Echoglass
It began with the mirrors.
Not full ones—just glimpses.
A shimmer in the reflection of a spoon. A flash of movement in a phone screen. The faint outline of someone standing behind you in a darkened window, only to vanish the second you turned.
It had been three days since they pulled Eli back from the dream.
Three days since they'd watched the last mirror vanish from the room.
But none of them believed it was truly gone.
And now, something had changed.
They didn't trust each other anymore.
---
It started small.
Jess caught Max staring at her too long. His eyes didn't blink.
When she asked him about it, he just said, "I thought you were someone else."
Later, Sky found Nori standing in front of the vending machine, unmoving, for ten full minutes. She didn't speak until he touched her shoulder—then she jerked as if waking from underwater.
Eli, still pale and shaken from what he'd seen, sat apart from them now. He said the boy left traces in his head—fragments of words, images that didn't belong to him.
"He's not gone," Eli said quietly, sitting on the curb outside school, arms wrapped around his knees. "He's just quieter."
Lumen didn't disagree. He hadn't said much at all since the dream.
He just watched.
---
That evening, they met in the abandoned observatory on the edge of town. The place had been shut down for years, but it still smelled of dust and metal and forgotten stars. It was the only place none of them had mirrors.
They didn't speak right away.
The silence between them stretched like a wire—tight, humming with tension.
Finally, Jess said it.
The thing they'd all been thinking.
"One of us is still carrying him."
Max flinched. "That's not—"
"It's true," Sky cut in. "He said it. That someone still belongs."
They all looked at each other.
The shadows on the walls seemed longer than they should be.
Lumen stepped into the center of the room, arms raised like a magician offering a trick.
"Then let's find out."
He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a compact mirror.
Not glass—polished silver. Small enough to fit in the palm of his hand.
The others froze.
"Where the hell did you get that?" Max asked, already backing away.
Lumen didn't answer.
Instead, he opened it slowly.
The mirror inside shimmered, showing only darkness at first.
Then something began to move in the reflection.
Not his face.
Not anyone's.
Just eyes. Watching.
Familiar.
Hungry.
"Stop—Lumen, close it—" Sky shouted.
But it was too late.
Lumen turned the mirror outward, letting them all see.
In the reflection—
Each of them stood in the observatory.
Except one.
One figure in the mirror was different.
Paler. Thinner.
Smiling.
Nori.
---
She staggered backward. "No—no, that's not me. That's not—"
But the others were already pulling away from her.
Jess looked stricken. "He's hiding in someone. He said it."
Eli rose slowly, voice trembling. "We have to know."
"No," Nori whispered, shaking her head, tears slipping down her cheeks. "This isn't me—I'm not him—"
But in the mirror—
She was still smiling.
---
And far above them, unseen behind the broken dome of the observatory, the night sky shifted.
A single star blinked out.
Then another.
And another.
As if the sky itself were being swallowed