Chapter 4 4.chapter 4:THE FIRST VISION

Chapter 4: The First Vision**

Kira dreamed of fire.

A hallway, endlessly long, flickered with orange flames licking the walls. Portraits hung skewed, melting into grotesque smears. Her footsteps echoed as she ran barefoot across scorched wood, chasing a shadow ahead-a little girl in a white dress. The girl's laughter bounced off the walls, high-pitched and hollow.

"Kira," the girl called, never turning around. "Come see."

She rounded a corner, and there it was-the mirror.

Freestanding in the middle of the hall, unburnt, untouched, gleaming black.

The girl stopped before it and turned. Her face was Kira's-but pale, lifeless, eyes glassy with darkness. She raised a finger and pointed behind Kira.

Kira turned slowly.

Her mother stood there, arms outstretched. Her mouth moved, but no sound came-only blood trickled from her lips.

The fire roared.

Kira screamed-

And sat bolt upright in bed.

Sweat drenched her shirt. Her throat was raw. The mirror in the attic hadn't left her mind since she opened the latch and found Elias Vane's book. But this-this vision-felt like more than a dream. It had weight. Presence. A *message*.

She swung her legs out of bed and froze.

On the floor beside her, drawn in white chalk, was a symbol. One of the ones from the mirror's frame.

She hadn't put it there.

Later that morning, she returned to the library with the sketch of the symbols and Elias's journal. The librarian-Ms. Cordelia-watched her with pursed lips as Kira spread the contents on the reading table.

"You shouldn't have gone near it," she said flatly, pointing to the mirror's diagram.

Kira didn't even pretend to play dumb. "I need to know what this thing is."

Cordelia sighed, sitting across from her. "That house is a wound, Kira. And the mirror is the infection. It wasn't meant to stay here. But every Langley woman has kept it. Guarded it. Whether they meant to or not."

"What does it want?"

"Time. Memory. Self." She tapped one of the symbols. "This one here? It's an old alchemical glyph. It means 'dissolution'-breaking down the self until nothing remains."

Kira stared at the symbol.

"I dreamed of my mother last night," she said softly. "But not as she was. She was... broken. And there was a girl with my face."

Cordelia leaned closer. "It's begun."

"What has?"

"The visions. That's how it starts. The mirror shows you fragments-memories, fears, sometimes futures. And then it starts blurring the line between what's real and what isn't."

Kira felt sick.

"Is there a way to stop it?"

Cordelia hesitated. "Elias thought there was. He believed if someone faced the mirror on the night of the blood moon-the mirror's birthdate-it could be sealed again."

"When's the next blood moon?"

Cordelia pulled a dusty almanac from the shelf and flipped through the pages. Her finger landed on a date circled in red.

"Four days from now."

Kira swallowed hard. "And if I don't seal it?"

"Then it takes you."

Back at the house, Kira felt the pressure again.

The walls felt tighter. The air, heavier. She paced the foyer, then made her way back to the study on the first floor. Among the forgotten books, she searched for anything Evelyn might've left behind.

In a side drawer of her grandmother's desk, she found a set of keys-and an old cassette tape labeled *FOR HER*. Kira blinked. A tape? She rummaged through the shelves until she found a dusty tape player. With trembling fingers, she inserted the cassette and pressed play.

A voice crackled to life.

Evelyn's.

"If you're hearing this, then you've already seen it. I prayed you wouldn't. I failed."

Kira stood frozen, the tape hissing between words.

"The mirror came into our family's care in 1763. A gift, they said. From a man with no shadow. We were fools. Every generation, one Langley woman was chosen to keep it. To guard it. It feeds on us. It knows us. It *becomes* us."

A long silence. Then:

"I don't know what it wants anymore. But it's growing stronger. Showing more. *Be careful, Kira. It lies.* It shows what you love to keep you near. And what you fear to break you apart."

The tape clicked off.

Kira stood in the silence of the study, hands trembling.

She looked up.

In the reflection of the glass cabinet, she saw herself.

But not *quite*.

Her reflection lingered even as she turned away.

That night, as the wind howled and shadows stretched long through the house, Kira dreamed again.

This time, she stood *inside* the mirror.

Looking out.

Watching herself sleep.

And behind her, the reflection smiled.