The fog clung to London like a shroud, thick and hungry, swallowing the glow of streetlamps. Elias Vane, a reclusive archivist with a limp and a grief he carried like a second shadow, found the first body in the basement of the old Grand Lumière Theatre. The woman—no, the statue—was frozen mid-scream, her skin marble-cracked, fingers clawing at her own reflection in the shattered mirror at her feet. The coroner called it “mass hysteria,” but Elias knew stone when he saw it. He’d seen it before.
His sister, Clara, had died the same way six months prior.
The texts began that night.
Unknown Number: YOU LOOKED. NOW SHE LOOKS BACK.
Elias ignored it. Paranoia, he told himself. Grief-madness. But the next morning, another victim: a socialite found in her penthouse, face locked in terror, her diamond necklace fused to her throat like scales. The mirrors in her bedroom had exploded inward, glass dust spelling a single word on the floor: LYSSA.
“A name,” muttered DI Graves, a skeptic with nicotine-yellow fingers. “Some cult shite.”
Elias knew better. He’d found Clara’s journal after her death, pages filled with frantic sketches of a woman with serpentine hair, her eyes hidden behind a veil of mirrored shards. She’s in the glass, Clara had scrawled. The Goddess of Lies. She shows you what you crave… then takes what you love.
The third text came as Elias stood in Clara’s abandoned flat, her cracked vanity mirror still hanging askew.
Unknown Number: SHE OFFERS A TRADE. YOUR SORROW FOR HER FACE.
His hands trembled. In the mirror, his reflection didn’t. It smiled—a cold, needle-thin grin—and raised a finger to its lips. Behind it, shadows moved. Something coiled.
Elias smashed the glass.
The antique shop reeked of mothballs and myrrh. The proprietor, a hunched woman with milky eyes, slid a velvet box across the counter. Inside lay a hand mirror, its handle carved with serpents. “Lytta’s Glass,” she croaked. “They say Lyssa was mortal once—a beauty cursed by a god to live eternity in reflections. She feeds on regret. Shows you… possibilities.”
“How do I stop her?”
The old woman’s laugh was a dry rattle. “You don’t. You bargain.”
That night, Elias dreamt of Clara. She stood in a hall of mirrors, each reflection a version of her that never died: Clara laughing, Clara whole, Clara alive. At the end of the hall stood a figure in a rippling silver gown, her face obscured by a cascading veil of mirrored fragments.
“A trade,” hissed the Goddess. “Your eyes for hers.”
Elias woke screaming, his cheeks wet with blood. The mirror above his bed was intact. His reflection was not. It stared back with Clara’s eyes.
The finale played out in the Grand Lumière, its rotting stage lit by the sickly glow of emergency exits. Elias clutched Lytta’s Glass, the serpent handle biting into his palm. The texts had led him here: COME ALONE. BRING THE MIRROR. SEE TRUTH.
She emerged from the shadows—not a monster, but a woman. Lyssa’s veil shimmered, reflecting Elias’s face, Clara’s face, a kaleidoscope of might-have-beens. “You broke the rules,” she whispered, her voice like splintering glass. “You looked. You hunted.”
“Give her back,” Elias growled.
Lyssa laughed. The veil parted. Beneath it—nothing. A void. A thousand fractured images spiraled in the emptiness: Clara’s death, his own mother’s funeral, futures where he walked, whole, into the sea. “Regret is my sacrament,” Lyssa crooned. “But you… you’re interesting. A man who loves a ghost more than his own flesh.”
She stepped closer. The mirrors lining the stage cracked, one by one. “A new bargain. Stay with me. Be my… anchor. And I’ll let her go.”
Elias hesitated. In Lytta’s Glass, Clara’s reflection mouthed NO.
He lunged, driving the mirror’s edge into Lyssa’s chest. The veil shattered.
The glass didn’t kill her. It trapped her.
Elias woke in a hospital, bandages over his eyes. The nurses said he’d been found clutching a shattered mirror, screaming about serpents. But he knew the truth: Lyssa’s curse had transferred. He sees her now, in every reflection—a veiled figure, smiling. Waiting.
And Clara? She’s free. He hears her sometimes, in the scrape of glass, the drip of a faucet. “You shouldn’t have looked,” she whispers.
But Elias can’t stop. The mirrors call to him. They always will.
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