"Some mirrors lie. The most dangerous ones go quiet."
----------
The apartment was too still.
Clara moved like a diver between worlds — careful, deliberate, breath caught behind her ribs. Every surface reflected too little. Or too much. The spoon on the counter, the faucet in the sink, even the puddle of water beneath a dying plant — they all offered... nothing.
No reflection. Not even a blur.
"Gustav," she called quietly.
He was already watching. Across the room, he'd lifted the compact mirror from Naomi's things. It was open. Nothing stared back.
"I think it's begun," he said, his voice low. "The mirror-silence."
Clara blinked at her own hands. Turned them. No light bent off them anymore.
She approached the wall mirror — the one near the window — and stood before it.
Nothing.
Not even a shadow.
Just glass. Still. Unknowing.
Her throat tightened. "It's like… we don't exist."
"No," Gustav said. "It's like the world no longer wants to see us."
He stepped up beside her. "This is the gate's whisper. It means Irene is waiting."
A pause.
"And it means Bathory knows."
They turned in sync, eyes scanning the room. The spiral on Clara's hand itched. A pressure behind her sternum, like a word pressing to be spoken.
She moved to the desk. Opened her journal.
Her handwriting no longer looked like hers.
Seven lines appeared across the page — unbidden — parallel and clean. Then, at the center, a spiral, drawn in ink darker than her pen allowed.
Clara stared.
3:13
Below it, two more words formed:
Mirror Sleeps.
She looked at Gustav. He nodded once, gravely. "We have to move. Now."
—-------
In the museum,
The halls greeted them with coldness. Not chill — but vacancy. As if the entire building held its breath.
Cameras flickered static. Motion sensors ignored them.
They passed rows of relics. Paintings. Masks. Shards of glass once sacred.
But all the mirrors? Covered in dust. Or veiled in velvet. Or blank.
No reflections. No distortion. No echo of anything.
They were unseen by the world now. Not hidden. Just… not there.
Clara gripped Gustav's hand tighter.
"What if the mirror doesn't let us back?"
He didn't answer right away.
Then: "Then we'll make sure we don't need to come back."
—-----
They descended deeper.
The floor below the main archive was colder, quieter. Even the creaks of wood didn't echo here.
Clara paused at the bottom stair.
"Why now?" she asked.
Gustav flicked on the small lantern. It glowed dull. Almost ashamed to be burning.
"Because the hour approaches. Irene appears only when the world forgets its own reflection — when silence reaches the mirror's core."
Clara looked down the hallway. It was darker than before. No electric buzz. No glow from emergency strips.
Only the scent of dust, ink, and old vows.
She nodded. "Then let's forget who we are… and find out what we've been."
—-------
Halfway down the corridor, the wall to their right shifted.
It didn't move. It... acknowledged.
The bricks shimmered faintly.
Clara stopped. "This is it."
Gustav pressed a hand against it.
Nothing happened.
Clara lifted her hand — the spiral still faintly glowing — and touched the brick.
It exhaled.
A low groan echoed in the stone.
The spiral on her palm flared. The brick pulsed once, like a living thing. Then split.
Stone peeled itself aside in a perfect circle.
Behind it: blackness.
No color. No light. No sound.
Gustav stepped forward, but Clara caught his wrist.
"It's 3:12."
He checked his watch. Then hers. Then the clock on the hall wall.
All synced.
3:12:46.
Clara's heart pounded.
"The mirror's asleep for exactly one minute," Gustav said. "From 3:13:00 to 3:13:59."
"If we don't enter before 3:14—"
"We don't enter at all."
Clara leaned against the cold wall, her breath shaky. "Gustav... why do I feel like I've died here before?"
Gustav didn't meet her gaze. He was staring at the floor, lips tight. "Because in at least one version, you did."
Clara flinched.
He finally looked at her. "I don't mean in this life. But in a mirror like this one — when you tried to open it without me. You bled too much. And no one was there to remember you."
She shook her head. "Then how do you know that version existed?"
He touched the Codex pages folded in his coat pocket. "Because I read her name. Carved into a table. By a woman named Irene."
That name again. Irene.
The one who kept threading through the story like a breath not fully taken.
"Do you trust her?" Clara asked.
Gustav hesitated.
"I trust what she wants," he answered. "She doesn't want to save us. She wants us to remember why we needed saving in the first place."
That didn't make her feel better.
Gustav stepped closer to the shifting wall. The pattern of the bricks had begun glowing faintly — not with light, but with absence. As if something invisible was brushing them from the inside.
Suddenly, a noise behind them.
A single shattering sound.
Clara turned.
On the floor — a shard of glass. Small. Gleaming. Breathing.
It hadn't been there before.
She approached it cautiously.
It reflected her — but not her now. A version of herself in a white dress, covered in ash. Eyes wide with grief. Hands outstretched.
Then it flickered. The reflection shifted.
Now she wore a blood-red veil, eyes closed, mouth stitched shut.
She gasped.
"Don't look at it," Gustav said sharply, snatching the shard away. "Those are fragments Bathory left behind. Remnants. She knows we're close."
Clara swallowed. "She's watching?"
"She always is. But she can't touch us while the mirror is asleep. That's the only reason we're still breathing."
Clara exhaled slowly. "So we run while the devil naps."
Gustav half-smiled. "Something like that."
They stepped further down the corridor.
Clara began to notice strange details.
The walls were carved, but not with symbols. With faces.
Hundreds of them. Frozen in anguish, ecstasy, rage. Like frozen screams caught mid-birth.
"They're not real," Gustav said. "They're impressions."
"Of what?"
He hesitated. "Reflections that wanted to become real. But weren't chosen."
Clara's blood chilled.
"You mean… failed versions of me?"
He nodded. "Some of them were almost you. But they made different choices. Some chose hate. Some chose silence."
She stared at one that looked eerily like her — except the mouth was filled with thorns.
"They look like they're still in pain."
"They are," Gustav whispered. "Because they still believe they're alive."
Clara stepped away from the wall, breath catching in her throat.
"How many times have we done this?" she asked. "Not just in this life, I mean. All of this — the mirror, the spiral, the door."
Gustav's voice was a thread. "Seven times. That we know of."
"And how many times have we failed?"
He didn't answer. That was the answer.
---------
Clara stopped walking.
"Why keep trying?" she asked. "Why not let the curse complete itself?"
Gustav turned to face her.
"Because there's one thing Bathory doesn't understand."
"What's that?"
"That love — real love — remembers."
Even if time forgets.
Even if lives reset.
Even if versions rot behind glass.
It remembers.
Clara felt something tighten behind her ribs. Not pain. Not fear.
Hope.
Dangerous, fragile, unwelcome — but still there.
Gustav lifted her hand again. The spiral pulsed faintly. Warmer now.
"This is your memory trying to come home," he said. "And when it aligns with mine… the mirror won't be able to lie anymore."
--------
The countdown began in silence.
At 3:12:56, the wind in the corridor stopped.
At 3:12:59, even the hum of the Earth seemed to die.
Then—3:13:00.
The spiral flared gold.
The passage yawned open wider — a breath made of centuries.
Clara stepped first.
Behind her, the museum trembled.
Every small mirror — from hand mirror to display case — cracked.
Not shattered.
Cracked.
As if it had blinked once and decided not to open again.
They passed through.
The veil closed behind them at 3:13:59.
And silence claimed the world again.
—------