For a moment, Evelyn couldn't breathe.The lantern in her hand sputtered, shrinking as dread tightened around her throat like a cold hand. The monster wearing her face stepped closer, its cracked eyelids peeling open wider than any human's ever should.
A thin line of black liquid oozed from the corner of the shadow-Evelyn's eye.It dripped down like ink.Like the mirror-image was bleeding reflection.
"W-What are you?" Evelyn whispered.
The creature's head twitched sharply—again, that puppet-like movement.Bones cracking.Skin stretching.
"What you deny."
The real Evelyn stepped back.Her heel struck something hard.She looked down—and froze.
A mirror lay on the carriage floor.Old, cracked, silvering peeling off in strips, like it had aged for a hundred years.But what made her blood turn to ice…was her reflection.
It wasn't copying her movements.It wasn't her.
It was the creature—but standing perfectly still inside the mirror, smiling with all its teeth showing.
Evelyn's breath hitched.The shadow-Evelyn outside the mirror crawled closer on limbs that shook with every step, joints bending backward for a moment before snapping forward again.
Two versions of her.Neither human.Neither safe.
She lifted the lantern, but the mirror suddenly drank in the light—pulling it toward its surface like a whirlpool of glass. The flame stretched like a thread, flickering wildly.
The reflection inside the mirror whispered:
"You can't hide the truth in light."
The shadow-Evelyn outside the mirror finished the sentence:
"Because darkness remembers everything."
Evelyn stumbled away from the mirror as the two voices overlapped—one muffled behind glass, the other inches from her face.
The train trembled again, this time violently enough to make her fall to one knee. The Heart behind the creature pulsed harder, glowing brighter, feeding energy into them both.
"Stay back!" Evelyn yelled.
Her voice cracked.
Both versions of her stopped.Tilted their heads.Synchronized.
Then the mirror cracked—not from impact… but from something pushing to get out.
A hand—identical to hers—pressed against the inside of the glass.Another followed.Then a face.The reflection began forcing itself through the fractured surface, like the mirror was no longer solid but thick, cold water.
Evelyn scrambled back across the trembling floor.
One monster wearing her face was bad enough.
But now the mirror was giving birth to a second one.
The train lights flickered.The carriage doors sealed shut.The air filled with cold, heavy breath that wasn't hers.
The Heart spoke for the first time:
"Come home, Evelyn.""All of you."