Lost in Reflection
I jolted awake on the floor of an unfamiliar bedroom, my skull throbbing as if someone had taken a hammer to it. Dust motes floated with tiny halos in the thin shaft of light cutting through boarded windows. I blinked until the halos disappeared, but the dust remained in sparse clouds. The floorboards beneath me were bare, cold against my skin.
When I tried to sit up, pain lanced through my temples. A copper taste coated my tongue, and my mouth felt stuffed with cotton. Flexing my hands, I discovered the plastic bite of zip ties cutting into my wrists.
“Raven?” My voice emerged as a dry rasp.
No answer.
Panic shot through me. Ignoring the wave of nausea that followed, I forced myself to my knees. The room tilted and swam before me, shadows stretching in impossible directions.
Emry’s face flashed in my memory—eyes narrowing across the table, mouth forming words I couldn’t quite grasp. “You’re not my Raven and Lilah.” As darkness closed in, her final accusation: “Imposters! Did you think I couldn’t tell?”
My empathic senses, dulled by whatever drug lingered in my system, reached desperately outward, searching for Raven’s familiar presence.
Nothing.
“Raven!” I called again, louder this time, voice cracking. The silence that followed was absolute, dense with possibilities I couldn’t bear to contemplate. Had he been erased? Had the protection spell failed? Was I alone in yet another reality?
Then movement in the corner caught my eye. A dark shape, motionless until now.
Slumped awkwardly against the wall, Raven lay crumpled, his body twisted, hands bound like mine. His eyes remained closed, but his chest rose and fell in shallow breaths.
“Oh, thank God,” I whispered, shuffling toward him on my knees. Relief crashed through me. I hadn’t realized until that moment how terrified I’d been of finding myself truly alone.
I reached out with bound hands to touch his shoulder. “Raven. Wake up.”
Eyelids fluttering, he stirred slightly. Before he could fully regain consciousness, a sound from beyond the room froze me in place.
The creak of floorboards. Slow footsteps. The scrape of something being dragged across wood.
I positioned myself between Raven and the door, my bound hands held awkwardly before me in a defensive stance. We were still in Emry’s neighborhood—I recognized the view through the boarded window—but something fundamental had shifted. The house itself felt different, wrong.
With a prolonged whine of rusty hinges, the bedroom door swung open.
A piercing scream split the air.
I flinched at the sound—raw and primal. It took me a moment to realize it hadn’t come from me.
In the doorway stood an elderly woman, her spine curved with age, draped in a threadbare housecoat that might once have been floral but had faded to an indeterminate gray. Stringy white hair hung around her hollow face. Clutched in one gnarled hand, she held a rust-pocked hatchet—not raised for attack, but held with the casual familiarity of a tool one has carried too long.
Deep lines mapped her face like dried riverbeds, and her eyes—watery blue and wide with shock—darted between me and the corners of the room. Trembling, her chapped lips stared at us, her knuckles whitening around the hatchet’s worn handle.
“You,” she finally managed, voice thin and reedy. “This place was supposed to be empty.”
A sickly-sweet smell of decay wafted from the hallway behind her, mingling with the musty scent of unwashed clothing, and the energy of fear. I noticed a faded, bluish tattoo on her inner wrist—numbers and letters too smudged to read, remnants of some institutional marking.
“We don’t want trouble,” I said slowly, keeping my voice steady despite the adrenaline surging through me.
Behind me, Raven groaned, consciousness returning. I felt him stirring, shifting his weight. Our eyes met briefly—a wordless exchange of information—then he gave me a slight, almost imperceptible nod.
In one fluid motion that belied our drugged state, we both snapped the zip ties binding our wrists. The plastic restraints weren’t particularly strong; it was a technique we’d practiced in another life, another reality where preparation for the worst was routine.
Stumbling back a step, the woman gasped but didn’t flee. The hatchet twitched in her grip but remained lowered.
“Good Lord,” she murmured, wide-eyed. “They teach you that at one of them government camps? The ones where they… train people?”
She didn’t elaborate, but the way her voice trailed off suggested she’d heard stories, none of them good.
“Who are you?” Raven’s voice was rough from disuse.
She hesitated, suspicious eyes darting between us. “Earnestine,” she finally admitted, as if surrendering a closely guarded secret. “Earnestine Lupone.”
