The community center looms gray and unremarkable in the morning light, a building Ava has passed a thousand times without noticing. Now it feels different—a container for secrets, for power, for danger. She pauses at the entrance, hands tucked into her jacket pockets where the glow can't escape, and takes a steadying breath. The emotions of the teens inside already press against her mind like hands against a window, seeking entry.
They hadn't planned to meet this early. After yesterday's revelations at the playground, they'd separated in silence, each retreating to process what they'd discovered about their connection. Ava had barely slept, the memory of Megan Porter's scream echoing in her ears.
She pushes through the double doors, immediately wincing as a wave of emotions crashes over her. A boy by the water fountain radiates anxiety about a test. Two girls near the bulletin board shimmer with excitement over weekend plans. A janitor mopping the floor exudes quiet frustration. Ava's breath catches as she absorbs it all, each feeling settling into her chest like a stone into water, creating ripples she can't control.
"Focus," she whispers, repeating Lucian's instruction. "Filter."
She finds an empty bench and sits, pressing her fingertips to her temples. The glow beneath her skin pulses faster, responding to her distress. She breathes deeply, trying to build walls around her mind the way Sophie's notebook diagrams suggested. It helps, but barely—like using tissue paper to hold back a flood.
The main doors swing open with military precision. Liam enters, a walking fortress of rigid posture and controlled movements. His backpack hangs perfectly centered between his shoulders, the opposite of his usual careless sling. His shadow stretches behind him, slightly darker than it should be, slightly more alive. His eyes scan the room, landing on Ava with a mixture of relief and something harder.
"You're early," he says, joining her on the bench but leaving careful space between them. "Good. We need a structured approach today."
Ava nods, not trusting her voice. Liam's emotions are a contradictory knot—concern wrapped in determination wrapped in fear, all tied up with guilt that pulses like a second heartbeat. She can sense it without trying, and the intimacy of knowing so much about him without permission feels invasive.
"I made a schedule," Liam continues, pulling a folded paper from his pocket. His handwriting is uncommonly neat, each hour blocked and labeled. "Two hours of practice with the Almanac exercises, then target drills, then—"
"Target drills?" Ava interrupts, her discomfort momentarily forgotten. "Liam, I'm not sure that's—"
"We need to be prepared," he cuts in, jaw tight. "After what happened yesterday, it's obvious we're not in control. That has to change."
The doors open again before Ava can respond. Sophie enters, her hair pulled back in a severe ponytail, arms laden with books and her ever-present notebook. Dark circles shadow her eyes; she clearly hasn't slept either. She approaches with deliberate steps, her gaze moving between them with cool assessment.
"I see we're starting the militarization process early," she says, adjusting her glasses with one finger. She remains standing, keeping herself apart from them both.
Liam straightens, paper tight in his grip. "I made a training schedule."
"Of course you did." Sophie shifts her books to one arm. "Did you consider that maybe we should understand what we're working with before we start throwing dangerous abilities around?"
"We don't have time for academic debates," Liam responds, voice hardening. "The Shadow Demon could be anywhere. Our parents are still missing. And yesterday Ava—"
"I know what happened yesterday," Sophie interrupts. "I was there, remember? That's precisely why we need more information before someone gets seriously hurt."
Ava's stomach tightens as their emotions clash above her—Liam's protective instinct sharpening into something controlling, Sophie's analytical approach hardening into rigid logic. Both driven by fear neither will acknowledge.
"We should at least try to follow some of the exercises in the Almanac," Ava offers, attempting to find middle ground. "They seem designed to help with control."
"Exactly," Liam seizes on this. "Practice makes perfect. We start with the basics, then build to applications."
Sophie's skepticism radiates toward Ava like a physical sensation. "Applications? You make it sound like we're developing skills for a job interview, not dealing with potentially reality-altering powers."
"What would you suggest?" Liam challenges, standing to face Sophie directly. "More time in the library while the town forgets we exist?"
