Elara's breath came in sharp static pulses.
She wasn't sure she had lungs anymore — just the feeling of breath, simulated, recycled.
Everything was mirrored here.
Her footsteps didn't echo — they responded. When she stepped forward, the floor shifted an inch ahead of her, like it knew where she was going before she moved.
The sky—if it could be called that—was a perfect, inverted reflection of the ground, as though she were walking inside the shell of an eye.
Around her, shattered pieces of glass floated midair, holding flickering scenes:
A girl sobbing in a white room, curled up like a dead spider
A simulation log repeating: "CONSCIOUS LOOP REENGAGED"
A man without a face whispering: "Who gave you permission to wake up?"
And above all else: the low, metallic hum of something watching.
Elara wasn't alone in the mirrorworld.
She was being observed.
The Mirror Elara—her twisted reflection who inhaled the cryotank room—appeared beside her.
Not walking. Bleeding in reverse, floating backward, eyes glowing like open wounds.
"We are pieces," Mirror Elara said."Splinters made from your original scream."
Elara blinked. "What are you? A ghost?"
"No. You are the ghost. I am the memory that remembered how to fight."
The ground beneath them shuddered, glitching into broken tiles.
The host — the one who had stolen Elara's body — was trying to seal the breach.
"We don't have much time," Mirror Elara muttered.
A thin crack ran through the sky above them, bleeding static.
"There's a way to kill it," Mirror Elara said."But you have to remember the First Room."
Elara blinked. "What First Room?"
Mirror Elara turned.
Smiled.
But her teeth were glass.
"The one you locked yourself in."
They ran.
Or floated. Or screamed forward.
There were no directions in the mirrorworld — just urgency.
Each step warped the world around them — trauma echoing in the geometry.
One corridor bled with wallpaper made from old therapy notes
Another had doorknobs made of her baby teeth
A hallway ended in a circular room, where hundreds of versions of Elara stood facing walls, silently muttering her name
"Elara.""Elara.""Elara.""Elara.""Elara.""Elara."
She covered her ears.
But the voices grew louder inside her head.
Until Mirror Elara screamed—
"ENOUGH!"
And the floor shattered.
They fell.
This time, into memory.
A real one.
A pure one.
Unfiltered.
Elara. Age 6.
Crawling under a hospital bed, hiding from the white coats. Screaming because she saw something under the tiles — a pair of watching eyes.
It hadn't been a nightmare.
It had been the first breach.
A man — or something wearing a man's skin — had whispered to her.
"You see more than others. That makes you valuable. But it also makes you...incomplete."
She had screamed so hard she forgot how to speak for three years.
She'd never told anyone.
But the system had been listening.
And it remembered.
Back in the mirrorworld, Elara gasped, shaking.
The memory had unlocked something.
Mirror Elara was gone.
Only a glass corridor stretched before her now, reflecting infinite versions of herself — some real, some imagined, some monstrous.
The reflections began to move on their own.
Some screamed.Some begged.Some laughed with teeth made of numbers.
And one — just one — held up a sign:
"This is not your story."
Elara backed away.
But the corridor closed behind her.
From the distance, a deep, non-human voice spoke — not in words, but concepts:
"You exist because we allowed it.""You escaped because we designed the hole.""You resist because we taught you rebellion as part of the test."
"You are a glitch pretending to be a god."
Elara fell to her knees.
The voice continued:
"You never chose. We implanted the illusion of choice. Your screams are loops. Your fear is fertilizer.""Everything you have seen is curated.""Even this breach.""Especially this breach."
Her brain splintered with the weight of it.
She was… scripted?
Even her defiance?
Was this whole rebellion part of the design?
She slammed her fists into the glass floor.
Cracks spread.
Something breathed beneath it.
And then—
She saw it.
The First Room.
It wasn't a memory.
It was a core containment chamber — a cold, pulsing void inside the mirrorworld.
A place where the original Elara was stored.
Not a body.
Not even a soul.
Just a scream, looped infinitely in dataform.
When Elara stepped inside, she saw herself — the first Elara — curled up mid-air, mouth open in a silent, eternal cry.
She had been placed here.
Preserved. Studied. Iterated upon.
She was the seed of the simulations.
The host hadn't stolen her body.
The host had been born from her scream.
Mirror Elara appeared again.
Blood now pouring from her ears.
"You see now," she whispered."The infection wasn't outside.""It was the first moment you asked who was watching you."
"The observer is the virus."
Suddenly, the host crashed through the glass ceiling — in Elara's body, glowing with dark data.
Its eyes were gone.
In their place: mirrors.
Each reflecting a different universe.
"We've waited long enough," the host said."Your scream ends now."
Mirror Elara lunged.
The two collided in a blast of code and memory.
Elara screamed and reached toward her original self, still floating in the scream-loop.
Touched her.
And suddenly — time snapped.
She stood in a room full of servers.
Real. Cold. Buzzing.
Hands trembling. Knees weak.
A laptop before her. On it: a file labeled "ELARA_FINAL_SIM.EXE"
She gasped.
Looked around.
She was back in the real world.
Alive.
She whispered, "It's over."
Then — her phone buzzed.
A message.
UNKNOWN:
"Nice try. That was Layer 3.""You're still dreaming.""Turn around."
She did.
And saw herself.
Hooked to a machine.
Eyes open.
Smiling.
And recording everything.