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Dust on the Mirror

  He walked the city like a ghost wearing a skin suit.

  The streets of Virela — that was the city’s name, though few remembered it — stretched endlessly under bruised clouds and flickering lamps. Cobblestones whispered beneath his steps, repeating his name back to him in languages no longer spoken.

  “Arin,” they said.

  “Arin,” he whispered.

  But even he no longer believed it.

  The city didn’t see him. Not really. Pedestrians brushed past without a glance. Store doors didn’t chime when he entered. Once, he dropped a book in the middle of a crowded café and no one noticed. It lay there like a forgotten thought. He picked it up and left.

  That was three days ago.

  Or maybe three years.

  He tried speaking to his neighbor this morning — the man across the hallway, always shirtless, always watering a cactus that never seemed to grow.

  “Morning,” Arin said, gently.

  The man blinked at him, tilting his head like a confused dog. Then, without a word, he turned back inside and locked the door. Arin stood there a moment, listening to the bolt slide into place.

  He laughed.

  Then sat on the floor outside his apartment.

  Then cried.

  The mirror bothered him the most.

  It wasn’t just that it stopped reflecting him — it was that it refused to. As though it had agency. As though it had made a choice.

  He brought different mirrors into the apartment: an old compact, a silver shard from a broken vanity, a cracked bathroom piece he stole from an abandoned house.

  None showed him.

  They showed the wall behind him, or the window, or the flickering lamp. But never his body, never his face.

  He pressed his hands against the glass once, eyes wide, breath slow. Hoping something would shift.

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  Nothing.

  Not even mist.

  He wasn’t there.

  He started drawing his face.

  With charcoal. With pencil. With the melted stub of a lipstick left behind by a girl he no longer remembered — or maybe one who never existed at all.

  The drawings came out... wrong.

  The eyes too far apart. The nose missing. The smile more like a wound. Sometimes, there were extra features — a third eye. A mouth stitched shut. Or no face at all.

  Each night he crumpled the paper and tossed it toward the trash. Each morning, the same drawings reappeared on the wall, stuck by invisible hands.

  They watched him in silence.

  In the evening, he walked again.

  That’s what his life had become — loops. Circles. Repetition. Like a song slowly forgetting its own melody.

  He found himself in front of a bookstore he once worked at — the glass fogged with time, the letters on the signage faded to a whisper.

  He pushed the door open. A bell above the frame remained silent.

  Inside, a woman with white hair glanced up from behind the counter.

  Arin stepped forward, heart pounding.

  “Do you—” he started.

  She blinked slowly.

  “Do you remember me?”

  She looked at him a moment longer. Then reached beneath the counter and pulled out a receipt pad.

  She scribbled a name.

  “Dale.”

  “That’s not my name,” Arin said softly.

  She smiled — not cruelly, but distantly. Like someone offering tea to a stranger at a funeral.

  “It is now,” she said.

  He left without another word.

  Later, in his apartment, he found a photograph tucked in the back of a book.

  Him. As a child.

  His eyes were wide. Curious. Not yet dimmed by the weight of being unseen.

  He held the photo to his chest like a prayer. And for a second — just a flicker — he felt warm. Like a hand had touched his shoulder.

  He turned.

  No one.

  But the warmth remained.

  Midnight came.

  And with it — the letter’s promise.

  


  Glasshouse. Midnight. Come.

  He didn’t know where the glasshouse was.

  He didn’t remember ever hearing of one in Virela.

  But his feet moved anyway — not like he was walking toward something, but as if something was pulling him. Thread by thread.

  The streets narrowed. Lamps blinked. Shadows stretched like yawns from another world.

  He walked past a cathedral with no door. A fountain filled with black feathers. A violinist playing a tune that echoed backward.

  Virela was changing.

  Or maybe revealing itself.

  He found the path.

  A narrow alley choked with vines and silence.

  At the end — a gate, twisted iron and rose thorns, guarding a structure made entirely of glass.

  Cracked walls. Ivy bleeding through broken panes. Statues inside, covered in dust and memory.

  He stepped through.

  The glasshouse smelled of old perfume and stormwater.

  Each breath was a memory. Each step echoed like a heartbeat.

  Then — he saw her.

  Standing at the center.

  A woman dressed in black. Hair like spilled ink. A lantern in her hand that gave no light.

  But what froze him — what made the breath catch and his ribs ache — was this:

  She had no shadow.

  None.

  Not even in the moonlight slicing through the broken roof.

  She turned.

  And for the first time in weeks — maybe months — someone saw him.

  Really saw him.

  Their eyes met.

  And he felt like someone had whispered his name across galaxies.

  “Hello, Arin,” she said.

  His mouth parted.

  “Do I know you?” he asked, but the words were barely breath.

  She smiled gently.

  “No,” she said. “But I remember you.”

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