Morning light filtered through the blinds, fashioning Ethan's bathroom into a stage upon which the confused man discovered all of yesterday's hopes crushed. The fluorescent light biting down upon his weary face revealed faintly Chen's eyes-red, slightly bruised jaw, and witty reminders of last night's mayhem. Room 4A had not turned out to be something he'd remember with great fondness. One last wrong blink of an already riveted eye, and his reflection became a thing-the glass, now somewhat mocking.
It registers as there—a second delay. A deflection of some sort along the glass. It's still there. Watching. Mimicking. Waiting. A chill creeps along Ethan's spine. Something is terribly wrong here. He rests his trembling hand on the porcelain sink, as though grounding himself against the very real and far-too-authentic scorn of his reflection. "You're not me," he whispers, a quivering, fearful, confused sound barely spilling from his throat.
The mockery smiles, its grin stretching uncomfortably beyond all human proportions, its mouth becoming suddenly too filled with too many teeth. That's it, Ethan backs away, nearly skidding on the shiny floor, heart pounding like never before. He looks and finds a perfectly normal-looking guy—bloodshot eyes and faint bruise blooming on his jaw, simply him. But he knows what he saw, is sure, and knows whatever he saw is still very much in existence, lurking just below the surface, biding its time for the perfect moment to strike.
But it remembers. And so does he. Not just the room. Olivia. She was there. She disappeared. Faded like a shadow under the Hollowed's influence. But somehow, the world kept turning. Her name isn't on the attendance sheet anymore. Her desk went missing. People walk past her locker without a second glance, as if she has never existed at all. She's been erased. And he might be next.
In the Harrington High Library that same afternoon, the stuffy old world, laden with musty book covers and monogamous dust, clung on to Noah Price as he bent low over a tattered volume on restricted archival shelves, whispering for dear life, like his life depended on it. "Entities like the Hollowed... they feed on awareness," he says, pressing down on the page, which is littered with a yellowed newsprint that crumbles at his touch. "It doesn't kill right away—it replaces. First your memories, then your presence, and finally..."
"Your face," Ethan finishes, a word that escaped him like a confession. Noah's words weigh down on him like a thick fog, and for a moment, he feels numb.
Noah nodded gravely. "It's why no one remembers Grace. Or Olivia."
"She was just here, Noah. We were...she helped us." Strains of Olivia's laughter ring in his head, drifting far off like distant thunder.
"I know, man. But it's already starting. The Hollowed isn't a ghost—it's a pattern. A fracture. The more you acknowledge it, the more it can enter you."
"Then what do we do? Forget it?" Ethan raised his voice as his frustration erupted.
Noah sighed and stroked his hair. "That's the trap. If you forget it, it gets stronger. If you remember it, it pulls closer."
Ethan slammed the book shut, making it reverberate through the library like a gunshot. There has to be another way!
Across the library, a familiar voice cut through the quiet. Maybe there is...
Irene. She stands by the window, untouched by the sun, like light refuses to reach her. Unsettlingly calm at once, her presence shifts gravity as she speaks.
Noah stiffened. "She shouldn't be here."
"I live here," Irene states, utterly inscrutable. "Like the Hollowed does. We were born in the same breath."
Ethan looks at her, the desperation writhing in his gut. "You knew about Olivia. About all of this. Why didn't you warn me?"
"I did," she says softly, her voice a lingering sigh. "But you wouldn't have believed me until you saw it. Until you felt it take something from you."
Her gaze flicks to the mirror mounted on the wall behind the library desk. At that moment, Ethan feels an icy shudder roll down his spine. The mirror ripples, distorting the library's image.
Ethan turns around. In the reflection, Noah has disappeared. Ethan finds himself standing alone with Irene—and another version of himself, unnaturally still.
Ethan wouldn't let himself turn around. "Don't move," he muttered, paralyzed by fear, his heart racing.
The reflected Ethan smiled-more teeth, too long, far too many. It swung its head round hundred-and-eighty-degrees and began to walk into the mirror, vanishing into the glass.
The mirror has cracked wide, with fissures spreading like majestic spider webs upon its surface. Ethan could feel the ever-increasing dread permeating the air like some unnameable odor.
That night, Ethan slapped awake from the hypnotism of silence sinking too thickly against the very walls of his dorm. Greatly awake was the tension of an intellect, pressing against fears. The ceiling stared down at him; Grace's notebook lay wide open nearby. Her fading sketchings now shifted beneath the silver sheen of moonlight-melting, quaking ink. One had prophesied Olivia, her hollow eyes, pressed as though in resignation against an imaginary glass pane behind which she is trapped.
