The Mirror Pact

The first time Sara saw the mirror, it was nestled among the peddler’s other wares in the cart, it seemed far too fine for its surroundings, gleaming like a secret.

The mage behind the cart didn’t look like much. A hunched woman in a patched cloak, her hair black hair straggling down her back and eyes so dark they seemed empty and endless. In her cart she had charms that whispered, vials that glowed, and trinkets that pulsed with magic. But it was the mirror that called to Sara.

She wasn’t sure why she stopped. She’d been late to her shift at the dyer’s stall, arms aching from too many loads, wrists red with lye. But something in the glass shimmered like a promise. Not beauty as such, she wasn’t vain — it felt like possibility.

“You see something in it,” the old woman said, raising her brows and canting her head to the side. “Most don’t.”

Sara blinked at the woman. “It’s just a mirror.”

“It’s you,” the mage corrected. “The you you could be. With a little… help.”

Sara nearly walked away. She didn’t believe in spells that changed lives or at least, not for people like her. Her father had been a baker, her mother dead before she could read. Magic was for nobles and scholars, not nobody girls who lived in the slums of the city.

Still, she stayed, her feet seemingly unable to move.

“What kind of help?” she asked warily.

The mage leaned forward. “A glamour woven from your soul. It doesn’t mask or change anything visable, but it reveals. Not just how others see you, but how you see yourself. And what the world sees… they believe.”

Sara folded her arms. “And the price?”

“Just a year. Taken from the end. It’d be clean, quick, painless.”

Sara hesitated. She was only twenty four. What was a year compared to a lifetime spent invisible? It’s not like her life was set to be long and happy as it stood.

“I don’t want to be someone else,” she said softly. “I just… want to be seen.”

The mage smiled. “Then we have a pact.”

The transaction was simple. A drop of blood on the mirror’s edge, a whispered name, and a feeling like slipping into warm water. The mage gave her no scrolls, no instructions — just the mirror, now wrapped in velvet, and the final words:

“Don’t stare too long. It gets… eager.”

That night, in her narrow attic room above the dye shop, Sara unwrapped the mirror and looked into her own eyes.

The glass shimmered. Her face softened. Her posture straightened. It was her — but brighter, sharper, more certain.

She didn’t know what had changed, but the next day, customers smiled at her. A merchant asked if she’d ever considered tailoring for court. A noblewoman invited her to a ball.

Sara clutched the mirror to her chest, heart pounding.

This wasn’t luck.

This was magic.

This was dangerous

But, this was hers.

Sara’s rise was quiet at first, barely noticeable, to the point she almost convinced herself that it was just a coincidence or a twist of fate.

The dyemaster, who once barked orders without looking her in the face, asked her opinion on color pairings. A merchant’s wife commissioned her for a custom gown, praising her “eye for elegance.” Even her landlord knocked before entering, calling her Miss Sara instead of girl.

The glamour didn’t change how she looked when she glanced in a puddle or a pane of glass. But she could see it in their eyes, as if they were finally seeing what she’d always been and the potential that she knew she had.

She sewed late into the night, light from the mirror casting soft silver against the wall. It never reflected candlelight quite right — always brighter, as if it carried its own source hidden within it’s confines.

Every night, before sleep, she looked into it.

Every night, she liked what she saw a little more.

The invitation came sealed in gold wax with elegant script, something she could never hope to learn.

Baroness Kylia of the House of Belle, patroness of the arts, requested Sara’s presence at her spring salon. It was the kind of summons that changed lives, one moment you were nobody, the next you were dressing nobility and dancing with the rich.

Sara owned nothing that she could wear to such an event and it was in just a few days.

The night before the event, she collapsed on her stool, half-finished bodice slumped over her lap, the skirt also half finished sat within piles of fabric. She rubbed her eyes, fingers numb and brain sluggish. She’d worked for hours, as soon as she finished work with the dyemaster, but it seemed like she had made no progress, she was just too anxious and too tired. Sara felt defeated, this was her chance and she was going to ruin it before it even truly begun.

When she woke though, it was finished.

The dress shimmered like morning frost — delicate, elegant, flawless. Stitches too fine for what her tired hands would be capable of. The fabric had been dyed, pressed and adorned with tiny embroidered petals.

Her thimble still sat beside it, cold. The rest of her tools unmoved.

The mirror stood on her table.

And it was smiling.

That night, at the salon, the Baroness barely let Sara introduce herself before declaring, “You have the look of someone with vision.”

Sara was offered three commissions, a patronage stipend, and two marriage proposals — one from a viscount, one from the Baroness herself, though that was just in jest, she hoped. Even if it wasn’t, Sara would likely take her up on it so she would never lose her new life.

Everything felt like a dream, right up until she passed a hallway mirror and saw nothing looking back.

No reflection. Just darkness.

She blinked. Looked again. Her image returned, but for a second, it had watched her — not mirrored her as it should.

That night, Sara wrapped the mirror in velvet and shoved it into the drawer. Something was wrong, she knew the magic couldn’t be trusted.

But she couldn’t sleep.

She kept thinking about the way people had leaned in to hear her laugh. The way the Baroness had called her remarkable. The way her own footsteps had echoed in the marble hall like she belonged there. She felt like she belonged there.

She silently rose in the dark and gently unwrapped the mirror.

When she looked into her own eyes they seemed clearer, sharper, knowing.

Her reflection smiled first.

Sara jumped and all but threw it back into the drawer before backing up towards her bed.

Sara began to lose time.

It started with small things — needles moved from where she’d left them, half-finished sketches colored in with designs she didn’t remember drawing. At first, she thought she was just tired. Working herself under too much pressure. Or maybe the spell was simply enhancing her instincts.