"Research isn't a waste of time," Sophie snaps. Her voice remains even, but Ava feels the spike of hurt beneath the words. "The Almanac contains centuries of knowledge about what we're experiencing. I've already found references to similar manifestations in—"
"What good is knowing the history if we can't defend ourselves?" Liam's shadow darkens at his feet, reaching slightly toward Sophie in a way that makes Ava's breath catch. "The demon found us once. It'll find us again."
"So your solution is playing with dangerous abilities we barely understand?" Sophie's arms tighten around her books. "That worked out so well for Megan Porter."
The words land like a slap. Ava flinches, and Liam's face hardens.
"That's not fair," he says, voice low.
"None of this is fair," Sophie counters. "But rushing into combat training when we can barely control basic manifestations is irrational and dangerous."
Ava stands, placing herself between them. "Stop it, both of you. This isn't helping."
They fall silent, but the air remains charged with unspoken accusations. Ava feels the weight of both their emotions—Liam's desperate need to protect, Sophie's terrified clinging to logic in the face of the inexplicable, and beneath it all, the fear that binds them together and pushes them apart.
"We need to work together," Ava says, fighting to keep her voice steady. "Whatever approach we take."
"Fine." Sophie adjusts her glasses again. "Then let's be practical. We need a secure space, controlled conditions, and measurable outcomes. Not Liam's fantasy boot camp."
"It's not fantasy to prepare for a threat we know is coming," Liam shoots back.
"You can't prepare for something you don't understand," Sophie says.
"And you can't understand something by just reading about it," Liam counters.
Ava's hands begin to glow in her pockets, responding to her distress as her friends' voices rise. A familiar pressure builds behind her eyes.
"The basement," she says abruptly, desperate to redirect their energy. "We can practice there. It's private. Concrete walls. If something goes wrong..."
The implication hangs in the air between them. If something goes wrong, at least the damage will be contained.
Sophie is the first to nod, a tight, efficient movement. "Fine. The basement. But we document everything. Methodical trials, not blind experimentation."
"As long as we're actually doing something instead of just talking about it," Liam agrees, folding his schedule with precise creases.
They move toward the basement door, a disjointed unit. Where they once would have walked in easy synchronization, now they maintain careful distance. Ava trails behind, watching their rigid backs, feeling the strain of their anger, their fear, their determination. The friendship that once felt unbreakable now seems as fragile as the control they're struggling to maintain.
Ava's hands are warm in her pockets, but she feels a chill in her chest, an uncomfortable cold that she recognizes as loss. Something is breaking between them, changing in ways she's not sure they can repair.
The basement air hangs damp and still, undisturbed for months until their arrival. Naked bulbs cast harsh light against concrete walls, creating hard-edged shadows that seem to wait for Liam's command. Ava shivers, not entirely from the cold. The space feels appropriate for what they've become—hidden, forgotten, potentially dangerous. Three metal folding chairs form a triangle in the center of the room, their arrangement too deliberate to be coincidental.
"Someone's been here," Sophie says, running a finger along a chair's edge. No dust clings to her skin. "Recently."
"Lucian," Liam suggests, voice flat. He drops his backpack against the wall with a dull thud. "Setting the stage for us."
Ava moves to the center of the triangle, trying to ignore how the concrete seems to absorb sound, making each footstep final. "Let's just try something simple. The resonance we saw yesterday—maybe we can recreate it."
Sophie pulls out her notebook, flipping to a diagram sketched in precise lines. "The Almanac describes a triangulation technique. Ava creates the light source, Liam shapes the shadows it casts, and I use echo sense to detect patterns in the energy exchange."
They take positions at the three points, facing inward. The silence between them feels weighted, a fourth presence in the room. Ava closes her eyes, focusing on the light that lives beneath her skin. It responds more readily now, flowing to her fingertips like water seeking its natural channel.
"Ready," she says.
Her hands begin to glow, soft gold illuminating her face from below. The light builds gradually, forming a sphere between her palms that pulses gently with her heartbeat. It feels warm, almost comforting—the one part of this strange new reality that doesn't terrify her.
Liam extends his hands toward the shadows cast by Ava's light. His expression tightens with concentration, a vein visible at his temple. The shadows respond sluggishly, trembling like leaves in a faint breeze.
"They're resisting," he mutters, frustration edging his voice.
