in, voice low. "We can't have you wandering around with these… visions. We need to reorient you." She motioned to Cherry. "Administer the dosage we discussed."
Cherry dipped a syringe into a vial of cloudy liquid. I tried to wrench free, shrieking. But Dr. Calix placed a single finger against my lips. "Quiet," she hissed. "You'll thank me."
The needle bit into my neck. I bit down on my lip as cold fire spread through my veins. The world blurred. My limbs went heavy, and my vision swam with pale shapes. All at once, Ulzakar's voice thundered in my skull: You cannot wake again, Satrio. This world belongs to us.
I fell backward, eyes rolling up, and darkness claimed me.
When I stirred next, I was on my feet, standing in a narrow hallway bathed in dusk-blue light. The walls arched overhead like the inside of a ribcage. Shadows stretched long, and a frigid draft whispered through cracks I could not see. I tried to move my hands—they were free. Confusion crashed into me as I took a step forward: the floor beneath my feet was slick with ice.
I stumbled but regained my balance. The corridor went on forever, lined with doors at irregular intervals. Each door was made of heavy oak, its surface etched with a spiral emblem that bled red when I looked too long. Whispers echoed through the hall—soft, urgent: "Come… come…"
I pressed my hand to my chest. My heart was drumming, but my head felt clear, as though I'd emerged from a deep fog. I wasn't in the hospital anymore. I knew that: there was no sterile scent, no buzzing fluorescent lights—just cold and the metallic tang of something ancient.
I turned a corner and saw Lena standing there. Her hospital gown was gone. Instead, she wore a dress of pale gray that billowed around her like smoke, and her hair hung in dark waves down her back. Her eyes glowed faintly with that spiral mark on her palm, but her posture was calm—almost serene.
"Satrio," she whispered, voice echoing like distant bells. "You came back."
I approached, wary. "Lena… where are we?"
She inclined her head. In the wan light, her skin seemed translucent. "Between dreams and waking. Between life and death. This is Ulzakar's realm—the cathedral he built on the ruins of our minds."
"I saw him," I said, voice trembling. "The demon. He spoke to me—said I couldn't escape."
She reached out a hand. I flinched, but something in her gaze—anguish, love—anchored me. "He is strong here. He feeds on brokenness, on fear. But you are stronger."
I shook my head. "I don't know how to fight him. I don't know what's real anymore."
She smiled, small and sad. "I know." She turned and led me down the corridor, her steps confident. Each door we passed seemed to sigh as we moved by, as though the trembling world within recognized our purpose. At the very end, a great door made of cracked bone loomed—veins of ice coursed through its surface, forming a spiral at its center. Beyond it, a pale blue glow pulsed like a heartbeat.
"This is his inner sanctum," Lena said. "Beyond this door is the source of his power—his mirror of true reflection." She placed a hand on my shoulder. "If you shatter it, you break his hold on you and on this world."
My stomach turned. I knew what was behind that door: the power to reveal his true nature—and perhaps to destroy it. The spiral motif etched into the bone seemed to twist and writhe as if alive. I swallowed hard, heart thundering. "How do I… break it?"
Lena's gaze met mine. "With truth. You must look upon him—not as demon, but as once-mortal. Face his origin, his fear. Remind him of the bond you share: he was born of your own despair."
I hesitated. Memories flooded me: the moment I drove that silver blade into the cathedral's altar, the blood of the faithful drenching my hands; the scream of Ulzakar as he bled into nothingness. But also Lena's face as she died in my arms—her last words echoing in my mind. The guilt, the rage, the grief that had given him form.
Lena squeezed my shoulder. "I'll be with you. Even if this is just one more illusion."
I drew a slow breath and reached for the door's handle. My fingers brushed the cold bone. The spiral emblem pulsed beneath my palm, as if sensing my heartbeat. The door creaked open, revealing a vast chamber bathed in pale blue radiance.
Inside, on a dais of cracked obsidian, stood a mirror so vast it stretched to the ceiling. Its frame was wrought from frozen bone, spines and ribs entwined in a grotesque arch. The surface was liquid silver, rippling like a disturbed lake. Reflected in it was not the room behind me, but a swirling tempest of ice and shadow. At its center, I saw a figure: Ulzakar, tall and skeletal, crown of bone atop his head, eyes glowing white. He turned his gaze toward me, and the mirror trembled.
