Chapter 3 ECHOES BETWEEN WORLDS

For days after discovering her great-grandfather's letter, Juliette walked through life as though in a dream. She carried the letter folded in her coat pocket like a relic, brushing her fingers over its edges whenever doubt tried to creep in.

Could it really be that this mirror was something more than coincidence?

Each morning and evening, she returned to the mirror. Ren was always there-sometimes drawing, sometimes waiting, sometimes writing her name across the glass with the kind of reverence that made her heart turn over in her chest.

They talked about everything. Books they loved. Foods they hated. Their favorite seasons-Juliette preferred the soft melancholy of autumn, while Ren adored spring's gentle hope. He once held up a pink cherry blossom petal to the glass, and she laughed, holding up a crinkled maple leaf in return.

"Opposites," she wrote, grinning.

"Balance," he replied.

They laughed a lot. That was what surprised Juliette most. She had not expected laughter to come so easily across a divide of time zones, cultures, and glass. But it did.

One evening, she asked something she'd been wondering about for days.

"Do you ever tell anyone about me?" she wrote.

Ren hesitated. Then, slowly: "Once. My grandmother. She said... she said my grandfather always believed the mirror had unfinished business. That it carried a voice he could never understand."

Juliette leaned in.

"She said he used to stare into it for hours... long after the war. Sometimes he'd smile. Sometimes he'd cry. They argued about it often. She wanted to throw it away, but he couldn't let it go."

Juliette's eyes widened. Her great-grandmother had said something eerily similar about her husband. "The mirror haunted him," she had whispered once, as if the memory still frightened her.

Juliette exhaled. The threads of the past were weaving tighter.

Later that night, unable to sleep, she took the mirror off the vanity table and held it under the moonlight. Its surface shimmered-not like ordinary glass, but like water. Liquid and mysterious. She traced the edges. One small crack ran through the top corner, barely visible.

She remembered something her great-grandfather had written in his journal: "The mirror was not whole. Each soldier took a shard. Only mine stayed with me."

How had it found its way to her?

And more importantly... how had Ren's mirror survived too?

Across the world, Ren was sketching in silence. He'd begun drawing things he didn't understand-faces he didn't recognize, places he'd never seen. His hands moved before his thoughts. A cathedral appeared beneath his fingers one afternoon. He realized it resembled the Sacré-Cœur.

He stared at it for a long time before whispering her name: "Juliette."

Something was awakening in them both.

They began keeping track of the mirror's oddities. Sometimes it pulsed with a gentle glow at midnight. Once, it shimmered during a thunderstorm, even when the room was dark. Messages would occasionally appear before either of them touched the glass-words in a language neither spoke but somehow understood.

One day, a phrase burned faintly along the edge:

"Bound by history. Freed by love."

Juliette felt a chill run down her spine. It was then she made a decision. She needed answers. Real ones.

She took the mirror to an antique shop tucked behind the Montmartre square. The owner, an old woman with eyes like glass beads, examined the mirror in silence for several minutes.

"It's not from here," the woman finally said.

"Not from Paris?"

"Not from this world."

Juliette blinked.

The woman set the mirror down gently. "You should be careful. Mirrors can reflect the soul, yes. But this one? It may also hold it."

Juliette didn't know what to say. She wrapped the mirror back in its velvet cloth and left, her heart thudding.

That night, Ren was waiting. His expression was solemn. He had found something too-an old photograph of his grandfather, sitting in a bunker with the mirror propped beside him. In the mirror's reflection was not his face... but a young woman.

Juliette.

She gasped.

They stared at each other through the glass. The past and present converging. Ren reached out and pressed his fingers against the mirror. So did she.

For a moment, just a breath-warmth flickered between their palms. Not quite touch, but almost.

Juliette whispered, "What are we?"

Ren didn't answer immediately. He scribbled something slowly, thoughtfully.

"Something the world forgot to finish."

Juliette smiled. A tear slipped down her cheek.

Yes. That's what it felt like.

And somewhere in the house, hidden in a box of keepsakes she hadn't opened in years, a second letter waited. Unread. Untouched.

Her great-grandfather had written it to the man who had stood beside him the day they found the mirror.

Ren's grandfather.

The past was not done with them yet.

And neither was the mirror.