The storm spat Lena out into silence.
One moment, she was reaching for Siobhan's hand in the chaos—the blur of screams, laughter, splintering walls—and the next, everything vanished.
No wind.
No voices.
No others.
Just mirrors.
She stood at the mouth of a vast spiraling corridor, flanked on either side by floor-to-ceiling glass. The walls shimmered with warped reflections, stretching into infinity. Some mirrors were jagged like broken promises. Others too clean, too polished—watching her rather than reflecting.
Lena took a hesitant step forward.
Her reflection followed.
No delay. No trickery.
Not yet.
"Eden?" Lena whispered. Her voice echoed, but the sound was wrong—fractured, like glass shards tumbling down an endless shaft. It bounced off unseen corners, coming back to her as a thousand variations, none quite hers.
Then—a flicker.
A shadow turned the far corner. Slouched shoulders. Hesitant gait.
Familiar.
"Eden!" Lena called.
The figure didn't stop.
She ran.
Her boots struck the glassy floor with too much noise—each step echoing like thunder in a crystal cave. With every turn, the mirrors multiplied. Some warped her into a blur of speed. Others lagged behind. A few simply stood still, staring back with accusing eyes.
She rounded a sharp corner—and slammed into herself.
Or what she thought was herself.
A mirror. A wall of it.
Her nose stung on impact. She stumbled back, dazed.
Then the laughter began.
Not Eden's—not as Lena remembered her. This laughter was layered, fractured into unnatural harmonies. A child's giggle stitched to a smoker's rasp. A sob pretending to be amusement. It echoed from every surface, from every direction, until it was impossible to tell where it began.
The mirrors changed.
Eden appeared.
In all of them.
To Lena's left: Eden under stage lights, mascara smeared, mouth contorted in a sob mid-joke.
To the right: Eden laughing—manically, head thrown back, teeth too sharp, eyes too wide.
Ahead: Eden melting. No blood, no gore. Just her skin sliding from her skull like wax under a heat lamp, lips peeling back in a grotesque smile.
Lena staggered back. Her breath hitched.
The melting Eden spoke.
"You knew, didn't you?"
Lena's chest tightened. "No," she said. "I—"
"You knew what they wanted me to be," Eden said from every mirror at once. "And you made sure I stayed that way."
Lena turned and ran.
The maze shifted as she moved. Hallways folded, corridors overlapped, mirrors duplicated endlessly. Reflections of herself blurred into other versions—each face slowly becoming Eden's. Her own eyes flickered, darkened, blinked with Eden's sadness.
"You didn't help me," said a voice—maybe above her, maybe inside her. "You packaged me."
A new corridor opened like a wound.
At the end: Eden.
Still. Back turned.
Lena slowed. Her voice cracked when she spoke. "Eden?"
The figure turned.
It was her—how she had looked on the day of the final show. Pale. Exhausted. A smile stretched too thin—held in place like stage makeup drawn on with trembling hands.
"You told me to lean in," Eden said quietly. "Remember that?"
"I was trying to help," Lena murmured.
"You said, 'They love when you're falling apart. So let them love you harder.'"
"That's not what I—" Lena flinched. "That's not what I meant."
Eden's eyes darkened.
A mirror nearby cracked.
Lena turned to it—and saw herself.
Not the version that cried or ran—but the version that pitched, that sold.
"We'll brand it," Mirror-Lena said, smiling to someone offscreen. "The girl who jokes about her pain. She's raw. It's real. Audiences love that."
Lena stepped back. The mirror hissed, its surface shimmering like oil on water.
Another cracked open.
Eden again—in a bathroom, whispering through tears: "I can't do this again."
Off-screen, Lena's voice replied. Calm. Reassuring.
"It's working. Don't pull back now."
"I thought I was helping," Lena breathed.
The mirrors quaked.
Voices piled over one another now—hundreds of Edens. Each tone different: angry, mournful, tired.
"You wanted a brand, not a friend."
"You picked what made them clap."
"You heard me cry and thought it was marketable."
Lena dropped to her knees.
"Stop," she begged. Her voice barely a whisper.
"You didn't save me," Eden said. "You refined me."
All around, mirrors lit with every emotion—every Eden.
Laughing.
Sobbing.
Melting.
Turning away.
And then—one mirror stayed still.
Not laughing. Not weeping.
Just watching.
Lena crawled toward it, glass crunching beneath her hands and knees.
She pressed her forehead to the mirror's surface.
"I didn't mean to ruin you," she whispered. "I wanted to help. I thought I was shaping something… something real."
She paused. Her breath fogged the glass.
"No. That's not the truth."
The still-Eden's expression sharpened.
Lena closed her eyes.
"I used you," she said.
The laughter stopped.
"I saw something in you—a voice I didn't have the courage to use myself. You were brilliant. Vulnerable. Brave. And I… I turned that into a product. I sharpened your pain until it was consumable."
Glass shivered.
"I told myself it was empathy. But it was convenience. You were the truth. I was the editor. And when you started to break, I told you that meant it was working."
Still-Eden blinked.
Lena stood.
Tears streaked her cheeks, though she didn't remember when she started crying.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I don't deserve forgiveness. But I won't lie about it anymore."
A low crack echoed through the maze.
Every mirror went black.
Not shattered.
Not broken.
Closed.
The reflections disappeared. The laughter died.
And the mirror in front of her—where Eden had stood—opened.
Not fractured.
Opened, like a door.
Warm light spilled from the threshold.
Lena hesitated, then stepped through.
She stumbled into a hallway, collapsing to her hands and knees.
She gasped for air, coughing, lungs seizing like someone pulled from deep water.
The wind was gone. The maze, gone. The mirrors, gone.
But the silence now was real.
Not hollow. Not cruel.
Just… still.
Somewhere distant, someone called her name.
She wiped her face.
And in the stillness, she whispered—mostly to herself, but maybe to Eden too:
"I see you now."