The sun was grey and dull in the morning, throwing long shadows on the halls of Manor. It was not morning—it was as if the house were still dreaming.
Elena had not slept following the dream. Not really. Her body slept, but her mind…
It had roamed unknown corridors—hallways that did not belong in Rosehill.
And the mirror crack?
Remained. Pale and shining like a scar that would not heal.
Downstairs, she found Leah at the dining table, biting into a stale croissant and scrolling through her phone.
"You look like hell," Leah said, eyeing her. "Did the sexy ghost haunt your dreams again?"
Elena sat down slowly. "He said my name this time."
Leah's smile vanished.
"Don't lie to me. I walked past a hall lined with mirrors. He was going in front of me, never looking back. But I could sense something whenever he called out my name—it felt like…" she broke off, "something I shouldn't remember."
Leah put down her phone. "Are you listening to yourself?"
"I discovered my grandmother's diary. She wrote about warnings. About nightmares. About a man behind a mirror. About me."
Leah's breath hitched. "Your grandmother saw him too?"
"She described him as a prisoner. but also a protector."
As they spoke, a tremendous crash sounded from upstairs.
The two girls leapt.
Mark's voice yelled weakly, "Uh—Elena? I may have found something you should see."
They sprinted upstairs and discovered Mark on his knees in front of a wall in the vicinity of the master bedroom.
He indicated the wooden paneling.
"I had dropped my phone and it had slipped under the baseboard. But when I pulled it back out…" he pushed the panel—click—and it moved fractionally.
A secret compartment.
In it was a slender, velvet-covered box.
Elena unzipped it tremblingly.
There was a key. Old, carved, in the shape of a rose vine—and alongside it, a yellowed letter sealed in wax.
She broke the seal.
"To the one who hears him—
If you've discovered this, the Manor has already selected you.
He is not what they described.
But when the fourth dream appears, you will have to choose:
Shatter the mirror.
Or shatter yourself."
A piercing, swift gust of air swept down the hallway.
Windows crashed shut. The lights began to flicker.
And from the mirror in the distance… came a whisper.
"One step closer."
The air changed.
Not only the icy gust of air—but something darker, denser. The sort of change you don't register with your skin, but in your bones.
Elena's hands clamped around the key.
Leah took a step back automatically, her gaze moving between the mirror and Elena. "What do you mean it talked? Elena, this is not just a haunted house situation anymore—this is. alive.
Mark, abnormally pale, nodded slowly. "We have to be careful. Whatever your grandmother was protecting—this house, this mirror—it's responding to you."
"I know," Elena whispered.
Because in that very moment, she didn't just sense fear. She sensed something else building inside her—
Recognition.
The key's weight felt warm in her hand now, as if it had been waiting for her fingers.
As if it recalled her.
Or someone like her.
She put the key away in her pocket and grabbed the journal once more, opening it to the page that was ribbon-marked. A message was written in hasty handwriting:
"The mirror stirs only for blood it remembers. The last girl lost herself on the fourth dream. This one must choose better."
"Last girl?" Leah asked, reading over her shoulder. "Do you think that means… there were others before you?"
Elena gazed up, her eyes open wide. "Perhaps not only others. Perhaps. he's waiting for someone in particular."
That evening, after Leah and Mark grudgingly departed for the inn (Mark reporting the city walls "breathed" and Leah unwilling to debate), Elena was left alone again in Rosehill.
She faced the mirror once more.
The crack now caught the lamplight—like a struck lightning bolt. She reached up, faltering. and touched the chill glass.
For an instant, she thought she saw a flash of something moving behind the mirror once more. A shadow. A man's shape.
And then—so quietly she hardly heard it—
"Don't be afraid of me."
Her breath hitched. She retreated.
No," she breathed into the air. "But I think I'm in terror of what I'll be. if I'm not in terror of you."
The mirror throbbed.
The Manor did not sleep that evening.
Each creak of the boards, each groan of the old walls was like a whisper to speak.
Elena sat huddled in a blanket on the window seat of her room, journal on her lap, key clutched tight in her hand. She had not left there since the last whisper—since Julian's voice, soft and hurting, told her not to be afraid of him.
It should have scared her. But it didn't.
It haunted her differently.
A slow, devouring way.
At midnight, the wind died.
All was still.
The silence was abnormally profound, as if the world had been muffled by unseen fingers.
Then it occurred.
Tap.
A solitary sound.
She turned to the mirror in the other side of the room.
Tap.
Again—so delicate. Like someone was rapping from within.
Elena got up slowly, her legs trembling beneath her.
This time, she didn't dawdle.
She approached the mirror.
The crack glimmered like moonlight held captive within glass. And then—he'd never seen it so clear before—his image was whole.
Not fuzzy.
Not dreamed.
He stood within the mirror, not turned away from her, but facing aside, as though he couldn't quite bear to meet her gaze fully. A man in black—tall, refined, with raven-haired darkness curling over his collar. The glow of the mirror lit him in silver, glowing upon sharp cheekbones and eyes that appeared carved of stormclouds.
Julian.
He stared. shattered.
Trapped.
Beautiful.
He raised his head gradually, at last looking at her.
And whispered:
"You came back."
Elena's breath caught.
"I don't know you," she whispered.
A gentle smile softened his mouth. "Not yet."
A knock at her bedroom door caught her out of the reverie.
"Elena? You awake?" Leah's voice, a little unsteady. "You might want to come downstairs. The house just—well—it kind of… opened something."
"What?" she shouted, hurrying towards the door.
Leah was standing there, barefoot, hoodie turned inside out, eyes wide open.
"There's a room. Behind the library wall. It wasn't there before. And it's full of paintings… of you."