"Ease into it," Sophie suggests, standing perfectly still with her eyes half-closed. "The Almanac says force creates instability in the shadow structures."
Liam's jaw clenches. The tendons in his neck stand out as he pushes harder, willing the shadows to obey. Slowly, they begin to bend toward him, stretching across the concrete in unnatural patterns.
"I'm getting something," Sophie says, tilting her head as if listening to distant music. "The frequency changes when you exert control. It's like... static clearing from a signal."
Ava increases her light's intensity, trying to give Liam clearer shadows to work with. The sphere between her hands grows to the size of a basketball, its glow reflecting in her eyes.
"Good," Sophie nods. "There's a pattern forming. Try to maintain consistent pressure, Liam."
Liam's hands shake slightly. The shadows bend further, forming a loose ring around Ava's light. Beads of sweat appear on his forehead despite the basement's chill.
"It's fighting me," he says through gritted teeth.
"Darkness isn't meant to be controlled," Sophie reads from her notes. "It's meant to be guided. Try visualizing the shape instead of forcing it."
"I know what I'm doing," Liam snaps.
The shadows pulse, expanding and contracting like a heartbeat out of sync with Ava's light. Ava feels a sudden unease, a pressure in the air that wasn't there before.
"Maybe we should take a break," she suggests, the light between her hands wavering with her concern.
"We just started," Liam argues, not looking at her. His focus remains fixed on the shadow ring, which has begun to develop small spikes around its edges. "I almost have it."
Sophie's eyes narrow behind her glasses. "The resonance is destabilizing. The frequency is becoming erratic."
"I said I almost have it," Liam insists, pushing harder.
The shadow ring distorts, spikes growing longer, sharper. One tendril breaks free, whipping upward with a sound like tearing fabric. Ava instinctively steps back, but the tendril moves faster—a dark whip that cracks across the space between them and strikes her forearm.
A sharp cry escapes her. The light in her hands extinguishes as she stumbles backward, clutching her arm. Pain flares hot and immediate where the shadow touched her. She looks down in shock to see a cut forming, thin but precise, like a paper slice but deeper. Blood wells up, bright against her pale skin.
The basement plunges into relative darkness, lit only by the overhead bulbs. The shadows retreat to their normal positions as Liam's concentration shatters.
"Ava!" His face drains of color. He moves toward her, then stops, hands outstretched but hesitant. "I didn't—I wasn't trying to—"
Sophie rushes to Ava's side, gently taking her injured arm to examine it. "Let me see," she says, voice controlled but tight with anger. Ava winces as Sophie's fingers probe near the cut.
"It's not deep," Sophie announces after a moment. "But it will need cleaning." She turns to Liam, who stands frozen in place. "This is exactly what I was afraid would happen."
The words crash into the frigid air, sharp and unforgiving. Liam's hands fall to his sides, limp and hollow, as if all strength has drained from them. His face is a portrait of agony, guilt etched deeply into every line, raw and unshielded. He had promised to protect his best friend, yet now he stood as the architect of their pain, a betrayal he could never have imagined.
"I'm sorry," he whispers. "I thought I could control it."
Ava holds her arm close to her chest, feeling tears well up in her eyes. The pain is intense but bearable. What hurts more is seeing the expression on Liam's face—horror mixed with self-disgust and fear. She wants to reassure him that it's all right, that she gets it, but she can't bring herself to speak.
"Control isn't something you force," Sophie says, reaching into her backpack for the first aid kit she's carried since sixth grade. Her movements are efficient, clinical. "It's something you earn through understanding."
Liam backs away, unable to meet Ava's gaze. "I didn't mean to hurt you," he says again. His shadow stretches behind him, seeming to shrink as if sharing his shame.
"Intentions don't matter when we're dealing with powers we don't comprehend," Sophie replies, cleaning Ava's cut with an antiseptic wipe. Her touch is gentle despite the harshness of her words. "Consequences do."
Ava watches Liam retreat further, his back literally against the wall now. The distance between them seems to grow with each passing second—not just physical space but something deeper, a fracturing of trust.
"It was an accident," Ava finally manages, her voice smaller than she intends.
