The Reflection That Refused to Vanish

Dawn broke like a fever, hot and wrong. I knelt by the puddle again, needing to confirm what I'd seen wasn't sleep-deprived madness. The water lay still, mirror-perfect in the windless morning.

Two Asharas gazed up at me.

My daughter—the real one, solid in my arms—gurgled contentedly. Her reflection did the same, perfect synchronization. But beside it, the mouthless one waited, eyes spiraling inward like doors to nowhere.

I dragged my hand through the water, muddying it, breaking the image. When the ripples settled and the silt cleared, only one reflection remained.

The wrong one.

Ashara began to hum. The same broken syllable that had started this unraveling, now set to melody. Each note made the mouthless reflection grow clearer, more defined, as if sound itself was sculpting it into being.

I pressed my hand over her tiny mouth—gentle, desperate. She stopped, blinking up at me with innocent confusion.

How do you correct a child who doesn't know she's echoing a god?

"We need to talk." I found Dorian sharpening his blade by the dying fire, movements too precise, too focused. The blood from his wound had dried in patterns that hurt to perceive. "About what you saw. In the temple. Years ago."

His hands stilled. "Aria—"

"No more deflection. No more protection. Tell me."

He set the blade aside, and for the first time since this began, I saw true fear in his eyes. "During the moon-temple purge. The smoke of unwritten names—we thought it was just incense. Made you see things. Hallucinations."

"What did you see?"

"You." His voice dropped to barely audible. "Holding two infants. Identical, but..." He struggled for words. "One breathed. Cried. Lived. The other was made of reflection itself. Glass and light pretending to be flesh."

My arms tightened around Ashara. "What happened?"

"The living child opened her eyes and wailed—normal, healthy. The reflected one..." He met my gaze. "It smiled. And it said, in a voice older than temples: 'Thank you for the name.'"

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I thought it was the smoke. Battle-madness. Prophecy poison." His laugh held no humor. "I never imagined I was seeing the future. Your future. Our future."

Ashara stirred in my arms, and we both froze. But she only yawned, settling back into sleep. Normal. Human. Mine.

Until nightfall.

I was changing her by firelight when it happened. She'd been babbling—the sweet nonsense sounds of infancy, all gums and joy. Then, between one breath and the next, her voice changed.

Not the tone. The voice itself. Adult. Female. Ancient.

"The mirror did not break. It waited."

Dorian was on his feet instantly, blade drawn against an enemy that wore our daughter's face. I covered Ashara's mouth with trembling fingers, but the voice continued—from beneath the floorboards, from the walls, from the spaces between sound.

"It waited it waited it waited—"

Then silence. Ashara blinked at me, sucking contentedly on her fist, unaware she'd been a god's mouthpiece.

"She doesn't know," I whispered. "She doesn't know what she's carrying."

Movement at the edge of firelight. We turned together, weapons raised, to find him standing just beyond the light's reach. The hunter-priest from before, grey-wrapped and patient. He didn't speak—they never did, those who hunted names. Words were doors, and they'd learned to keep theirs closed.

He set something at the border of our camp and faded back into darkness. Dorian retrieved it: a bone charm, yellow with age. Carved into its surface were two figures. Both were Ashara—one with normal features, one with an open seam where the mouth should be.

Beneath, in script that predated alphabets: Do you know which one you cradle?

I crushed the charm under my heel, but the question remained, burrowing into my brain like a parasite. Did I know? When she smiled, was it her? When she cried, which throat shaped the sound?

"I need air," I said, though what I needed was impossible—to turn back time, to swallow the second name before it could echo, to birth only one daughter instead of whatever this was becoming.

I set Ashara in her makeshift cradle and stood by the cabin's single luxury—a shard of mirror-glass wedged into the wall, warped but functional. In it, I saw myself: exhausted, milk-stained, afraid. Behind me, Ashara slept peaceful in her blankets.

Both of her.

The real Ashara, chest rising and falling with mortal breath. And beside her, the reflection that shouldn't exist outside the mirror. The mouthless one with spiraling eyes.

But this time, it moved independently.

The false Ashara turned its head. Looked directly at me through the glass. And began walking toward the surface.

"Dorian—"

Too late. Always too late.

The mirror's surface rippled like water, and she stepped through. Not an infant—newborns don't walk. But Ashara-sized, Ashara-shaped, wearing my daughter's face like an inherited dress. She didn't breathe. Didn't blink. But when she spoke, the voice came from everywhere:

"You said my name once. That was enough."

She moved toward the cradle where real-Ashara whimpered in her sleep, disturbed by proximity to her own echo. Two daughters. One born of flesh and choice. One invited through carelessness and kept alive by repetition.

I lunged between them, scooping up my true daughter while the false one watched with spiral eyes. She didn't grab or claw—worse, she simply stood there, patient as prophecy.

"She's mine," I snarled.

"We're both yours," the false Ashara said, tilting her head with movement too fluid for mortal joints. "You named us both. The question is: which one gets to grow up?"

Dorian's blade sang as he drew it, but I knew steel couldn't cut reflection. Couldn't kill something I'd invited through the door of naming. The false Ashara smiled—an expression that looked wrong on features meant for innocence.

"One of us was born," she said. "One of us was invited. But only one can stay embodied. Choose, mother. Before the choice makes itself."

Real-Ashara began to cry—thin, reedy wails that sounded less human with each breath. As if proximity to her reflection was teaching her how to be less real. More echo.

I held her tighter, backed against the wall, caught between daughter and un-daughter while Dorian stood frozen, unsure which threat to face.

One of them was born. One of them was invited. I named them both.

Now I have to choose who gets to stay.