First-person – Emrys POV
I didn't sleep. Didn't sit. Didn't even blink for what felt like hours.
My body moved before I thought. My hands still sticky with mirror dust and blood—not mine. I think.
Every hallway blended into the next, but I kept moving. Kept breathing. That was enough.
I don't know how long it took before I stopped.
A control room up ahead, half-filled with moonlight from a broken skylight. Broken monitors, ripped wires like mechanical veins slithering along the floor. The air reeked of metal and something sweet—like rotten sugar.
I crept in slowly.
And that's when I saw the mirror.
Or what was left of one.
It was tilted on the wall, half of it shattered like a spiderweb under glass. I caught my own reflection in the largest unbroken shard.
It looked like me at first. Pale. Hollow-eyed. Drained.
Then it smiled.
I didn't.
My stomach dropped.
That's when I first noticed Glass Face.
It didn't move. Just stood there in the shard, that frozen grin stretching wider than human skin can handle. Its face was mine, but broken—hairline fractures down its cheeks, bleeding something black that pulsed like it was alive.
My reflection should have ended at the glass. But I could feel it watching me beyond that surface, like it had weight. Like it was attempting to get out.
The room turned cold.
I turned away, heart racing in my chest, and that's when I heard the footsteps.
Not heavy. Not fast. Just… deliberate.
I grabbed a piece of rusted metal rod from the debris around me and stepped out into the hallway again, blood still racing in my ears.
Someone emerged from the far corridor—slow, stooped a little, moving like they were half-dragging themselves.
My breath caught.
Bliss.
She looked… older. Worn. Her body lean and tight as a wire coiled and ready to spring. Skin pale, spotted with old scars and bruising dark. Her hair was longer now, matted like she hadn't touched it in weeks—or more.
But the worst?
Her eyes didn't match. One was her old green. The other was gold, shining subtly beneath the surface.
Possessed.
Or close.
"Emrys?" she whispered.
It wasn't the name. It was the way she said it—like she wasn't sure I existed or not.
I didn't answer.
We simply stood there, breathing in the same stale air. She was leaning against the wall, her body twitching every few moments, like she was fighting something inside her.
"You're not supposed to be here," she said finally.
"Neither are you," I replied.
A bitter smile distorted her lips, then vanished.
"They held me here once Soren vanished," she said to him. "Said I was… salvageable. Whatever that was meant to imply."
"You survived?"
"Parts of me did."
There was silence. Heavy with old ghosts.
She rooted around in her coat and produced a small metal box. Within: a shard of mirror wrapped in cloth.
"This one doesn't lie," she said, handing it to me. "You can see things. Glimpses. The mirror doesn't show your face—it shows your echo."
I didn't want to look. But I did.
I saw myself in the lab. Screaming. Alone. But then my face changed.
Not distorted. Not monstrous.
Just… empty.
Like something had finally drained everything.
I looked up at her. "Bliss, what's happening to me?"
Her hand clenched suddenly. Her spine arched in a sharp bow. When she opened her mouth, her voice wasn't hers.
"You were never meant to leave the mirror."
Her body flung forward again. She gasped, falling to her knees, clawing at her head.
I dropped down beside her, not knowing what the hell to do.
"It's getting worse," she ground out. "He's waking up. The first one."
Glass Face.
She glanced up at me, eyes wide and with a fear I had not seen during the old days.
"You want answers? They're in the Lower Wing. That's where they hid the first mirror. The one that split the first Subject."
"Why me?" I questioned.
"Because you're not only a survivor, Emrys."
She smiled now. The sort that did not reach her eyes.
"You're what they were trying to create."
She tried to stand, but her legs failed her. I caught her. For a moment, there was only us, breathing together in the silence of something forgotten. Something buried.
And then her eyes rolled back.
She convulsed once—violently. I held on. But she was cold now. Not dead.
Just elsewhere.
"Bliss," I said, shaking her gently. "Stay with me."
Her mouth worked. Her voice came low, raspy.
"The mirror remembers everything. Even what we forget."
I backed away. The hall light sputtered.
The shattered mirror behind me pulsed.
Glass Face watched again.
And this time… he waved.
I ran.
Not far, but fast. I dragged Bliss's body into a nearby storage room and barricaded the door. She was unconscious—or worse. I couldn't tell. But I wasn't leaving her.
I sat in the dark, staring into the broken shard she'd given me. My face stared back—expressionless.
But behind it?
A smile. Waiting.
I pressed the mirror to my chest.
Lower Wing.
Whatever lived down there wasn't waiting for me just yet. It knew me.
And I think… a part of me knew it, too.
I don't know how long I sat there.
Time slips in places like this. It stretches, warps—folds over itself until minutes feel like memories and hours feel like lies.
Bliss didn't wake.
Her breathing was shallow, but steady. Whatever that thing inside her was, it had gone quiet. For now.
The mirror shard in my hand had gone cold.
I held it up to the dim light, watching the way my reflection stared back. Still me. Still hollow. Still not smiling.
But behind me… shadows moved.
Just the flicker of something in the far edge of the glass. Too quick. Too quiet. But it was there.
I lowered it fast.
Nope. Not today.
I tucked it into my jacket and stood.
The air in the storage room had gone heavy, like the walls were exhaling something old. Dust spiraled in slow motion through a shaft of flickering emergency light, and every sound—Bliss's breath, my heartbeat, the soft hum of electricity—felt too loud.
And then I heard it.
Tap.
A soft, deliberate sound. Like fingernails on glass.
I turned.
The only reflective surface in the room was an old metal panel. Scratched, warped—but still just enough to reflect. Barely.
And in it… a hand.
Pressed flat against the inside.
Long fingers. Too long. And a smile curling just beyond the edge of the reflection.
Not on the face. On the mirror itself.
I blinked. Gone.
The shard in my jacket buzzed faintly. Vibrating against my ribs like a phone call from the other side.
I ignored it.
Instead, I checked Bliss's pulse. Still there. Faint, but real. I couldn't carry her far, not down into the Lower Wing—not yet. So I did the only thing I could do:
I left her.
I whispered something stupid like "I'll be back"—because that's what people say in horror stories right before they die. But I meant it.
I wasn't leaving her for long.
The hallway outside felt colder. The mirrors on the walls—just fragments now—seemed to lean inward. Like they were listening.
I passed one.
It showed my reflection walking a half-second behind.
Not delayed.
Just… late.
The stairs to the Lower Wing were hidden behind a sealed door at the end of the western corridor. Bliss must've hacked the access at some point, because the panel was half-torn off and the keypad was fried.
But the door was ajar.
The kind of open that wasn't from human hands.
The kind of open that was an invitation.
I stepped through.
It was dark.
Like the light itself had been sucked out. Like even the air didn't want to be there. I clicked on my flashlight.
The beam barely cut the black.
The walls were covered in mirrored panels—some shattered, some warped, all wrong. My own reflection stared at me from dozens of angles.
None of them matched.
One blinked. I didn't.
Another turned its head slowly to look at me after I passed it.
They weren't mirrors.
They were windows.
And something on the other side was learning my face.