"An accident that was completely preventable," Sophie counters, wrapping Ava's arm with clean gauze. "If we'd approached this systematically instead of rushing into practice without proper preparation."
Liam's expression hardens, guilt crystallizing into defensiveness. "And if the Shadow Demon finds us while we're still researching your systematic approach? What then?"
"At least we won't have injured each other first," Sophie retorts.
Ava pulls her arm gently from Sophie's grasp, the bandage secure. "Please stop," she says. "Fighting doesn't help."
But her words fall into the growing chasm between her friends. Liam's shadow stretches toward the door, as if eager to escape. Sophie returns to her notebook, making clinical notations about what just occurred. And Ava stands between them, cradling her injured arm, feeling their trio fracture along fault lines they never knew existed until the powers revealed them.
"Maybe Lucian can help," she suggests quietly.
Neither of her friends disagrees aloud, but their silence feels like its own answer—a tacit acknowledgment that they've reached the limits of what they can manage alone.
Lucian's office exists in a forgotten corner of the community center, a room that shouldn't be there but somehow is. Artifacts line the walls—tarnished mirrors in ornate frames, shelves of leather-bound books whose titles blur when looked at directly, small objects under glass that seem to shift when not observed. The air smells of old paper and something less definable—metal, perhaps, or lightning. Lucian sits behind a desk that might once have been mahogany but now resembles something darker, its surface crowded with maps whose coastlines don't match any geography taught in schools.
The teens enter like wounded animals, cautious and quiet. Ava's bandaged arm hangs at her side, a white flag of their earlier failure. Liam keeps distance between himself and the others, his shoulders rigid with unspoken guilt. Sophie clutches her notebook, knuckles white against its worn cover.
Lucian's silver eyes take in each detail without comment. He gestures toward three chairs arranged before his desk, each different from the others—one ornately carved wood, one simple metal, one padded leather cracked with age.
"Sit," he says, his voice neither warm nor cold but precise, like a scalpel.
They settle into the chairs, no one questioning the arrangement. Lucian's gaze lingers on Ava's bandaged arm.
"The shadows left their mark," he observes. Not a question.
Liam stiffens. "It was an accident," he says, though his voice lacks conviction.
"Of course it was." Lucian leans back, his silver eyes unreadable. "Power rarely injures with intent at first. It's indifferent to our desires. That's what makes it dangerous."
"You knew this would happen," Sophie accuses, though her voice holds more resignation than anger.
"I knew something would," Lucian corrects. "Power tests its wielder. Always." He stands, moving to a cabinet behind his desk. The wood creaks as he opens it, revealing shelves of small drawers labeled in a script none of them recognize. "The question is what you learn from the test."
He selects a drawer, pulling it open with careful precision. Inside lies a faded photograph which he handles with unexpected gentleness. He places it on the desk facing them.
A young woman stares back from the image, her eyes fierce and intelligent, her smile containing a challenge. Dark hair frames her face in wild disarray, and something about her posture suggests barely contained energy. She stands beside a younger Lucian, their shoulders touching with the easy familiarity of deep friendship.
"Elara," Lucian says, and the name carries the weight of centuries. "She was the most brilliant Keeper I ever knew."
Ava leans forward despite herself. "She was your friend."
A shadow crosses Lucian's face. "More than that. She was my conscience, my challenger. The one person who saw the world as I did, but never let me forget the responsibility that came with such vision."
His finger traces the edge of the photograph, a gesture so human it seems out of place coming from him.
"Elara had extraordinary abilities—similar to yours, Sophie, but more developed. She could hear echoes across vast distances, across time itself. The past spoke to her in voices clear as your own."
Lucian returns to his seat, but his eyes remain on the photograph. "Like you, she was brilliant. Insatiably curious. She believed knowledge was the answer to everything, that enough understanding would grant perfect control."
Sophie shifts in her chair, uncomfortable with the parallel. Lucian notices but doesn't acknowledge it.
"Elara discovered references to direct manipulation of the Shadow Realm in texts most Keepers considered too dangerous to study. Ancient methods for opening doorways, for bending the rules that separate our reality from others." His voice grows quieter, more intense. "She became obsessed with the possibility."
