Chapter 3 3.Chapter 3:THE MIRROR UNCOVERED

Chapter 3: The Mirror Uncovered**

Kira didn't scream. She couldn't.

Her throat tightened as if the house itself was squeezing her voice away. She stared at the mirror, heart jackhammering against her ribs. The figure within it-**not her**, not even close-stared back with an eerie calm. It had her shape, her posture, but its eyes... its *eyes* glowed faintly, like embers just before a fire bursts into flame.

Then the figure smiled.

Kira bolted from the room, slamming the door behind her. She didn't stop running until she was down the hall, hand clutched over her chest as if trying to keep her heart inside her body. The mirror. It had moved. Or *something* had moved within it.

It was real.

Not just a trick of the light. Not a hallucination.

Real.

Her thoughts scrambled like mice. She needed answers. Not half-truths from musty libraries or whispers from townsfolk. **She needed to see the mirror again.** Not from across the room in a panic-but face-to-face. *Understood*. And if it truly held something... otherworldly... then she needed to know what it wanted from her.

Because Kira had the awful, crawling sense it did want something.

It had always wanted something.

-

She returned to the attic the next morning, sleep-deprived and determined. The trunk she'd placed in front of the hidden door was untouched. Dust lay thick across its lid. She hesitated, then shoved the bookshelf aside once again, revealing the narrow wooden door with the polished obsidian stone embedded in the center.

She touched the stone.

*Click.*

The door creaked open.

The hidden chamber looked the same-lightless, windowless, timeless. The black mirror towered at the center of the space like a shrine to something ancient. The twisted wood of its frame seemed more detailed now, the curves more like vines-or veins.

Kira stepped inside.

The cold enveloped her instantly, and a faint ringing filled her ears. The mirror loomed ahead, waiting. No reflection this time. Just a blank obsidian surface, as if it were a pool of water suspended vertically in midair.

She stepped closer.

Then, just before her nose nearly brushed the glass, an image bloomed on its surface.

A girl.

No, **her**-but *younger*, no more than ten. She sat on a swing, laughing in a garden full of roses. Her mother stood beside her. Kira gasped.

She remembered that day.

It had been her birthday.

A week before the accident.

As quickly as the vision appeared, it *shifted*. The garden darkened, the roses wilted, her mother's smile twisted into something hollow. The younger Kira stopped laughing and looked straight at her older self through the mirror. Her lips moved silently:

"Don't look too long."

Kira stumbled backward. The image vanished. The mirror turned black again.

*What the hell is this thing?*

She sat on the floor, back pressed against the wall, trying to breathe.

A flicker of movement caught her eye. On the frame of the mirror, just near the base, symbols had been etched into the wood. Delicate. Intricate. Some were runes she didn't recognize; others looked like Latin or even ancient Greek.

She reached into her bag and took out a notepad. She sketched the symbols quickly, noting their positions and spacing. Later, she'd try to decode them. Maybe at the library. Maybe online. She needed *something* to help her understand what she was dealing with.

Then her fingers brushed something she hadn't noticed before: a small, almost hidden latch beneath the mirror's base. Without thinking, she flicked it.

A section of the floor beneath the mirror shifted with a soft *click*.

Kira froze.

A compartment?

She leaned forward, pulling it open with cautious fingers. Inside was a small, leather-bound book, worn with age. The cover bore no title, just the same obsidian stone inlaid in the center-smaller, but unmistakable.

She opened it.

The first page was scrawled in heavy black ink.

*"To the next Keeper-should you find this, know that I failed. And you will, too, unless you learn what the mirror demands."* - *E.V.*

E.V. Elias Vane.

Kira turned the page. The handwriting became frantic. Diagrams of the mirror. Observations. Experiments. Theories. Notes on dreams. Warnings not to look into it during the full moon. Mentions of "echoes" and "reflections that rot."

Then a passage stood out:

*"The mirror feeds on memory. The longer one gazes, the more it knows. The more it knows, the more it can show. Or take."*

Kira shut the book, her pulse thundering. If Elias had studied this... *obsessed* over it... and then vanished, what did that mean for her?

Was she the next Keeper?

Was there a choice?

She returned the book to her bag, glanced at the mirror one last time, and left the chamber. As she sealed the hidden door behind her, she realized something terrifying:

The mirror hadn't *shown* her a nightmare.

It had shown her a *warning*.

And Kira knew-**this was just the beginning**.