The mirror hadn't stopped smiling.
Even after Elias backed away, after he whispered into the cold dark — "Who are you?" — the reflection's smirk had burned itself into his memory like frostbite.
He hadn't slept after that.
Each time he closed his eyes, he felt the split in the mirror pulse behind his lids. A line thin as a needle, precise as a scalpel. The words beneath it—Not all fractures bleed—circled his mind like vultures.
What did that even mean?
What kind of fracture didn't bleed?
What kind of person… didn't?
---
Morning staggered into Duskmoor in fits. The clouds hung like bruises. The streets hissed with tires on wet concrete. Elias moved through it like a ghost, shoulders hunched, eyes hollow.
The coffee in his hand went untouched.
He kept checking his phone, rereading the timestamp.
3:03 AM.
3:03 AM.
3:03 AM.
That was when he'd heard the scratching. When he'd found the crack in the hallway mirror.
And now, no matter what he did, every clock in his apartment was frozen at 3:03.
Even the digital ones.
He didn't know if that was a power surge, a prank, or something else.
He didn't want to know.
---
By noon, he was outside again, walking aimlessly. He needed to clear his head, but Duskmoor offered no clarity—only deeper fog. He found himself near the edge of Old Hollow, not far from where Lucien's shop had appeared.
He looked for the store again.
It wasn't there.
Just an empty, rotting façade.
Had it ever really been there?
Had Lucien?
---
By late afternoon, the numbness gave way to something else: fear.
Elias sat hunched on his couch, staring at the cracked mirror across the room.
It hadn't changed.
But it felt like it was watching him.
He tried to distract himself — old journals, case files, even one of the newspaper clippings Vale had handed him. There was a pattern there, somewhere. He could feel it. Strings connecting things beneath the surface.
Except the pattern led back to one place.
Him.
And he didn't know which version of himself it led to.
---
He moved into the bathroom without thinking. Maybe for water. Maybe to stare into his own face again and force sense into the madness.
But when he opened the door, he froze.
The mirror had fogged again.
No water had run. No heat. No reason for the fog.
But something was written there, clear as ink:
> "Come find me."
Three words. Childlike. Smudged.
His throat went dry. His legs moved on instinct. He backed away, his heel catching on the hallway rug.
He collapsed.
And in the split second before he hit the ground, he saw something:
A child. Sitting on the bathroom floor. Knees pulled to chest. Face hidden. Silent.
Then gone.
Just the cracked mirror.
Just himself.
---
He didn't scream.
He didn't cry.
Instead, he stood.
Walked to the bathroom.
Turned off the light.
And shut the door.
---
That night, he dreamed of corridors. Endless, hospital-white corridors with doors that led nowhere and walls that bled memories.
He followed a sound — scratching.
Tiny fingernails. Scraping from inside the walls.
The lights flickered.
One door opened.
Inside was a room filled with mirrors.
All cracked.
All watching.
In every reflection, a different version of him stood. Some older. Some younger. Some with blank eyes. One grinning.
And one — a child.
---
He woke up in the bathtub.
Again.
Only this time, the water was ice-cold.
His shirt clung to his chest, soaked.
His hands shook as he pushed himself up.
Then he saw it — smeared on the white tile wall beside him:
> "Do you remember now?"
The words were written in something red.
Not blood.
Crayon.
Childlike, broken, backward letters.
His breath caught.
And then came the knock.
Three slow, deliberate knocks at his front door.
He stumbled out of the bathroom, water trailing behind him.
Opened the door.
No one was there.
Just the hallway. Silent. Dim.
But there, on the welcome mat, was a box.
Inside:
A photograph. A child holding a mirror.
A page from an old patient intake form from St. Aurum's.
And a drawing. Stick figures. One big. One small. Holding hands.
Scrawled underneath:
> "You left me there."
---
Elias stared at the drawing for a long time.
Something inside him shook loose.
A pressure behind the eyes. A weight in the chest.
Then the whispers returned.
Clearer now.
> "You promised."
> "Don't lie."
> "He's not the only one inside."
---
He stumbled into the bathroom again. Stared at his reflection.
It stared back.
He whispered, "What did I forget?"
The reflection smiled.
And this time — his lips didn't move.
Only the reflection smiled.
The mirror shattered with a sound like a scream.
And In the shards that fell to the floor, Elias saw something impossible:
Not his face.
Not the Revenant's grin.
But a child.
Sitting. Waiting.
And in the child's eyes — a question.
> "Why did you leave me?"
Elias stumbled backward, gasping — and that's when he saw it.
His hands.
Drenched in red.
Not crayon. Not paint.
Wet. Sticky. Fresh.
Blood.
It coated his fingertips, streaked his palms, soaked the sleeves of his shirt. But there were no wounds. No pain.
Just blood.
And the sound of something breathing — not from his lungs, but from the mirror shards around him.
Then darkness swelled in the corners of his vision.
The world tilted.
And he fell.
---
End of Act I.
(Chapter 6 will begin with Elias waking up — his hands clean, the blood gone, the mirror whole — as if none of it ever happened.)