"What happened to her?" Ava asks, though the stillness in Lucian's silver eyes suggests she already knows the answer won't be happy.
"I warned her that some knowledge comes at too high a price. That some boundaries exist for reasons beyond our understanding." His mouth twists in a bitter smile. "She accused me of fear, of small thinking. Said someone had to push beyond what was known if we were ever to protect ourselves from what lurked in the shadows."
Liam leans forward, drawn in despite his lingering distrust. "She wanted to fight the Shadow Demon directly."
"She wanted to master the Shadow Realm itself," Lucian corrects. "To control the very substance from which the demon draws its power."
He opens a small box on his desk, revealing what looks like metallic sand—fine particles that catch the light with an unnatural gleam.
"She believed she could create a stable portal, a direct connection to the Shadow Realm that she could control and close at will. She spent months developing the process, gathering materials, performing smaller tests." His voice remains steady, but something in his eyes flickers like distant lightning. "I begged her to reconsider, to at least wait until we understood more about the forces she sought to command."
The silence stretches, expectant and cold.
"She chose a night when the boundary between worlds was naturally thin. I was supposed to assist, to help maintain the anchor points for her return." His hand closes around the box of metallic dust. "But she started early, without me. Whether from impatience or because she wanted to spare me the risk, I never knew."
Ava's hand drifts to her bandaged arm, a unconscious gesture. "She didn't come back."
"When I arrived, the workspace was empty except for this." Lucian holds up the box. "A scattering of silver dust where she had stood. Nothing else. No portal, no trace of her presence, just this residue of a person who had once contained worlds of knowledge and passion."
The teens sit motionless, each absorbed in the implications. Liam's shadow stretches thin beneath his chair, as if trying to make itself smaller. Ava's hands remain still, the glow carefully suppressed. Sophie stares at the photograph, seeing herself reflected in Elara's confident gaze.
"I tell you this not to frighten you," Lucian continues after a moment, "but because I see in each of you echoes of Elara. The same brilliance. The same determination. The same dangerous confidence that you can master forces beyond your understanding."
He closes the box with a soft click. "Your powers are growing faster than your control. That's natural. But overconfidence will destroy you as surely as it destroyed her."
"Is that what happened today?" Liam asks, voice rough with emotion. "Overconfidence?"
"No," Lucian's answer comes quickly, surprisingly gentle. "Today was the necessary pain of learning. Elara's mistake wasn't in failing—it was in believing she couldn't fail."
He returns the photograph to its drawer with careful movements. "You three possess extraordinary potential. Together, you might achieve what Elara could not. But only if you remember that power without understanding is merely destruction waiting to happen."
The warning hangs in the air between them, a tangible thing. Ava feels its weight press against her chest, making it difficult to breathe. She glances at her friends, seeing the same recognition in their faces—the uncomfortable parallels to their own situation.
"The three of you need each other," Lucian says, his gaze moving from one to the next with deliberate purpose. "Not just your powers, but your perspectives. Liam's instinct for protection. Sophie's analytical mind. Ava's empathic heart. Divided, you'll fail. United, you might just survive what's coming."
"And what exactly is coming?" Sophie asks, the question direct but her voice uncharacteristically subdued.
Lucian's silver eyes seem to look through them, beyond them, to something only he can see. "The Shadow Demon isn't just hunting you. It's preparing for something bigger. I believe it intends to do what Elara attempted—create a permanent connection between our world and the Shadow Realm."
"Why?" Liam demands.
"So it never goes hungry again," Lucian says simply. "An endless feast of identities, of memories, of lives."
The teens sit in uncomfortable silence, each recognizing parallels to their own situation, each wondering if they too are walking Elara's path toward destruction. The silver dust in its box sits on Lucian's desk—a cautionary tale made physical, the remains of someone who once thought herself unstoppable.
Moonlight cuts across Ava's bedroom floor in sharp rectangles, too bright and too precise. Her empty house creaks around her, a hollow shell pretending to be a home. She lies awake, the bandage on her arm still white in the darkness, her mind replaying Lucian's story of silver dust and vanished brilliance. Sleep feels impossible, dangerous even. As if surrendering to unconsciousness might allow something waiting in the shadows to slip through her defenses.
