Part I: A Choice of Swords
Lena Carter stood in her room, heart hammering.
The floating mirror shards hovered around her like a constellation—each one shimmering with a different life, a different her. One shard showed her with Dev, laughing on a balcony. Another held a vision of Kian, wounded and bleeding, whispering her name as the world collapsed around them. The third—Riven's shard—was stained with blood and roses, love wrapped in thorns.
But the last one—
The last shard was black.
No reflection. No future.
Just silence.
She reached toward it—and the silence screamed.
Her hand recoiled, breath caught in her throat.
What happens if I choose none of them?
"Then we all burn," whispered a voice behind her.
She turned.
Dev stood at the threshold of her doorway, gaze fixed on the shards. He looked older somehow, like the boy she knew was being burned away by something darker.
"You felt it, didn't you?" Lena asked. "When the mirrors cracked."
"I felt you," Dev said. "And I knew something inside you had changed."
"I didn't ask for this."
"I know. But we don't get to choose the weight we carry. Only how we carry it."
He took a step closer, eyes flicking to the shards. "Have you picked one?"
"No."
"Good," he said. "Because I haven't given up yet."
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Part II: Night of the Knives
At St. Aemilian's High School, the night air was unusually quiet.
The sky above Delhi was bruised purple, as if something unseen was watching. The students walked home in pairs or stayed in locked dorm rooms, avoiding mirrors, windows—anything that could reflect.
Everyone could feel it.
A storm was building.
And in the storm's eye stood Lena.
She met Meera outside the abandoned music block—one of the only places left untouched by the growing curse of reflections.
Meera looked scared. For the first time.
"I saw something in the bathroom mirror," she said. "It wasn't me."
Lena nodded. "They're getting closer."
Meera touched Lena's wrist, her voice trembling. "What are you turning into?"
Lena couldn't answer.
She wasn't sure herself.
There was something inside her now—a dark twin, coiled like a viper. It whispered at night. It smiled when she was hurt. It wanted her to give in.
To stop choosing between right and wrong.
And just become the thing everyone feared.
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Part III: Riven's Ultimatum
He found her on the library roof.
Riven, clad in his usual black, boots dangling over the edge, watching the streetlights shimmer in the distance like dying stars.
"You came," he said without turning.
"You knew I would."
He glanced at her, half a smirk tugging at his lips. "Because you can't stay away from me. None of you can."
Lena crossed her arms. "That's not true."
"No?" He stood, stepping closer, his face inches from hers. "Then why do your hands shake when I touch you?"
She didn't answer.
He stepped back, spinning a silver coin in his palm.
"The Vanished made an offer. They want you. Badly."
"And you?"
Riven caught the coin mid-air. "I want what I've always wanted. You. Standing beside me. Not afraid of power. Not ashamed of what you are."
"I'm not yours to keep, Riven."
"Maybe not. But you're not theirs either."
He stepped close again. "I'm the only one who knows what it means to carry darkness and not be destroyed by it."
"Maybe I don't want to carry it," she whispered.
Riven smiled, sad and sharp. "It's too late for that."
And he vanished into the night.
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Part IV: Shatterpoint
That night, Lena stood before the cracked full-length mirror in her closet.
The glass was webbed with glowing veins—like lightning frozen in a storm. In the center, her reflection stared back.
But it wasn't her.
It smiled.
"You're not real," Lena whispered.
"Oh, but I am," said the reflection. "I'm what you become when you stop trying to please everyone. When you stop apologizing for surviving."
"Is that what this is?" she asked. "Survival?"
The reflection leaned in. "No. This is evolution."
With that, it shattered.
A pulse exploded outward, blasting Lena across the room. The glass embedded in the walls turned black—and then began to move. Liquid reflections crawled out, twisting into shapes. Figures.
Dev. Kian. Riven.
All three of them—bleeding. Broken. Each one calling her name.
"No," Lena whispered. "This isn't real—"
But it was. And it wasn't a vision.
It was a choice.
And it was tearing her apart.
One final voice echoed in her mind. Anya Carter's voice, from the journal.
> "In the end, we don't fall in love.
We fall into reflection.
And sometimes, reflection swallows us whole."
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