Chapter 25: The Fractured Mind

A sound like cracking glass filled Evelyn's skull.

She wasn't sure if it was coming from the city, the creature, or herself.

The moment the thing blinked, something inside her broke.

She stumbled backward, clutching her head as a wave of nausea and vertigo ripped through her.

The world around her fractured—reality splitting apart like a shattered mirror.

Flashes of memories, half-formed visions, and flickering echoes of the past bombarded her senses.

She saw:

Lillian, standing in the woods the night she vanished, reaching for something unseen.

Her childhood home, its walls dripping with shadows that pulsed like living veins.

A reflection of herself in a cracked mirror—but her reflection didn't move with her.

A circle of robed figures, chanting words she couldn't understand.

And then—

A voice.

Deep, guttural, inhuman.

"You do not belong."

The words slithered into her thoughts, bypassing sound entirely.

Evelyn's vision snapped back to the present, her body trembling violently.

The thing was closer now.

Too close.

Its towering form loomed above her, those hundreds of black, glassy eyes still fixed on her, unblinking.

The city around them had completely stilled.

The air was wrong—thick, heavy, suffocating.

And then Evelyn realized—

She couldn't move.

Her limbs refused to obey.

A cold, invisible force held her in place, her body frozen while her mind screamed at her to run.

Lillian—or the thing wearing Lillian's face—watched in eerie silence.

Then, slowly, she raised her hand again—

And pointed downward.

Evelyn's gaze was yanked downward against her will.

And she saw it.

Her own shadow.

It wasn't her shape.

It wasn't even human.

It was moving, twisting into something else—

Something with too many arms, too many fingers, too many eyes.

And it was grinning.

A slow, jagged, impossible grin.

Then—

The ground cracked open.

And Evelyn fell.

Into the Abyss

Evelyn plunged into darkness.

The air rushed past her, icy and sharp, but there was no end to the fall—no sense of gravity, only the sickening weightlessness of being swallowed whole.

The whispers followed her down.

Not just voices—memories.

Her mother's lullabies, distorted and off-key.

Lillian's laughter, echoing in reverse.

A voice she didn't recognize, whispering her name like a prayer.

Then—

A cold hand closed around her wrist.

She jerked, the fall slowing, but she didn't hit the ground.

Instead, she was suspended—floating in the abyss, weightless, held in place by an unseen force.

The darkness around her shifted, coalescing into forms.

Walls.

Not real ones—cracked and decayed, pulsing as if breathing.

She was in a room.

A place that shouldn't exist.

Dim, flickering lamplight cast grotesque shadows along the walls.

And in the center of the room—

A door.

It was wrong.

Not in shape, not in size—but in presence.

It shouldn't be there.

It felt… alive.

Something was on the other side.

Something waiting.

Evelyn's body moved on its own.

She wasn't walking—she was being pulled.

A force she couldn't fight dragged her toward the door, her heartbeat hammering in her ears.

She tried to speak.

Tried to scream.

Nothing came out.

The moment her fingers touched the doorknob—

A voice hissed in her ear:

"You already opened it once. Don't do it again."

The air turned solid, pressing in on her lungs.

Something stood behind her.

Close.

Breathing.

Watching.

The moment she turned—

The door swung open.

And the world collapsed.

The Other Side

The door yawned wide, and the moment Evelyn crossed the threshold—

She was somewhere else.

It wasn't a room.

It wasn't a city.

It wasn't even real.

The sky above was a swirling void—a mass of black clouds shifting unnaturally, twisting like tangled veins.

The ground was slick, wet stone, stretching endlessly in every direction.

And then there were the mirrors.

Dozens.

Hundreds.

All standing at odd angles, circling her in an intricate labyrinth of reflections.

But they didn't show her.

Not entirely.

Each reflection was different.

In one, she was younger, standing in the woods with Lillian the night she disappeared.

In another, she was older, her face pale, her eyes hollowed by shadows that moved on their own.

And in the one directly in front of her—

She was dead.

Her body lay sprawled on the wet stone, lifeless, empty, her face twisted in a silent scream.

She staggered back.

A whisper slithered through the air:

"Which one is real?"

Evelyn spun around—but there was no one there.

The air was too thick, too heavy, pressing against her chest like an invisible weight.

And then—

The mirrors began to shift.

Not by moving—by changing.

Her reflections were no longer hers.

They were watching her.

All of them.

Different versions of herself, their heads twitching, their mouths moving soundlessly.

Then, one by one, they began to step forward.

Not their reflections.

Them.

They were stepping out of the mirrors.

And Evelyn realized—

She wasn't supposed to be here.

This place wasn't a memory.

It wasn't a dream.

It was a prison.

And she had just let something out.

Reflections of the Damned

The other Evelyns stepped forward.

Their bodies moved unnaturally, stiff and jerky, like puppets hanging from invisible strings.

Their eyes were wrong.

Not human.

Not reflections.

But windows into something else.

Evelyn stumbled backward, her breath ragged, shallow.

She couldn't run.

There was nowhere to go.

The mirrors stretched in every direction, twisting, warping as if the very fabric of reality was unraveling.

One of the reflections—an older version of herself, face gaunt, skin gray—spoke first.

"You shouldn't have come here."

Her voice was wrong—hollow, layered, like a dozen voices whispering at once.

Another stepped closer—this one younger, almost a child, but her mouth hung open too wide, stretching past human limits.

"You left us behind."

Evelyn's pulse hammered in her skull.

This wasn't real.

This couldn't be real.

"Who are you?" she demanded, though her voice barely rose above a whisper.

They all tilted their heads in unison.

Then, the childlike one smiled—

A slow, unnatural grin that split her face open like a cracked doll.

"We are you."

The moment the words left its mouth—

The mirrors shattered.

The sound was deafening—like a thousand glass shards screaming at once.

And Evelyn fell again.

Falling, falling, falling—

Through the broken reflections, through the abyss, through time itself.

The voices followed her, clawing at her mind, whispering things she couldn't understand.

Then—

Silence.

And she woke up.

In her apartment.

Breathing hard.

Drenched in sweat.

The city outside looked normal.

The clock on her nightstand read 3:33 AM.

Had it been a dream?

Had any of it been real?

Her hands shook as she reached for her phone, desperate to ground herself.

But when the screen lit up—

Her reflection in the black screen didn't move with her.

It just stared.

And then it smiled.