Her eyes drift closed despite her resistance, then snap open at a sudden chill that sweeps across the room. The moonlight shifts, bends, gathers like liquid at the foot of her bed. It pulls together, coalescing into a familiar shape—her mother, Maya, dressed in the blue cardigan she always wore on Saturday mornings. Her auburn hair catches the moonlight in impossible ways, sometimes absorbing it, sometimes reflecting it too brightly.
"Mom?" Ava whispers, pushing herself upright. Her heart hammers against her ribs, hope and suspicion warring in her chest.
Maya smiles, but the expression doesn't settle properly on her face. It slides slightly, like a mask not quite fitted to its wearer. "My brave girl," she says, her voice alternating between the warm tones Ava remembers and something flatter, more hollow.
Ava reaches out, then hesitates. Something isn't right. Maya's edges blur when she moves, and her eyes—Ava's own eyes, inherited in perfect detail—don't quite focus on her daughter.
"Where are you?" Ava asks, pulling her knees to her chest, making herself smaller. "Why did you leave us?"
Maya's form shifts, the cardigan melting into a dress Ava remembers from summer picnics, then back again. "We did what we had to do," she says, the words carrying an echo that doesn't match the size of the room. "The sacrifice was necessary."
"What sacrifice?" Ava demands, her voice stronger than she feels. "Our memories? Our existence? Us?"
Maya moves closer, her movements too fluid, as if she's gliding rather than stepping. "Everything has a price, my light. Everything returns."
The glow begins under Ava's skin, a response to her rising distress. Maya's form wavers more violently at its appearance, parts of her becoming transparent, revealing something darker beneath the maternal disguise.
"What are you really?" Ava whispers, the light brightening between her fingers.
Maya's smile widens too far, stretches beyond what a human mouth should allow. "We did what we had to do," she repeats, but her voice no longer sounds like Maya at all. It sounds like something learning to speak through borrowed memories.
The light flares between Ava's hands. In its brightness, Maya's form dissolves like mist, leaving only a whisper that might be her mother's voice or might be something else entirely: "Find us."
---
Liam jolts awake in his darkened bedroom, sweat cold on his skin despite the chill. Something pulled him from sleep, some sound or presence on the edge of perception. His eyes scan the room, finding only familiar shadows—his desk piled with neglected schoolwork, the chair draped with yesterday's clothes, the doorway empty then suddenly not.
His father stands there, Ethan's tall frame filling the space with the solid presence Liam remembers. But the shadows cling to him strangely, wrapping around his limbs like living things, tightening and loosening in rhythm with Liam's heartbeat. His father's face holds the stern expression Liam knows well, but something in his eyes seems remote, observing rather than seeing.
"Dad," Liam says, voice cracking on the single syllable. He sits up slowly, afraid sudden movement might disperse this visitation like smoke.
"You've grown stronger," Ethan says. His voice sounds right but echoes wrongly, as if coming from somewhere deeper than his chest. The shadows around him pulse. "I always knew you would."
Liam swings his legs over the edge of the bed but doesn't stand. Suspicion wars with desperate hope. "Where have you been? Why did you leave?"
Ethan's smile doesn't reach his eyes, which remain fixed and unblinking. "You were always meant for greater things," he says, the words weighted with an expectation Liam has felt his entire life. "The shadows recognize one of their own."
"I'm not—" Liam starts, then stops as his own shadow stretches toward his father's, reaching across the floor like an eager pet. "I didn't ask for this."
"We never ask for our true nature," Ethan replies. His outline blurs slightly where the darkness is thickest. "We merely discover it."
Liam stands now, doubt crystallizing into certainty. Something about his father's presence feels wrong—a performance rather than a reunion. "You're not him," he says, voice low and dangerous.
The thing wearing his father's shape tilts its head, an inhuman angle that makes Liam's stomach lurch. "Aren't I?" it asks, Ethan's voice distorting. "Aren't we all just shadows of what we pretend to be?"