“Earnestine,” I repeated. I tried to sound calmer than I felt. “Why are you here? Where’s Emry?”
Confusion wrinkled her already lined face. “Who’s Emory? Is he another one of you? This is—was—Ruthie Russell’s place.” Glancing nervously toward the window, she added, “They took her yesterday. I thought the house would be empty. Just came for food. Don’t… don’t turn me in.”
“Ruthie Russell?” I echoed, the unfamiliar name settling uncomfortably in my mouth.
“We taught together. Fourth-grade science for me, third for her.” Her voice shifted subtly, taking on the measured cadence of someone who had spent decades explaining concepts to children. “Thirty-two years at Vanderholt Elementary before they closed all the schools.”
“Closed the schools? When?” Raven asked, slowly rising to his feet.
Bitter and short, Earnestine’s laugh was sharp. “Where have you two been? After the Queen’s Decree. Must be… eight months ago now.”
Testing my balance, I stood carefully. “The woman who lived here—was she about our age? Copper-brown skin, black curly hair?”
Earnestine shook her head slowly. “Ruthie’s sixty-five if she’s a day. Gray hair, bit of a limp. Been living alone since the divorce back in 2007.”
“Not Emry,” I insisted. “Emry lived here. Yesterday.”
Something like pity flickered across Earnestine’s face. “No, honey. Just Ruthie. Been Ruthie’s place as long as I can remember, and I’ve been on this street going on forty years.”
I didn’t even have to look at Raven. Another reality shift—more profound than before.
“Mind if we look around?” Raven asked.
The hatchet finally lowering completely, Earnestine shrugged. “Help yourself. Not much to see.”
We moved cautiously through the house. Even knowing to expect changes, I found the transformation was jarring.
Where Emry’s home had been warm and filled with books, plants, and personal touches, this place was a hollow shell. The walls were bare except for lighter rectangles where pictures had once hung. Collecting dust that had settled undisturbed for what seemed like months, I ran my fingers over an empty bookshelf.
“This was different before,” I murmured to Raven, too quietly for Earnestine to hear. “Just yesterday, this room had a sofa there. And plants. So many plants.”
“Different reality, different history.”
In the corner of the living room, a built-in cabinet stood with its doors ajar, revealing nothing but cobwebs and a single forgotten coffee mug with a thick layer of mold inside.
Raven tried a light switch—click, click—the sound unnaturally loud in the stillness. Nothing happened.
“Power’s been out for weeks,” Earnestine called from the doorway. “Whole east side of the city’s dark now.”
Flickering on window sills, candles in various jam jars cast weak, dancing shadows across the stripped walls.
“What happened here?” I asked, gesturing to the barren room.
“What happened everywhere.” Earnestine shrugged. “The world ended, but nobody told us we could stop paying rent.”
The kitchen was equally sparse. Cabinet doors hung open to reveal mostly empty shelves. Moving easily, Earnestine found a loose floorboard near the pantry and pried it up. She retrieved a small cloth bag.
“Not much left,” she said, emptying the contents onto the scarred kitchen table. A handful of jerky strips, dark and leathery. Some stale bread wrapped in a dish towel. And three peaches, their skin bruised and spotted with tiny holes. “Found these growing wild behind old man Jenkins’ place. Probably wormy, but still sweet inside.”
“When did things get this bad?” Raven studied the meager supplies.
With the precise movements of someone accustomed to making little seem like more, Earnestine arranged the food—a teacher’s instinct for presentation that had survived the collapse around her.
“Started small,” she said, slicing the bread with a hunting knife pulled from her housecoat pocket. “Shortages at the Piggly Wiggly. Then the water started running brown when it ran at all. Military convoys passing through. Least, they looked military at first.”
“At first?” I prompted.
Flickering nervously to the window, her eyes darted away. “They don’t move right. Too fast. Don’t blink enough. Some folks say they’re not… entirely human anymore.”
Pushing two peaches across the table toward us, she added: “Take these. You’re young. Need your strength.” When I hesitated, she added: “Won’t be any more come fall. Might not be any of us come fall, either.”
“Who’s responsible for all this?” Raven asked, though I suspected we both knew the answer.
In a gesture of contempt so unexpected from her prim, teacher-like demeanor that I almost flinched, Earnestine spat on the floor.
“Queen Aoife,” she hissed, voice dropping to barely above a whisper, as if even saying the name might summon attention. “May she rot in whatever hell they’ve got reserved for her kind.”
