The fire in the hearth crackled, but it gave no warmth.
Lyra sat with Elias in the drawing room, the candlelight flickering across their strained faces. The house had fallen silent again, but not the peaceful kind. The kind that watched. Waited.
"I think I saw her," Lyra whispered. "In the cradle room. Not just the name. A shadow of her. She looks like me."
Elias nodded. "She is you. Or was. Her soul never left the Hollow. It didn't die—it was sealed."
"But why?" Lyra asked. "Why seal someone away like that?"
Elias looked away. "To preserve something. Or to punish it."
---
Later that night, Lyra returned to her mother's room. She hadn't touched it since her arrival, but something pulled her there. The journal she'd used for the rite sat open, pages flapping as though wind moved through them—though the windows were shut tight.
She flipped to the back and saw it: a torn letter tucked inside.
To whoever finds this, know this truth: the Hollow does not keep souls. It splits them. One to walk, one to wait. I couldn't save her. Forgive me.
No name. No signature. But it was in her mother's handwriting.
Lyra's blood ran cold.
"Elira wasn't just my ancestor," she whispered. "She was… part of me."
---
She didn't sleep that night.
In the mirror across her room, she noticed something strange. Her reflection stood a second too long after she turned away. Its expression—duller, empty-eyed—remained as if carved in wax.
She tested it. Raised her hand. The mirror copied her, but with a delay. Then the reflection smiled.
Lyra hadn't.
She stumbled back. Elias burst in, sensing something was wrong. But by the time he saw the mirror, the reflection had returned to normal.
"She's in there," Lyra said. "Watching. Learning."
Elias's face darkened. "Then she's preparing to take your place."
---
They found the cracked hand mirror buried in the garden the next day, exactly where Lyra had dreamed it would be. The glass was blackened, the silver frame warped.
"She's bound to this," Elias said. "But the Hollow's changed the rules."
"What do you mean?"
"She's not just haunting anymore. She's trying to live."
A sudden gust of wind knocked the mirror from his hands. It shattered.
A scream—not Lyra's—pierced the air, echoing from every direction.
The house groaned.
And in a window above them, Lyra saw her reflection again.
But this time, it blinked first.