Rhea awoke to the sound of glass breathing.
It wasn't possible, but that was the only way to describe it—the soft, rhythmic inhale and exhale of countless shards around her, as if every broken piece of the mirror still lived.
Her fingers brushed the floor—cold, rough, and sticky with blood. She blinked rapidly, dazed. The studio light overhead flickered weakly, bathing everything in a trembling yellow glow.
For a moment, she didn't move.
Her body trembled violently, lungs dragging in shallow, uneven breaths.
Then memory returned in pieces—the Collector, the Hall of Echoes, the explosion of mirrors—and she gasped, choking on air.
She was back.
But something was wrong.
The air felt heavier.
The silence wasn't silent—it listened. It pulsed.
Her reflection, multiplied across thousands of shards, stared up at her from the floor. Each version of her looked slightly different—some tired, some hollow-eyed, some mouthing silent words.
One reflection, near her knee, moved a second late.
Another blinked when she didn't.
Rhea's stomach twisted. She crawled backward until her shoulder hit the wall.
All around her, the fragments of the cursed mirror shimmered faintly, glowing with a silver-blue heartbeat.
When she listened closely, she heard faint whispers rising from the shards—broken, layered, overlapping like ghostly breathing.
> "Remember us…"
"Don't let us fade…"
"She opened the way…"
Rhea clutched her head. "Stop—please stop."
Her own voice came back, distorted through the reflections:
> "Stop… please stop…"
"Stop…"
"Stop…"
She screamed, and the echoes screamed back, stretching the sound until it no longer sounded human.
Then—sudden silence.
Only the hum of the overhead light remained, flickering like a dying heartbeat.
Rhea's phone vibrated violently on the table nearby. She stumbled to grab it, desperate for something real.
Dozens of missed messages flashed across the screen—from Aarav, from museum officials, from unknown numbers.
And below that—notifications from the "Reflections: Stories from the Shadows" channel.
She opened it.
Everywhere—panic.
"Did anyone else hear the mirror break?"
"My reflection blinked at me."
"Voices… in the dark… they said her name."
There were attached images too—mirrors across the world fractured from within, spiderweb cracks glowing faintly with that same silver light.
Some photos showed faint figures standing behind the person taking them.
Others had shadows that didn't match.
Her heart slammed in her chest.
She scrolled faster—hundreds of comments now flooded in.
> @AshraF: "It's in my phone screen. I can see faces moving when it's off."
@NoelR: "The mirrors hum at night. My child says they whisper."
@Kai-V: "It said her name. Rhea. Over and over."
Her throat closed.
It wasn't just her. The curse had spread.
> "Once opened… silence must be fed."
The Collector's voice echoed in her mind like a bell tolling from far away.
Rhea turned sharply toward the pile of mirror shards on the floor. The largest one—almost the size of her hand—had begun to tremble again. Its surface shimmered like rippling water.
Slowly, she crawled closer.
Her reflection stared back. But the eyes… they weren't hers anymore. They were deeper, darker—bottomless.
Her reflection smiled.
She didn't.
> "You brought us out," it whispered.
Rhea's pulse spiked. "No," she said, shaking her head. "I left you there! You can't be here!"
The reflection tilted its head, movements unnatural, puppet-like.
> "You carried us—in your memory. In your voice. You promised to remember."
Tears burned at her eyes. "I only wanted to help you."
> "And you did," said the reflection softly. "Now we live again."
The shard cracked down the middle with a sharp snap. A thin line of black liquid seeped from the fracture, spreading across the floor like ink. The scent was metallic—old blood and burnt metal.
The liquid moved on its own, crawling toward her shoes.
Rhea stumbled back, knocking over her camera tripod. The equipment clattered to the floor with a crash.
"Stop it," she whispered, voice breaking. "Please stop!"
The lights flickered again—once, twice—then went out.
Darkness swallowed the room.
In the silence that followed, she heard breathing again. But this time—it wasn't hers.
Soft, wet, close.
She turned slowly toward the sound. The faint glow from the shards lit up her surroundings in flashes. Her shadow danced across the wall.
Then—her shadow raised its hand.
She didn't move.
Her breath froze.
The shadow turned its head toward her and smiled.
> "You can't run from what remembers you," it whispered in her voice.
Rhea's back hit the door. She twisted the handle, desperate to escape, but the door refused to open—as if something pressed against it from the other side.
Behind her, the shards began to hum again, louder, sharper, until it became a piercing vibration that shook the air.
One by one, the reflections began to speak.
> "Rhea."
"Rhea."
"Rhea."
"Rhea."
Their voices layered into a single, hollow cry that filled the studio. The shards lifted off the floor, weightless, swirling around her like a silver storm.
She covered her face, crying out. "What do you want from me?!"
Then, in perfect unison, the voices answered:
> "To be seen."
The shards dropped suddenly, raining to the floor. The sound of impact was deafening.
Rhea's knees gave out. She knelt amid the glass, shaking uncontrollably. Every reflection around her had gone dark. No more movement. No more whispers.
For a long, awful moment, she thought it was over.
Then—her phone buzzed again. One final message.
It was from an unknown number.
She opened it.
A video started playing—grainy, distorted.
It showed her own studio, filmed from somewhere in the corner.
Rhea froze.
The camera panned slowly toward her, sitting in the dark, exactly as she was now.
Then a figure stepped into view—black, liquid, featureless. The Collector.
It leaned down beside her, its form rippling like oil, and whispered directly into the camera:
> "She remembers."
The video ended.
Rhea dropped the phone, her hands trembling violently.
Somewhere behind her, from beneath the pile of mirror shards, came one final whisper—soft, childlike, innocent:
> "Thank you for bringing us back."
Her reflection, faint in the window glass, smiled one last time—
but her real face didn't.
---
To be continued…
---