Sarah stood in front of the bathroom mirror, toothbrush in hand, unmoving.
She hadn't turned the light on.
She didn't want to see her reflection too clearly.
Every mirror in the house was covered now—except this one. She needed to know if it would happen again. If she would show up. If Sarah would vanish.
But so far… nothing.
Just her.
Just tired eyes, bruised with sleeplessness. Lips dry. The faintest smudge beneath her jaw—something that looked like a handprint, but faded, like it had been left in another world and bled through.
Her fingers trembled as she reached up to touch the glass.
Nothing.
She closed her eyes.
And the whisper came.
"You're soft now. You forgot what it took to survive him."
Sarah jerked back.
Her reflection hadn't moved. Her mouth hadn't opened. But the words had been hers—spoken in her voice.
"Ace!" she shouted.
Footsteps thundered down the hall. He burst in, weapon drawn.
But the mirror was just a mirror again.
Just her.
Ace exhaled sharply. "Tell me what happened."
She did.
This time, she didn't hold anything back. Not the whisper. Not the way the reflection moved without her. Not the handprint she'd found on her throat two nights ago after dreaming of drowning in ash.
Ace didn't flinch. He never did.
Instead, he stepped forward and ran a thumb under her jaw.
"You're not losing it," he said softly. "This house is playing by different rules."
Sarah leaned into his hand. "It's not the house, Ace. It's me. She's in me."
"No," he said, eyes dark. "She's using you. There's a difference. And that means we can find her."
She nodded, though fear sat like stone in her stomach.
"How?" she asked.
Ace looked at her, voice quiet but sure.
"By finding out what you forgot."
Later that night, Ace sat in front of a stack of old notebooks—Sarah's journals from years ago. Ones she hadn't opened since Hal.
Most of them were blank.
But one wasn't.
It was a thin, spiral-bound thing. Torn at the edges. Pages warped from water damage or tears—or both.
Ace flipped to the middle.
One sentence, scrawled across the page in thick, frantic ink:
"I buried her in the skin of my silence."
He looked up.
Sarah was watching him from the doorway, eyes unreadable.
"I don't remember writing that," she said.
He held up the page. "Then it wasn't you."