Mirror.
Awake! The thought crashed into him by a tidal wave. The Hollowed isn't lurking for now. The Hollowed is using the mirrors. That was why Olivia was taken. That was why the other version of him was always near one. The room, the creature, the distortions-all tied back into reflections. Into perception.
Ethan leaped from his bed, flinging the sheet across the mirror, half-desperate to ward off whatever might fly through. He gripped his phone, fingers shaking, and furiously messaged Liam:
Ethan: I need to talk. Now. Don't sleep.
Outside the dorms, at 2:34 in the morning, Liam appears, hood pulled tight around his face, eyes darting like a rabbit gone mad. "I don't know how you're still here, man. After Olivia—after Grace—I thought you were next.
"I might be," Ethan says, voice even lower and graver now. "But I think I know how it's getting to us. Mirrors. Screens . . . Reflections."
Liam stiffens, fear replacing concern on his feature. "Then you saw it too."
"What?" Ethan's heart raced.
"My reflection. It wasn't me."
Ethan gaped at him, disbelief dawning. "When?"
"Two nights ago. I was brushing my teeth, and... it blinked when I didn't. Just like you said. I haven't looked in a mirror since."
"Then it must have already touched you," Ethan whispers, knotted cold in his stomach. "It's watching you now."
Liam's face pales even more, draining of any color. "So now what do we do?"
"We find Olivia," he stated, firm with determination. "I will not let her be forgotten."
The abandoned east wing of Harrington High stands in heavy darkness, thick with dust and with the weight of memories forgotten. Noah meets them barely before dawn, in a flashlight glow that parts the gloom. "The year books go back to 1950 in here. The last confirmed list of 4A students before the fire is here too."
He presses into the dusty archive, each creak of the floor like a scream of their fears in the silence. Ethan flips through aged documents, his heart thundering with expectation. Then—he finds it.
A group photo. Class 4A, 2010. All faces smudged—deliberately blurred. All but one.
Irene.
Dead center, expression unsmiling. A faint shimmer behind her, like heat off the pavement, a distortion that sends shivers down Ethan's spine.
"Guys..." Ethan holds it high, tone trembling from urgency.
Before he can say anything more, a shattering wave of sound—the thousand screams of fading souls—pierces the air as every mirror in the archives smashes.
The voice—a low, wet human-less hiss—slithered through the shattered glass: "You still remember."
Liam screams, and his scream rocks the archives.
Ethan spins just in time to see a hand—charred, elongated, stitched with faces—grabbing Liam's shoulder from a shard of mirror glass. It pulls.
"No!" Ethan lunges, gripping the other arm. "I won't let it take you!"
Glassiness covers Liam's eyes. His face collapses, a light fading away on the face. His mouth twitched open, and then,
SNAP.
Ethan stares at the wreck in horror, with disbelief consuming him. Liam breathes, but something else wears his face; a twisted mockery of his friend.
The Hollowed has him.
Noah yanks Ethan sideways with urgency. "We need to go! NOW!"
Ethan pulls away, heartbroken, feeling as though he'd lost much more than a friend. Behind them, Liam stands up. Clapping. Watching.
Outside, at dawn, Irene looks on, expression inscrutable.
"You said the Hollowed and you were born in the same breath," Ethan said, breathless, words spilling out like confessions. "What does that mean?"
She waits to answer. Instead, she reaches out and very lightly touches Ethan's temple with her fingertips.
And suddenly—he sees.
A burning classroom. Screams. Ashes swirling around children. A girl at the center—untouched. Unchanged.
Irene.
But behind her sat another version of her. Smiling. Hollow-eyed. Wearing her body like a costume, a grotesque imitation.
That one was not Irene.
"I was the last one remaining," she whispers, sorrowful. "So it wore my shape. But part of me remained alive."
She turned to Ethan, her gaze weighted with unspoken truths. "You're part of it now. It marked you. But that means you can reach Olivia. You can pull her back."
Ethan swallowed hard, fighting against fear and determination. "How?"
"You'll have to go where she is. Into the glass."
A few moments later, back in the dorm, Ethan stands in front of the covered mirror, his heart racing. He pulls away the blanket, revealing the glass that had become a portal to his nightmares.
He leans in, presses his palm onto the cold film, feeling it ripple under his touch.
And then it swallowed him whole, engulfed by the darkness, as the world dissolved around him into discordant whispers and shadows that spiralled into the unknown.