Burning Beneath

She was falling.

Not fast. Not endlessly.

It was a slow, controlled descent, as if something was lowering her into the dark.

The air grew colder, thicker. Breathing felt like inhaling fog, heavy and damp. She stretched her hands into the black, reaching for something—anything—but found only emptiness.

Then—solid ground.

Her feet met the surface with a soundless step. She stood in a vast, lightless space. No walls. No sky. Only the mirror, still fractured, now standing upright before her.

But the reflection was gone.

The cracks bled a dull red glow, pulsing like a heartbeat.

And then the voice returned.

“You are not what you think you are.”

It wasn’t a voice spoken aloud. It bloomed inside her head, coiling around her thoughts like smoke.

Sam opened her mouth to speak, to demand answers, but no sound came out. Words failed her.

Of course, she thought bitterly. Without my mind, even my voice is lost.

Movement flickered in the corner of her eye.

A figure.

Shadow made flesh, gliding around the edge of her vision, never staying still. It didn’t walk—it drifted. Watching. Waiting.

Her instincts screamed to run.

But she didn’t.

Not because she was brave. But because she knew it would follow.

“Why are you here?” the voice asked again, though softer now, like a whisper through cracked glass.

Sam didn’t answer. She didn’t know.

But the figure began to split—two, then four, then dozens—surrounding her in a silent circle.

Each one a darker version of herself.

Some wore her old clothes, her past disguises. The quiet girl in oversized sweaters. The black-clad rebel. The child who tried too hard to disappear.

And one—one of them—stood apart.

Barefoot. Hollow-eyed. Expressionless.

Sam without thought.

This one tilted its head slowly, studying her with lifeless curiosity.

Then it moved forward.

No words. No warning.

It lunged.

Sam didn’t think. Couldn’t think.

Her body moved on instinct alone.

She ducked, twisted, and ran into the dark, the sound of chasing footsteps—or were they her own?—echoing after her.

The mirror cracked again behind her, the red glow spilling like blood onto the ground.

And somewhere in the dark, something began to wake up.