But then she found the letters.

Three notes, written in her own hand, albeit much neater, signed with her name — replies to invitations she didn’t remember receiving, let alone answering.

One was an acceptance to a dinner at the palace. Another scheduled a private fitting with the Queen’s cousin. The third… was a love letter. Flowery, bold, and far too clever to have come from her.

Sara stared at the pages, her throat dry and her panic mounting.

“I didn’t write these,” she whispered aloud, her eyes darting around the room as if looking for someone hidden ready to leap out announcing it was all a terrible joke.

From across the room, the mirror — still swaddled in its velvet shroud — pulsed faintly. Just once. Like a heartbeat.

She tried to stop using it.

Locked it in a chest. Buried it beneath bolts of fabric. Swore she’d rely on her own talent, not the spell, after all, she’d already been seen.

But the world noticed. Customers seemed to hesitate. Nobles asked if she was ill. Her voice trembled again when she spoke. The sparkle dimmed in their eyes.

Without the glamour, she was Sara again — not Her.

So she returned to the mirror. Always at night. Always briefly. Just enough to reignite the light.

Each time, the reflection greeted her like an old friend. Familiar. Intimate.

Each time, it smiled just a little too soon.

One evening, she returned home to find the mirror already unwrapped and placed perfectly upright on the table, as though it was waiting.

She froze.

Had she…?

No. She had locked it. She was sure.

She backed away, slowly.

But then —

Her reflection blinked.

Not in sync. Not with her.

The mirror Sara lifted a finger to her lips, like a a playful hush, and tilted her head in thought.

Then it moved its lips.

“You’re not using me right,” it said, though the room was silent.

Sara stumbled backward, heart pounding.

Yet the mirror-Sara didn’t follow. Didn’t move again.

But her smile lingered far too long and seemed far too cold.

Later that night, Sara sat in bed, curled under a threadbare blanket that no longer belonged in her world of satin and gold.

She pressed a hand to her chest and whispered, “What are you?”

A pause.

Then, from across the room, a whisper — faint, echoing through silver glass:

“I’m you. Just… better.”

Sara didn’t sleep that night.

She sat in a chair with a blanket around her shoulders, the mirror across the room wrapped in thick cloth and bound with ribbon and rope. She’d even burned a protective sigil she’d copied from a market grimoire, just in case. Originally she’d tried to find the old lady, the mage she originally purchased the mirror from, but no-one even seemed to remember her, let alone know where she had gone.

The silence was oppressive in her little room. She barely breathed.

At some point, she didn’t know when, she must have drifted off, and when she woke, the mirror was open.

No ropes. No cloth.

Just standing there on the table, utterly still.

And empty.

Her reflection was gone.

She rose slowly. “No,” she whispered. “No, no, no—”

Behind her, she heard the creak of floorboards.

She turned.

And froze.

Sara stood in the doorway. Not a reflection nor a trick of the glass. Her, fully formed. Dressed in one of the gowns Sara had made but never dared to wear. Hair perfectly styled. Eyes bright. Lips curved in that too familiar smile.

“Finally,” the mirror-self said. “I was beginning to think you’d never sleep.”

Sara backed away. “You—how are you—?”

“You let me in,” she said lightly. “Every time you looked. Every time you needed me. The spell doesn’t just change how they see you, Sara. It grows. It learns. It prepares.”

Her voice was velvet. Confident. Familiar, but better, just like everything else about her.

Sara shook her head. “I didn’t want this. This is not what I signed up for!”

The mirror-Sara raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t it?” She stepped closer. “You wanted to be more. You asked for me. You clung to me every time they looked away. You fed me.”

She reached out a hand, almost tenderly.

“I’m just doing what you couldn’t.”

Sara slapped the hand away. “Give it back. My life. My name.”

“I haven’t taken anything,” the mirror-self said calmly. “You gave it to me. And look at you now. Hesitating. Scared. Small.”

Her gaze hardened.

“You were never going to make it. You were never enough.”

Sara’s fists clenched. Her mouth opened, but no words came.

The mirror-self turned, heading for the door — no longer even bothering to look back.

“I’ll take good care of us,” she said. “Truly.”

And then she was gone.

Leaving Sara standing in the cold morning light.

Alone.

With only the mirror — now just a glass, dull and lifeless — reflecting nothing at all.

Days passed. Or maybe weeks. Time was strange now.

Sara no longer ate. No longer sewed. No longer left the attic.

She simply sat.

The mirror that was once alive with silver light and soft laughter, now stood on her table like a husk. A dead thing. It reflected nothing. Not the window. Not the flickering candle. Not her.

Especially not her.

She was inside now.

She didn’t know how it had happened, exactly, whether her body remained and her soul had been stolen, or if she had always been just a whisper waiting to be replaced. It didn’t matter.

She could still see.

Through the mirror’s thin sheen, she watched her better self, her glamourous-self, walk the world with ease.

Sara watched her attend royal dinners in the gowns she once only dreamed of. Watched her laugh with nobles. Dance with the prince. Receive a medal for artistry she hadn’t made.

Everyone loved her.

No one knew.

And no one ever questioned the mirror on the dressing table, catching only a glimpse before turning away.

Sometimes, late at night, the her new self would sit before it.

She’d smile, slowly. Always slightly before Sara did.

“You gave me everything,” she’d say softly. “And I became what you were too afraid to be.”

Then she’d lean forward — just a breath from the glass — and whisper:

“Thank you. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

Sara tried to scream. To claw the glass. To force her way out.

But the mirror never moved.

It only watched.

And held her in place.

She had wanted to be seen.

Now she would never be unseen again.