The address on the receipt led James to what appeared to be an abandoned antique shop in one of the city's less reputable districts. Half the windows were boarded with weathered plywood, the other half so caked with grime that seeing through them was impossible.
The sign above the door had faded to near illegibility, its painted letters worn by decades of weather.
James checked the receipt again. This was definitely the place. One large pepperoni, extra cheese, payment processed online. Customer name: Will Thorne.
He was twenty-nine and had been living paycheck to paycheck for nearly a decade, ever since dropping out of college to care for his father during cancer treatment. Not that it had made a difference. His father died anyway, leaving James with substantial medical debt and no degree to help him pay it.
Pizza delivery wasn't exactly a career path, but it paid his studio apartment rent. Barely.
The shop's front door was unlocked, which struck him as unusual for a building that looked this abandoned and in an area like this. He pushed it open and called out.
"Pizza delivery! Anyone here?"
"Hello"
No response.
The smell hit him immediately, old wood and accumulated dust that made his nose itch. The interior was larger than the exterior suggested, packed floor to ceiling with the kind of miscellaneous items you would find at a pawn shop. Sheet-covered furniture stacked nearly to the rafters, boxes of books, display cases filled with ugly antique jewelry, and random knick-knacks occupying every available surface.
"Hello?" James tried again. "Pizza for Will Thorne?"
Still nothing.
He moved deeper into the shop, reasoning that the customer might be in the back and unable to hear him from the entrance. The floorboards creaked under his weight, and dust motes drifted through the weak light filtering in through the dirty windows.
Near the back of the shop, James discovered a section that seemed distinctly different from the rest. The items here appeared genuinely valuable rather than yard sale rejects in the front. Marble statues, figurines carved from precious stones, ornate vases, furniture that probably cost more than his annual salary.
Then he saw it, tucked away in a far corner.
The mirror.
It stood against the rear wall, taller than he was, framed in dark wood carved with ornate patterns that seemed to shift in the dim light. The wood grain appeared to pulse with some kind of energy. The mirror itself looked ancient, the sort of antique that belonged in a wealthy collector's mansion or a museum. He wouldn't have been surprised to learn it had been commissioned by royalty centuries ago.
He stepped in front of it, drawn by something he couldn't articulate. His reflection looked wrong somehow. Distorted, as if he were viewing himself through water rather than glass. He couldn't explain it precisely, but he knew the mirror wasn't showing him an accurate reflection. It seemed to thrum with the same pulse he felt in the wood grain.
He raised his hand experimentally, and his reflection mimicked the gesture, but not simultaneously. There was a delay, barely a split second, but enough to make his skin crawl and send a chill up his spine.
"What the hell?" he said aloud, jerking back.
He leaned closer, trying to understand what was wrong with the thing. His reflection leaned in as well, just a beat slower, as if copying him rather than mirroring him.
The hair on his arms stood up. This was seriously unsettling. He should leave, forget about the pizza order, and get the hell out of this place.
But he couldn't look away. It was as if his feet had rooted themselves to the floor and his gaze had locked onto the mirror's surface.
He was just beginning to panic about his inability to look away when he sensed something behind him. He looked at his reflection's background just in time to see a massive bookshelf toppling toward him.
He had perhaps half a second to think "oh shit" before it slammed into his back with the force of a freight train. The impact launched him forward, face-first toward the mirror.
Time stretched. James saw his reflection rushing toward him, saw the terror on his own face as he realized what was about to happen. Then he hit the mirror with a sound like shattering crystal.
The glass exploded outward in a cascade of razor-sharp fragments. But the mirror didn't just break, it disintegrated into particles as fine as dust. That wasn't the worst part, though.
The worst part was the sensation of himself shattering.
He was certain most of his bones were broken, could feel blood running down his face and into his eyes and mouth, but that physical damage was nothing compared to whatever had shattered inside him. Something deeper. Something that felt like the very core of his identity had been smashed into uncountable pieces. Like his veins had been stretched until they snapped.
Pain, unlike anything he'd ever experienced, flooded through him. It felt like being shocked with thousands of volts of electricity, if you could somehow survive the experience instead of dying instantly. Only a thousand times worse.
He tried to scream, but no sound emerged. His vision went white, then black. He was losing awareness, coming apart like sand thrown into the sea.
Then even that thought scattered like dust, and James Kard ceased to exist.