The darkness around the figure convulses, and for a moment Liam sees silver eyes gleaming from within the Ethan-shape. Then the shadows collapse inward, leaving the doorway empty and Liam alone with his racing heart and the certainty that whatever just happened wasn't a dream.
---
Sophie sits cross-legged on her bedroom floor, surrounded by a fortress of notes, printed articles, and open books. Her lamp casts a harsh circle of light that fails to reach the room's corners, where shadows gather in quiet patience. She hasn't attempted sleep, driven instead by the need to understand, to find patterns in the chaos of their situation. Elara's story echoes in her mind—a cautionary tale that feels uncomfortably like prophecy.
The room's temperature drops suddenly. Sophie looks up, breath clouding in the unexpected chill. The mirror on her dresser fogs over, though nothing else in the room shows signs of the cold. She watches, analytical mind cataloging details even as fear prickles along her spine.
"Patterns repeat," her mother's voice emerges from the mirror, clear and precise as Nora herself. "History echoes for those who listen."
Sophie approaches cautiously, notebook clutched to her chest like armor. The mirror's surface ripples like disturbed water. Instead of reflecting Sophie's approaching figure, it shows Nora sitting at her desk, writing in a leather-bound journal Sophie has never seen.
"Mom?" she asks, her scientific detachment wavering.
The Nora in the mirror doesn't look up from her writing. "The sacrifice was necessary," she says, pen moving in swift, sure strokes across the page. "The children must not know until they're ready."
Sophie presses her palm against the glass, which feels not cold but warm, almost feverish. "What children? What sacrifice? Mom, please—"
"Knowledge is protection," Nora continues, still not acknowledging Sophie. "But too early, it becomes vulnerability." She finally looks up, but not at Sophie—through her, to something beyond. "They're coming. They always were."
The mirror's surface bulges outward beneath Sophie's hand, the glass becoming temporarily elastic. She jerks back, heart hammering. Nora's image distorts, stretches, her features elongating into something less human.
"The echoes know," the voice says, no longer entirely Nora's. "The echoes remember what was taken."
The mirror cracks, a single line splitting it from corner to corner. Nora's image fragments, each piece showing a different expression—fear, determination, resignation. Then the glass goes dark, reflecting only Sophie's pale face and the empty room behind her.
---
Ava sits up in bed, the lingering chill of her mother's visitation still prickling her skin. Something connects these moments, these visitations. Something is reaching for them through the cracks in their understanding.
Her fingertips glow faintly as she reaches for her phone. Without conscious thought, she finds herself dialing Liam, then Sophie, creating a three-way call that connects them across the physical distance of their empty homes.
"It came to you too," she says when they answer. Not a question.
"My father," Liam confirms, his voice tight. "Or something wearing his shape."
"My mother, in the mirror," Sophie adds. "Talking about sacrifice and protection. About us not knowing until we're ready."
Ava's skin prickles with certainty. "It wasn't them," she says. "Not really. It was the Shadow Demon, using our memories, our longing. Turning them against us."
The silence that follows holds acknowledgment, fear, and a growing resolve.
"It's testing us," Liam says finally. "Probing our defenses."
"Or trying to divide us further," Sophie suggests, analytical even in fear. "Using our parents as emotional leverage."
Ava feels the truth of it settle in her chest, heavy and cold. "Either way, it knows we're becoming stronger. It knows we're a threat."
The connection between them pulses across the phone lines—three teens in empty houses, haunted by visions of parents who sacrificed everything to protect them. Three parts of a whole that's still learning its own shape and purpose.
"We need to be ready," Ava says, watching the light beneath her skin pulse with her heartbeat. "Whatever's coming, whatever it wants, we face it together."
No one speaks, but no one needs to. Their shared silence contains a promise—that whatever visitations come, whatever doubts are sown, the bond between them remains their greatest strength against the darkness that watches and waits and wears familiar faces to hide its true intent.
Outside their windows, shadows stretch longer than they should, reaching toward each house with patient hunger. And somewhere in the spaces between reality and reflection, silver eyes observe and calculate and plan the next move in a game that began long before three children were born with light and shadow and echoes hidden in their blood.