Soren stood before the mirror, his hands trembling as he read the words, the ones etched in the ancient wood of the cabinet beneath it:
- Offer rice.
- Burn incense.
- Do not forget the ritual.
It was a rule, a sacred one, though Soren had never quite understood why.
The mirror had always been an eerie fixture in his life, like a thing that didn’t belong to the world he knew. Not that he believed in superstition—not at first.
But over the years, he had grown accustomed to the whispering unease that always followed when he forgot the ritual.
It wasn’t a hard thing to do. The ritual was simple: a handful of rice. A stick of incense. A quiet moment to offer them up, as if in gratitude.
And then, only then, could the mirror be cleaned. A small price to pay, he thought. But a price nonetheless.
And tonight, of all nights, he had forgotten, again. He never really took the ritual seriously since he knew he always gets away with it.
Soren stood, staring at it. The old mirror had always been an odd thing—hardly noticeable to anyone but him. Yet he could never shake the feeling that it watched him, patiently, like an old friend with too many secrets.
Sometimes it felt as though the reflection didn’t quite match the room, as though the glass had its own agenda, its own world that didn’t overlap with the one on the other side.
He reached for the cloth, wiping away the dust from the frame, his mind fogged by the pressing need to finish the task. He’d been cleaning mirrors all his life, and surely this one—this mere relic—was no different.
But as he rubbed the cloth over the glass, the air seemed to thicken. A hum, built and swelled like a storm waiting to break. His fingers froze. Something wasn’t right.
A shape flickered in the mirror—no, not a shape.
A door. A door that hadn’t been there before, its dark wood framed by shadows that bled into the room. The space beyond it was—wrong. Hollow. Twisted. It wasn’t a hallway he knew. It wasn’t even a place he could name.
Soren blinked, his heart pounding. When he turned, the room behind him remained still, the soft creak of the old house settling in the silence. But in the mirror—the mirror’s reflection was different. It had drawn him in, like a thing that understood him better than he understood himself.
Before he could take a step back, something stirred within the glass. The door inside the reflection creaked open.
“Don’t,” he whispered, the words barely escaping his lips, but it was too late. The pull was unbearable now. It was as if the mirror itself had extended an invitation, one that was too dangerous to decline.
Soren reached out, fingers trembling, and touched the frame. The moment his skin made contact, the world around him shifted violently.
The room blurred, its edges dissolving like mist in the wind. He felt himself falling—no, floating—down that hallway.
The walls seemed to pulse, each door groaning in protest as it slowly opened. Some of them revealed nothing but darkness, others hinted at glimpses of rooms long forgotten.
There was no escape. The air felt like it was pressing him further into the depths of the mirror.
Time—if time even existed—passed in a disjointed manner. He couldn’t say whether he had been floating for hours, days, or minutes.
His mind began to fray, every moment stretching too thin, every sound echoing louder than the last. At long last, Soren stumbled through a door. And then—nothing.
He found himself back in the room where it had all begun. The cabinet. The mirror. Everything as it should have been.
Except for one thing. He realized that the everything that should have been is now on the other side of the reflection.
He’s now inside the reflection that he saw before he cleaned the mirror, a small, silver hairpin lay on the floor before him. The delicate metal gleaming softly in the candlelight. He bent down to pick it up, his hand trembling.
It was familiar to him, too familiar. He knew that hairpin—knew it as the one his mother had worn the day she disappeared.
The realization hit him like a blow to the chest.
The rice. The incense. The ritual.
It wasn’t a protection. It wasn’t a warning. It was a binding.
The mirror, he realized had taken far more than Soren could ever have imagined.
That rice?
It had killed much more due to a simple neglect. It had claimed memories. It had claimed lives.
And Soren—Soren would never leave this time —this time Soren wasn’t able to get away with it.
