The ground beneath Avery appeared to shift again, this time out of her control. She stumbled, her knees buckling beneath the force of the disorienting pull that had started in the air and permeated into her bones. The shadows around her seemed to warp and stretch, as if they were sentient, reaching out, pulling at her mind.
The figure—the man who had been watching her from the very beginning—still stood there, his dark eyes piercing through her with a cold, unreadable gaze.
He hadn't moved, hadn't spoken since his cryptic whisper.
"You've always known, haven't you?"
Avery fought to clear her mind, to untangle the fragments of confusion whirling within it, but everything folded inward. She attempted to utter something, to speak over the lump growing in her throat, but words betrayed her. She was being choked on silence, drowned on her own thoughts.
Her fingers followed the border of the book again, the creased leather creaking like the rhythm of the room itself. All of her was drawn to it, compelled by something she couldn't understand.
"What is this?"
The words finally escaped her lips, trembling and delicate, barely audible. She was foolish. How many times had she asked that very same question?
But the answer, this time, was not.
The man stepped forward. Slowly, deliberately. Each motion smooth, calculated, as turning the page.
"Avery," he stated, his voice like cold blood in her system. "You can't hide from what you've already begun."
She swallowed hard, her throat as dry as sandpaper. "What am I supposed to do? I can't. I don't know. What is this place?"
The man's lips twisted into something approximating a smile—an expression that didn't quite reach his eyes. A smile that viewed things she hadn't yet seen.
"This place?" He gave a soft laugh. "This place is inside your head, Avery. Just like all of it. The mirror, the book, the pictures. They're yours. Every piece of this puzzle leads back to you."
The words hit her like a chest blow. Her breath caught. Her heart thumped inside her chest, wanting to burst from the tension writhing inside her.
"What do you mean, me?" she spat, retreating, her pulse raging. "I'm just, surviving. This is just a game. Right?"
He didn't answer right away. He just stepped closer, his presence filling the space like a storm cloud about to break.
"No," he said, his voice low, almost a growl. "It's never been a game. It's always been about the truth you've buried deep inside you."
Avery blinked rapidly, confusion making her vision blur. What was he saying?
She took another step back, and another, until she was pressed against the cold stone wall. She couldn't get away from him—couldn't get away from the suffocating weight of his words, his gaze.
"I don't—" She tried to calm her breathing, to steady her voice so that it didn't shake. "I don't remember."
The man's eyes softened for an instant—an instant of something almost human. Almost gentle.
"You will," he said to her. "But you first have to own up to what you've done."
***
The words hung there between them like poison, curdling in her mind. Avery's breath felt trapped in her chest and she swung around from him, her mind spinning faster than she could grasp. What had she done?
The air around her undulated again, blurring, bending. The walls split wide open, the floor beneath her wrenching like quicksand. The earth opened up under her, and she struggled to breathe as her feet hit solid ground again.
This time, the world was different.
It was not the frigid, impersonal room that she had just been standing in mere seconds prior. It was not the choking pressure of the blackness burying her. It was not the endless, surreal corridors of the house she had been wandering.
This home, this was home.
She was having trouble breathing.
The room before her was filled with soft, golden light. The floors shone of polished wood, furniture warm and inviting. And there—standing before her, as if no time had passed at all—was someone she never thought to see again.
***
"Mom?"
Avery's voice broke at the word leaving her lips, as if the word itself had been sealed behind grime, camouflaged over years.
The woman standing before her had her back to Avery, looking out the window. She wore a simple blouse and jeans, her hair pulled back in a messy ponytail. She looked, normal.
Familiar. Real.
Avery's heart raced in her chest. She took a cautious step forward, her mind racing with incredulity.
But when she took another step, the woman turned around slowly, still not quite revealing her face.
And then Avery saw it—the cold, dark eyes. The too-wide smile. The same, familiar, chilling grin that made Avery's blood run cold.
It wasn't her mother.
It was the face in the mirror.
***
The space around her began to distort again. The corners smoothed out. The floorboards creaked and splintered, making way for the chill of the hard concrete that she had known so well. The caressing touch of the sun was replaced by the bitter, biting light of the merciless lamps that had held her captive since the beginning.
The expression on the woman's face twisted, and the creature in front of her sneered with a knowing, evil sheen.
"You don't know anything, do you?" he taunted, the voice lower, more menacing.
Avery felt a weight drop into her stomach, the wave of fear breaking to swallow her as the world she knew disintegrated.
"No," she breathed, her voice trembling. "I don't."
The figure stepped nearer. "You should have asked the right questions sooner."
And then, in an instant, the walls closed in on her, and the air grew cold as ice. The room was no longer a room. It was a prison.
Avery's breath stopped as the man's voice, low and threatening, echoed through the air around her.
"You want the truth, Avery? You want to know? Then break the mirror."
Avery's mind spun, her heart thudding in her ears as the figure's words closed around her, silencing her mind. "Break the mirror."
She had to scream, had to yell, but something within her recoiled. The mirror was the solution. Always the solution. The figure, this twisted reflection of the man who had been pursuing her, was offering her the one thing she feared most. Shattering the mirror meant facing whatever hidden truths it held—truths she wasn't sure she was ready to handle.
An abrupt outburst of rage flared within her. She could not flee anymore. She could not hide. Not from this. not from herself.
She did not think, moving instead with a mindless urgency, fingers shaking, closing around the cold, smoothness of the mirror that stood before her. She felt the jolt in her bones, the cold touch of reality receding as she hung on to the reflection of her own shattered self.
"Do it."
The voice of the figure was sharp as a command, sharp as a sound that lashed through the air like a whip. And before she could stop herself, Avery smashed her hand into the mirror. The glass exploded under the impact, breaking into a thousand tiny pieces, every one of them staring back at her with her own horror-filled face.
And then—
There was nothing.
Reality around her receded, as if the stitches of existence itself had unraveled. Avery hovered for a moment, light, suspended in nothing. She reached out her hands, sensing them brush against void, but there was no hold. Darkness surged up around her, shrouding her in a clammy cloak.
And then—a jolt.
The ground beneath her feet solidified, and Avery staggered, her arms flinging out to catch herself as the world came back into focus.
***
Avery blinked from the harsh light, her breathing coming in jagged, frantic gasps. She was on the cobblestone street, the chilly night air slapping against her skin. The place was unmistakable. The house. The same one she'd first walked into, the one that had started it all.
It was real. The house. The shadows. The distorted maze. The puzzles.
It was all real.
Avery's heart hammered against her ribcage as she gazed about. The streets were empty—unnaturally quiet. No cars. No humans. Nothing. None except the cold night air that seemed to hang in a thick, stifling hush.
But she wasn't alone.
Reed was several feet behind her, his back to her, as if waiting for something to happen. His body was tense, his stance rigid. The moment she saw him, he slowly faced her, his expression inscrutable.
They merely stared at one another for a moment. The atmosphere between them was charged, as if something important was about to happen. Something they both knew, but neither of them was willing to acknowledge.
"What in the world just happened?" Avery's voice was raw, her throat dry from the tension that had taken hold of her.
Reed inched nearer, his eyes fixed on hers. His face was icier than she remembered, as if any semblance of warmth that had ever been there had disintegrated and dissolved into something far darker.
"You broke the mirror," he said to her, his tone low, with something in it that could only be described as awe. "You shattered the illusion."