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Elara had always known the world to be quiet. She lived in a grand manor atop a hill shrouded in mist. Its hallways stretched endlessly, lined with gilded mirrors and dustless furniture that never moved. The sky beyond her windows was a constant, overcast grey. The air didn’t change with seasons. Clocks ticked, but their hands never shifted. Still, Elara went about her days—combing her hair before her vanity, walking the hallways, and pressing keys on the old grand piano in the drawing room. No matter how she played, the keys never made a sound. There were no visitors. No phone calls. No past and no future. Only the stillness of now. And yet, Elara never questioned it. Not until the day she saw the crack. It began as a faint line in the top right corner of her bedroom mirror. At first, she thought it was a trick of the light. But as she leaned in, it shimmered faintly—a subtle glow pulsing beneath the glass. Then she saw it. A flicker. A golden ray of something so alien, so foreign to her world, she stumbled back from it. Sunlight. The next morning, another mirror cracked. Then another. Fine fractures crawled across the surface like veins, distorting her reflection. Her mirrored self began to lag, blinking a second late, turning a moment too slow. In one corridor, Elara passed a tall mirror and stopped in her tracks. Her reflection had not moved. It stared back at her, eyes wide and pleading. She reached out to touch the glass, and the reflection lifted its hand—but too late, too slowly. It wasn’t mimicking. It was trapped. A creeping dread bloomed in her chest. The manor—her home—began to twist. The fog outside thickened into a murky wall. Furniture grew soft and misshapen when she looked away. The piano, which had always been silent, let out a haunting note in the middle of the night. She tried to leave. Ran down the main path through the gardens, past the fountain frozen in time—but no matter how far she went, she returned to the same spot. The front steps. The heavy oak door. The world was folding in. Then came the shattering. It was in the foyer. A full-length mirror with an ornate gold frame let out a piercing sound, like glass crying. The surface cracked from corner to corner before collapsing into glittering shards. Behind it, impossibly, was not a wall. It was a hallway—dim, dusty, humming with unfamiliar air. Elara stepped through. The moment she crossed the threshold, everything changed. The light was different—warmer. The stillness was gone. Dust floated lazily in beams of golden sunlight filtering through tall, cracked windows. The floor creaked beneath her feet. She was in another manor, like hers but real—decaying, lived-in, abandoned. Photographs hung crooked on the wall. In them, a girl with wild hair and curious eyes smiled into the camera. Elara stared. The girl looked like her—but not quite. Slightly older. More alive. On a side table sat a newspaper. The top headline read: “Local Girl Presumed Dead in Manor Fire — Tragic Loss, No Remains Found”Dated: Twenty Years Ago. Elara touched the page with trembling fingers. Images, sharp and painful, flashed through her mind—a fire roaring in the walls, smoke curling through the halls, her own scream as the mirror swallowed her whole. A spell. A binding. A punishment. She had been trapped. Preserved like a ghost in a reflection, living a life of perfect stillness. Until now. Someone—someone—had remembered her. Called her back. Broken the illusion. She staggered to the broken mirror and looked into it. Instead of her reflection, it showed the grey world she’d left behind. The fog. The silence. It was dissolving. She could feel it pulling at her, calling her back. But this time, she did not go. Instead, she turned away from the mirror and walked deeper into the ruined manor. Her heart beat faster with each step. Her breath came in sharp, glorious lungfuls. The air stung, but it was real. She didn’t know what the world beyond this place would hold. But she was done being a reflection.

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Shards of Reflection

ProudMommy0321

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Shards of Reflection

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Ceria Mcgrone

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