Chapter 15 — Whispers in the Quiet

Chapter 15 — Whispers in the Quiet

The village was the kind that had long fallen off maps, its name forgotten by GPS and its roads more dirt than stone. Isabelle's boots crunched on the gravel as she stepped past the hand-carved sign that read Marrow Creek. No welcoming committee. No sound but the wind threading through the pines.

She felt it almost immediately — that tightness in her chest. The way the air carried something… off. Children peeked at her from shuttered windows. An old woman tending to herbs in a crooked garden suddenly turned away the moment Isabelle's gaze met hers.

She checked into the only inn — if it could be called that — a creaking three-room house run by a stooped man named Elias. He didn't ask for her ID, didn't bother with small talk. Just handed her the key and said, "Don't wander after dusk."

That night, she couldn't sleep. The quiet was too loud, filled with a tension she couldn't explain. At midnight, she heard it — chanting, low and rhythmic, like a prayer and a threat all at once. She pulled on a coat and slipped out.

Following the sound through the dark, she found them. A circle of villagers, standing around a mirror half-buried in the forest floor. No candles. No fire. Just moonlight and their voices. She stayed hidden, heart pounding, until the chanting stopped — and everyone vanished. No parting words. No trace they had ever been there.

Back at the inn the next morning, she confronted Elias.

"You saw it," he said. Not a question.

"Who were they?"

His sigh was a collapse. "We don't speak of the Mirror Rites."

"But you perform them."

He gave her a long, sunken look. "Some doors don't stay closed, no matter how many generations try. We just... try not to look too hard anymore."

She leaned in. "I need to know. I've seen it too. The other side of the mirror. I think I've lived there."

Elias's hand trembled as he poured her tea. "Then you're further in than you think."

He told her of a girl, years ago — bright, stubborn, and cursed by dreams. She asked too many questions, too. She vanished one winter night, and no one ever spoke her name again.

"Did she break it?" Isabelle whispered.

"No. But she cracked it."

Later, walking the village edge, Isabelle caught a glimpse of her own reflection in a puddle. But it wasn't her face — not entirely. Just enough to make her freeze.

The mirror was watching now. And it remembered.