Elle didn’t remember the walk home.

She moved through the streets like someone half-woken, the wind tangling her hair, Shakespearean couplets chasing each other through her mind… and his eyes.

The way he’d looked at her.

Like he saw through every scar she’d ever hidden.

That night, sleep refused her.

She turned over in bed again and again. The dark felt thicker than usual. Too still. Too full.

At 2:47 a.m., she gave up.

She slipped into the bathroom, turned on the tap, and splashed water over her face.

When she looked up—

Her reflection didn’t move.

Elle froze.

She raised a hand.

The mirror-girl didn’t.

A heartbeat passed. Then, late, the reflection lifted its hand.

Her breath caught. The air turned wrong—not cold like winter.

Cold like absence.

Like the moment before a scream.

Then—

“Elowen.”

A voice. Low. Steady. Not cruel.
Not kind.
Certain.

She stumbled back, hand over her mouth.

But the mirror didn’t return to normal.

This time… it reached for her.

Fingers pressed against the other side of the glass. Cracks bloomed from the point of contact—not shattering, but spiraling.

Deliberate.

Marking.

A sigil unfurled—etched in frost.

And behind it, in the deep, dreamlike shimmer of the mirror’s veil—

A boy.

Not Ashriel as she knew him.

Ashriel unmasked.

Eyes the color of midnight ice.
Wings forged from armored shadow, curled behind him like secrets waiting to be unfurled.

He didn’t speak.

He didn’t need to.

He simply watched her.

And something inside her answered.

Not fear.
Not even wonder.
Recognition.

Then—

The mirror blinked out.

No crack. No sigil. Just her reflection again—shaking, pale, alone.

Except she wasn’t.

Because one word lingered on the fogged glass, fading as she watched:

Soon.

Elle’s breath trembled in the silence, because whatever Ashriel truly was—he wasn’t waiting anymore.