Elias spent the rest of the night staring at the mirror, afraid to blink, afraid that the thing on the other side might decide blinking was an invitation. The warning in the book echoed relentlessly inside him:
"Do not look at the mirror when the third night comes."
But this wasn't the third night.
This was night two.
And already… something had crossed the boundary.
When dawn finally seeped through the curtains, Elias expected the light to bring relief. It didn't. The mirror remained dark—not in reflection, but in essence, as if the glass refused to acknowledge daylight. The surface looked deeper than before, like a well descending into a place without floors.
He approached it slowly.
His reflection appeared only when he was close enough to touch the glass.
But it was wrong.
The eyes in the reflection were rimmed with faint, black veins—veins that weren't on his real face. The reflection's breathing was slower. He leaned left. It leaned a heartbeat too late. He raised his hand. It raised its hand… but its fingers were slightly longer.
Elias stepped back sharply.
"No," he whispered. "You're not me."
For the first time, the reflection moved *without* him.
It tilted its head, studying him with a scientist's fascination. Then it whispered something he couldn't hear, pressing its fingertips to the inside of the glass. The surface around its hand puckered inward, like stretched skin.
Elias turned away, heart hammering. He needed distance. He needed air. He needed something human.
He grabbed his coat and left the room.
The hallway looked ordinary—mercifully ordinary—but the air had a pressure to it, the kind he imagined existed at the bottom of the ocean. The house seemed to listen, the floorboards groaning softly when he passed, as if resenting his attempt to escape.
He went to the kitchen, splashed cold water on his face, and forced himself to breathe.
"It's not real," he muttered. "It's stress, it's lack of sleep, it's—"
A soft thud came from the hallway.
Then another.
Footsteps.
Slow.
Steady.
Wrong.
Elias froze, water dripping from his chin. No one else lived in the house. No one else should be walking.
He peered around the doorway.
Something was standing at the end of the hall.
At first he thought it was his reflection again—but that wasn't possible. This figure was taller. Thinner. Its arms hung too low, as though its joints had been placed in the wrong positions. Its head was angled in that same listening tilt he had seen behind the mirror.
It had come out.
Elias stumbled backward, knocking over a glass. The figure's head snapped toward the sound with inhuman speed. The air warped around it, bending slightly, like heat rising from asphalt.
"Stay back," Elias choked out.
It took a single step.
The floorboards didn't creak under its weight.
It wasn't touching the ground.
Elias ran.
He sprinted to his room, slammed the door, and shoved a chair beneath the handle—though he doubted something that walked without weight needed a doorknob. His breath came in violent shivers as he pressed his back against the wall.
Then the doorknob turned.
Once.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
"Go away…" Elias whispered.
The knob turned again.
Silence.
Then a voice slithered through the thin line between the door and the floor—an echo stretched into an imitation of speech:
**"The third night… will not wait for you."**
Elias covered his ears, trembling violently. He didn't know what that meant, but he knew—deeply, instinctively—that the warning in the book was no longer a suggestion.
It was a countdown.
The voice faded, replaced by a faint tapping… once again coming from inside the mirror.
The book lay on the bed, pages slightly fluttering as if stirred by an unseen breath. New ink bled onto the parchment, forming jagged letters that trembled as they dried:
**"Prepare yourself."**
Elias stared at the words, horror settling heavy in his bones.
Because now…
The gate wasn't opening.
It was already open.