THE REFLECTION THAT BREATHED

The mirror had been in Clara’s family for generations-a tall, silver-framed monstrosity that stood in the upstairs hallway like a sentry. No one remembered who bought it, or why it never reflected quite right. When Clara moved into her grandmother’s old house, she kept it only because it wouldn’t fit down the stairs to throw out.

The first time she noticed something was off, it was small. She brushed her teeth one morning and saw just behind her shoulder in the mirror’s reflection, the faintest fog of breath against the glass. She turned around. The air was still. Cold, but still.

She wiped the mirror clean. Her reflection wiped a second later. Not at the same time.

She laughed it off-old house. Warped glass. Drafty halls.

But that night, as she passed the mirror again, she saw herself standing there a half-second too long after she’d already moved on. Her reflection blinked when she didn’t.

That’s when she covered it with a sheet.

For three nights, she ignored it. She told herself the silence upstairs was normal, that the creaking was just wood settling. But on the fourth night, around 3 am, she woke to the sound of fabric sliding across the floor.

She sat up, heart pounding. Something white moved in the hallway-a shape dragging itself, slow and careful.

The sheet.

She grabbed her phone, its flashlight trembling in her hand and stepped into the hall. The sheet lay pooled on the floor before the mirror. The air smelled faintly of dust and something sharp, like ozone.

The mirror was uncovered.

And her reflection was smiling.

Clara froze. Her mouth stayed closed, but in the glass, her reflection tilted its head, grin stretching wider until it looked painful. Its breath fogged the inside of the mirror again, only this time, letters appeared in the mist.

Let Me Out.

She stumbled back. “No.”

The reflection’s hand pressed against the glass. The surface rippled. A faint, wet sound filled the hall like fingertips dragging through meat.

Let. Me. Out.

Clara turned and ran for the stairs, but halfway down, she heard it-another set of footsteps matching hers but heavier. When she looked back, the mirror at the top of the stairs was empty.

Empty.

And she could hear breathing right behind her ear.

When the police arrived the next morning, they found the front door wide open, a sheet half-dragged across the floor, and the mirror standing spotless.

In its surface, a young woman stared back-eyes wide, mouth frozen mid-scream.

But there was no one in the house.

Part Two-The house on Wren Hill

By the time the police left, the neighbors had gathered in the yard-murmuring about the noises they’d heard, the flashing lights, the open door. The officer said Clara was “missing,” but Mrs. Hammond, the elderly neighbor who’d known Clara’s grandmother, said quietly, “No ever really leaves that house.”

For a week, the old place stood silent. But on the eighth night, a realtor unlocked the front door to prepare the listing.

She was a brisk woman named Tessa Vaughn-practical, unsentimental. The kind of person who didn’t believe in ghost. But as she walked through the rooms with her clipboard, she noticed the heavy antique mirror still standing at the top of the stairs.

“Nice piece,” she muttered tapping the frame. The silver was tarnished, etched with curling leaves and strange geometric symbols that looked older than the house itself.

When she turned to leave, she caught her reflection staring after her-expression blank, unblinking.

Tessa frowned. She stepped closer, her reflection did not.

Instead, it tilted its head slightly, the way someone might when studying and insect.

A bead of cold sweat crawled down her back. She raised her hand, the reflection stayed still for a full heartbeat before mirroring her.

“Old glass,” she whispered. “Just old glass.”

But as she turned away a voice whispered her name. Tessa. Soft and rasping, like breath sliding along the inside of her ear.

She spun around. Empty hallway.

Then she noticed the faint outline of another handprint on the inside of the mirror. Not hers. Smaller.

That night she dreamed she was standing in the same hallway, only everything was reversed. The wallpaper peeled from the opposite side. The air shimmered. She looked into the mirror and saw a woman pounding from the other side-Clara.

Her mouth moved desperate, frantic. The words came in silent bursts.

“It’s not a mirror. It’s a door.”

Tessa woke gasping, fingers icy, her reflection already watching her from the dark window glass.

She told herself it was just stress. A bad dream. But when she went back to the house the next morning, something had changed.

The mirror wasn’t on the wall anymore.

It stood in the middle of the hallway, tilted slightly as if something had pushed it from behind.

And behind the glass, the reflection wasn’t hers at all.

It was Clara’s. Pale. Hollowed eyed. Smiling.

Downstairs, the front door slammed shut. The mirror rattled violently, then stilled.

From within the glass, a new message appeared, written in fog:

Two Inside. One To Go.

And when the neighbors next passed the house, they swore they saw two figures moving behind the upstairs window-one standing still, one screaming soundlessly.

Part Three: The Maker’s Mark

Three weeks after Tessa Vaughn vanished, the house on Wren Hill was declared condemned.

No wanted to touch it. Contractors refused to go near. The power company cut the line after reporting “unexplained surges.

But late one afternoon, a man named Eli Mercer arrived in a mud-splattered truck. He was a historian for the county-sent to catalog items before demolition.

He wasn’t a believer, not really. He’d heard the stories: People disappearing, the mirror moving, voices whispering in the walls. He’d heard Mrs. Hammond’s claim that the mirror predated the house entirely, that Clara’s great-grandmother had brought it from “the old country.”

“Let’s see what you really are,” he murmured, setting up his camera.

Dust drifted in the stale air. The hall smelled faintly of mildew and iron. The mirror stood at the top of the stairs, uncovered now, gleaming faintly though no light reached it.

Eli crouched, inspecting the frame. There, along the bottom of the edge, he found a signature:

M. Corven-1784

The name sent a chill through him. He’d seen it before-in the archives, on a collection of banned objections known as the Corven Mirrors, commissioned by an occultist in the late 1700’s, each was rumored to hold “a spirit twin,” created by binding a human soul to glass through ritual sacrifice. Most had been destroyed.

Most.

He took a photo. When the flash went off, the screen glitched-half the image replaced by a warped human face, mouth stretched in a scream.

He looked up. His reflection stood too close. Far too close.

“Okay,” he whispered, backing away. “You’re not real.”

The reflection tilted its head-first one way, then the other-and whispered back, “Neither are you.”

The voice came from behind him.

Eli spun around, heart hammering. Empty hall.

When he turned back, there were three figures in the glass now-Tessa, Clara and something else. The third one looked like him, but its eyes were all wrong.

Dark. Wet. Infinite.

He stumbled backward, tripping over the sheet on the floor. The mirror shuddered, the glass rippling like water, and then he heard the faintest knock from inside-three slow raps, deliberate and patient.

Then a whisper.

“Let me trade.”

The surface bulged outward. A hand-human, cold, dripping with something black and-thick-pressed through.

Eli screamed. The mirror shattered outward, the sound splintering through the whole house like thunder.

When the neighbors came later, drawn by the noise, they found the hallway empty. Shards of glass everywhere. But when they looked into the largest piece, they didn’t see themselves.

They saw four people.

All standing very still.

All smiling.

And one of them-a man with Eli’s face-was pressing a hand against the inside of the shard, whispering, just faintly enough to hear if you lean in close.

“Your turn.”