"Some mirrors don't show who you are. They show what's been carved away to make you."
—------
The reflection didn't blink.
Because it wasn't mine.
I stood in front of the mirror, breath caught in my throat, watching the glass pulse faintly like it had a heartbeat. Within it, seven figures took shape—women with my face, my posture, but not my eyes. Not my soul.
The first wore chains around her wrists, eyes hollow and lips sewn shut with silver thread.
The second was soaked in blood—fresh, glistening—as if caught in the act of dying.
The third smiled sweetly, clad in a white gown trimmed with crimson lace. A veil on her head. A ring on her finger.
Behind her, Gustav.
But not the Gustav I knew.
This one knelt before her, placing a crown of thorns on her brow.
I stumbled backward.
"What is this?" I whispered.
The mirror shimmered in response. No voice. No answers. Just… memory.
Only it wasn't mine.
Not yet.
—------
"I heard you crying," Gustav said later that night, his voice barely above the hum of the street outside. We sat across from each other in his study, surrounded by stacks of old books and flickering candlelight.
"I wasn't," I lied.
He looked down, fingers wrapped around a chipped ceramic mug. "Not with your mouth, maybe. But the version of you in my head? She screamed."
I froze. "What are you talking about?"
He glanced at the mirror in the corner—just a simple oval relic in a blackwood frame, or so it seemed. "Lately… there's been more than one of you up here." He tapped the side of his temple gently. "They speak at night. Fragments. Like broken film reels."
"What do they say?"
His eyes darkened. "They beg. They warn. One calls me husband. Another calls me traitor."
I swallowed. "And you believe them?"
"I believe something in you was torn," he said. "And it's trying to return through the cracks."
I stood abruptly, chest tight. "No. This is just some psychological—some subconscious projection. I'm not some vessel for dead versions of myself."
"Then why do you bleed when they dream?" he said quietly.
I paused. "What?"
He pointed. "Your wrist."
I looked down. A thin scratch bloomed across my skin. I hadn't noticed it. Hadn't felt it.
But it was fresh.
Gustav sighed, his thumb brushing his temple. "And now I'm hearing their voices. Not dreams. Not echoes. They're starting to speak through me."
I turned toward him sharply. "You mean, like… possession?"
He shook his head. "Not like that. More like… interference. Static. Sometimes I'll be reading, and suddenly a thought enters my head that doesn't feel like mine. A line of poetry I've never written. A memory of you… that I've never lived."
My hands gripped the edge of the mirror table. "Are they all me?"
He didn't answer immediately. But I could see it in his face.
"Yes," he finally whispered. "They're all you. Different lives, different endings. But all from the same origin."
I looked up at the mirror again. Its surface had changed without sound or signal. It now showed a corridor lined with candles. At the end of it stood seven doors. Each etched with a sigil. Each glowing faintly.
"What are they?" I asked.
"Rooms," Gustav said. "Or maybe prisons. Or memories. You'll have to step through each to pull them back."
The image rippled.
Suddenly we were watching a wedding.
A crimson chapel. Candles floating mid-air. A woman in red—me—walking toward the altar. A man waited at the end. Gustav. His hair longer. His eyes... older. Haunted.
"I've seen this in dreams," I murmured.
Gustav didn't speak. His face was blank. But his knuckles were white around the edge of the mirror stand.
The vision shifted again.
Now Clara was in chains, kneeling before a cracked mirror. Her eyes were red-rimmed. Her mouth stitched shut.
Another shift.
She stood in front of a blackened throne, dressed in mourning silk, a crown of bone resting on her brow.
"I don't understand," I whispered. "Which one of these am I?"
"All of them," Gustav said, voice hoarse. "But none of them completely."
Then, a final version appeared.
A woman—my face again—standing behind a burning library. Her hand raised. Her mouth open in a scream that shattered the mirror in the vision.
And just like that, the glass went dark.
Gustav stumbled backward, as if drained.
"I think… they're trying to reach you. All of them," he said. "But not all want the same thing."
I looked down at my hands. They were shaking.
"I thought this was about saving the versions of me trapped inside," I said. "But what if some of them don't want to be saved?"
Gustav's silence was answer enough.
I walked toward the Codex resting on the pedestal nearby. Its pages had begun to turn on their own. Slowly. Deliberately. As if it were searching for something.
It stopped on an illustration.
A seven-pointed mirror. Each shard bore a different version of Clara. Underneath was an inscription, written in a language I didn't know, but could somehow read:
"To reunite the soul, one must bleed with each of its faces."
I stepped back, cold all over.
"They won't come easily, will they?"
"No," Gustav said quietly. "Some will fight you. Some… might want to replace you."
My chest tightened. "How do I even begin?"
He placed a hand over mine. "By remembering what it means to be whole."
We stood there for a long moment.
Then the mirror pulsed.
This time, it didn't show me any Clara.
It showed Bathory.
Watching.
Smiling.
And whispering my name.
—------
The candelabras in the vault room burned lower that night, casting trembling shadows across the walls. Gustav and I stood before the Codex again.
He opened it to a page I hadn't seen before.
A wedding scene.
A woman in crimson.
A man cloaked in black.
Their hands bound in a ritual circle of salt, ash, and blood.
I leaned closer.
Her name—Clarae.
His—Gustavus.
"I think this was us," I said. "A long time ago."
He nodded. "Or what we were meant to be. Before the mirror twisted the story."
Suddenly, the Codex's ink bled—letters shifting, rearranging, smearing like wet paint. The page shivered beneath my fingers.
In the mirror beside us, the scene played out.
The wedding.
The kiss.
The sudden scream.
The bride's mouth opened wide in a silent scream as Gustav's mirror-self plunged a blade into her heart. Blood bloomed across her crimson gown like ink in water.
I staggered back.
"That's not who I am," I whispered. "That version—she chose wrong. I won't be her."
Gustav's voice was hollow. "It's what one of you did."
The mirror fractured again—just slightly.
This time, the crack ran across the veiled Clara's face.
—------
When I closed my eyes that night, I saw them again.
My other selves.
One stood over a battlefield, fire in her hands.
Another wept beside a crib of bone and roses.
One stood alone, clutching a dagger, whispering a name I couldn't hear.
And behind them all, the girl in red.
Not me.
But waiting.
Always waiting.
"You're not the original," she whispered in the dream. "Just the last one who still believes she is."
—------