The night air was thick with a silence that felt heavy, almost suffocating. Elias couldn't stop thinking about the attic. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw those dark, hollow pits where eyes should have been.
Driven by a morbid curiosity, he returned to the attic at midnight. This time, he didn't bring a candle; he used the flashlight on his phone. The beam cut through the darkness, landing directly on the ornate mirror.
As he approached, the glass began to frost over, despite the summer heat. A rhythmic thumping started behind the wall—thump-thump, thump-thump—like a giant, slow-beating heart.
Elias reached out to touch the cold glass. To his horror, the reflection didn't reach back. Instead, the "Mirror-Elias" was now standing several feet away from the glass inside the reflection's world, holding a rusted, jagged key.
Suddenly, a wet, scratching sound came from inside the mirror. A hand—pale, long-fingered, and dripping with a dark, oily substance—pressed against the glass from the other side. The mirror didn't shatter; it rippled like water.
The voice whispered again, louder this time, echoing in the cramped attic: "The cage is opening, Elias. I don't want to be the reflection anymore. I want to be the one who breathes."
A cold, dead hand grabbed Elias's wrist through the mirror. The grip was like ice, and as he tried to scream, no sound came out. The thing in the mirror began to pull him in, its wide, toothy grin stretching far beyond what was humanly possible.