I took a step forward. The chanting returned, faint but growing: "He comes… he comes…" Lena's hand on my back grounded me.
I remembered Dr. Calix's mirror: how reality bent at the edge of trust. If Ulzakar's mirror showed his true form—his origin—perhaps I could seize it. I climbed onto the dais, each step echoing in the chamber. As I reached the base, the icy wind coiled around me, biting through my clothes. Ulzakar's lips parted, and a voice like grinding ice reverberated through my skull:
"You have no right to be here, Satrio. Your soul is mine."
I stood my ground. My reflection shivered: myself, but younger—no spiral scar, no haunted eyes. It watched me, hollow-faced. I summoned every memory: Lena's laughter, the warmth of sunlight on my face before grief claimed me, the day I first held a blade to the demon's altar. I saw the boy I once was, before darkness took hold.
"Hear me, Ulzakar," I said, voice steady even as the wind tore at my clothes. "You were born from my pain, from my refusal to let Lena rest. You are nothing but fear given form. Today, I reclaim that which you stole."
Ulzakar's form in the mirror twisted in agony. The chant rose to a roar, shards of ice splintering across the floor as the mirror's surface rippled with cracks. Lightning-like fissures spread from its center, and Ulzakar screamed—a sound like a thousand bones shattering.
I reached out, fingertips brushing the glass. It was cold, unnaturally so, but I pressed harder, muscles coiling with purpose. "Lena," I whispered. "We end this together."
She stepped beside me, placing a trembling hand on the mirror's edge. Her eyes blazed with sorrow and determination. "Destroy him, Satrio."
I nodded once, and together we shoved. The mirror shattered with a crash that shook the chamber. Blue light exploded outward, and for a moment, time itself seemed to freeze. Then a wave of icicles rained down, fracturing into glittering shards that dissolved into mist.
Ulzakar's scream faded into a whisper. The mirror's bone frame crumbled, and the figure in its depths flickered—once, twice—and then imploded in a flash of white light. The chamber trembled, and the walls cracked, spilling dust and debris. Lena's hand went limp in mine.
"No…" I cried, catching her as she collapsed. She looked up at me, eyes soft and understanding. "You did it."
But her lips quivered, and her chest stilled. As her body sagged, I felt a hollow ache hollower than any pain before. Tears blurred my vision as I held her close. "Lena… Lena, please…"
Her eyes closed, and her face went slack. In that moment, the chanting vanished. Silence reigned.
I knelt beside her, the shards of the mirror at my feet, glittering like fallen stars. The blood in my veins no longer burned with rage but felt cold and empty. I pressed a hand to her cheek, felt its chill. There was no warmth left.
Above me, the shattered ceiling opened to a wash of twilight. A single ray of moonlight pierced through, illuminating Lena's face. I whispered, "I forgive you," though it was I who carried the guilt, I who birthed the demon with my refusal to let go.
As the chamber dissolved around us—walls turning to dust, ice melting into water—I felt myself slipping. The last thing I heard was Lena's breath, soft and fading, and then nothing.
When I awoke again, I was lying on the hospital floor, head pounding. The isolation cell door had been pried open. Sunlight streamed through a barred window, warm and real. I staggered to my feet and looked around: the ward nurses and doctors were everywhere, scrambling, murmuring—some checking doors, others checking logs. No chanting. No shadows. Just the sterile smell of antiseptic.
Dr. Calix stood at a distance, expression unreadable. Our eyes met, and in hers I saw fear—real human fear, not the practiced detachment I'd known before.
I took a trembling step forward. "Lena?" I whispered, voice raw.
Dr. Calix shook her head. "She… was never a patient here." Her voice trembled. "You—on security footage—you found her outside the facility, wandering… and then you collapsed."
My mind reeled. Lena was gone. The demons were gone. Ulzakar's hold had shattered—perhaps forever. But the price had been too high.
I closed my eyes and let the hospital's blinding light wash over me. In my heart, I carried Lena's memory, the echo of her final smile, and the knowledge that I had finally let her soul rest.
Outside, birds sang. And for the first time in what felt like an eternity, I believed—truly believed—that I could heal.