Chapter 2 Changes

He blinked and stepped back. The reflection didn't move.

Goosebumps rose along his arms. He looked behind him, half-expecting to find someone else in the room. But there was nothing-just dust, floorboards, and silence.

He turned back to the mirror. Now his reflection mirrored his movements again, but that image-haunted and furious-was burned into his mind. It hadn't been a trick of the light. It had been real. Or at least, it had felt real.

Marcus swallowed hard and backed out of the room, pulling the door shut with a soft click. The air in the hallway felt heavier than before. Like something had shifted-subtly, but unmistakably.

That night, he barely slept.

His mind kept replaying the moment again and again. He wasn't the type to believe in ghosts or supernatural nonsense. But there was something deeply unsettling about that mirror-something that tugged at a part of him he didn't fully understand. What if the mirror hadn't shown something other than himself, but something inside himself? A part he didn't want to face?

After all, he hadn't come here just for a fresh start. He'd come here to run away-from memories, from guilt, from loss.

The next morning, he returned to the room, half-hoping the mirror would be gone. But it stood in the exact same spot, untouched. This time, his reflection appeared normal. Just a tired man in a worn-out hoodie, staring at himself with bloodshot eyes.

But he didn't trust it. Not anymore.

He considered covering the mirror, even getting rid of it entirely. But something held him back. Curiosity, perhaps. Or fear. Or maybe a quiet voice that whispered that the mirror still had something to show him.

He didn't know yet that the mirror would become the key to everything-the unraveling of secrets, the unlocking of buried truths, and the descent into something far darker than he'd ever imagined. He didn't yet understand that what he saw in that first reflection wasn't just an illusion.

It was a warning.

And it had already begun.