I felt Raven tense beside me. In our reality, Aoife Jung was a formidable and often hated High Priestess of the Order of Daegan. Her intentions were good, if you considered the end and not the means. She did awful things in the name of saving the human race. Here, apparently, she’d become something far worse.
“What exactly does she… do?” I asked carefully.
“Everything. Started with the ‘Selection Program.’ Said she was identifying special people with gifts. Took the children first—tested them at school before they shut them down. Then adults. Anyone who showed potential.”
“Potential for what?”
“Magic.” Like a blasphemy, she whispered the word. “Real, honest-to-God magic. Not tricks. The kind that changes things. Changes people.”
Growing distant, haunted, her eyes lost focus. “The Webbers used to hoard rice. Had a whole pantry full. That and vegetables they grew themselves and canned in Mason jars. Soldiers came for them two nights ago. Just vanished. But the neighbors who watched… they vanished, too.”
“Has anyone ever come back?” Raven asked.
Earnestine’s face crumpled slightly.
“Just one. Little Mellie Steinfeld.” A teacher’s fondness breaking through the fear, her voice softened. “Used to give her piano lessons. Red hair like fall leaves, freckles everywhere. Could barely reach the pedals when she started. Sweet child—always brought me wildflowers from her mother’s garden.”
She swallowed hard. “They took her three weeks ago. She came back yesterday.”
“Came back how?” I asked.
“Changed.” Trembling slightly, Earnestine’s hands shook. “She had… wings. Not like angel wings. Something wrong. Like they’d been melted onto her back. Feathered but twisted. Unnatural.”
“What happened to her?” Raven’s voice was gentle.
“Collapsed in her mother’s yard. Died within hours. I saw her myself. Skin black as coal in places, like she’d been burned from the inside out.” Closing her eyes briefly, Earnestine paused. “Her eyes weren’t human anymore. All pupil. Black all the way through. Like looking into nothing at all.”
A heavy silence fell. Outside, the wind picked up, whistling through gaps in the boarded windows.
“We need to move on,” I said finally, standing from the table. “Thank you for the food.”
Lost in her own dark memories, Earnestine nodded absently.
Moving into the hallway, a cracked mirror hanging askew on the wall caught my attention. I stopped, something drawing me toward it despite a sudden, inexplicable dread.
Shadows deepening around us, the corridor seemed to narrow as we approached. A frantic rhythm started in my chest, some primal instinct warning me away even as I stepped closer.
“Lilah,” Raven said, voice tight with warning.
But I had to look. Had to know.
The reflection that stared back wasn’t me—not entirely.
The woman in the mirror had my features, but distorted as if viewed through warped glass. Pinned back with plastic barrettes, her hair was cropped in a severe bob. Dark circles shadowed sunken eyes that held none of my warmth, only a haunted wariness that bordered on paranoia. Puckered and angry, a jagged scar ran along her jawline. She looked older, hardened by suffering I hadn’t endured.
Beside her stood Raven’s reflection—equally transformed. Cropped short with a thin rattail at the nape of his neck, his hair was severely cut. His once-strong frame appeared gaunt, sharp beneath sallow skin, cheekbones jutting.
Both of our reflections wore torn black t-shirts, grease-stained jeans, and scuffed boots—clothing that belonged to this reality’s version of us, not the people we knew ourselves to be.
Tracing my unblemished jawline where the scar should have been, I raised a trembling hand to my face. My reflection mimicked the movement, ghosting over her scar, fingers moving. My hair still fell past my shoulders in loose waves, just as it always had.
“This isn’t me.”
“The mirror shows how we exist in this reality.” Raven’s eyes never left his own altered reflection. “How others see us. But within our protection spell, we remain physically unchanged.”
“For now,” I added, the implication hanging heavy between us. “The spell only lasts three days total. We cast it two afternoons ago, so we have until tomorrow afternoon—about thirty hours left. Then what? Do we become them?” With a shudder, I gestured at our reflections. “Or do we disappear entirely?”
“Or does reality rewrite our memories to match?” Grim, Raven’s voice carried dread as he reached up to touch his own hair, as if to reassure himself it was still long.
Discreetly pressing two fingers against his throat, checking his pulse, I noticed him make a gesture so vulnerable, so human that it made my chest ache. Even Raven, steady as bedrock, was shaken by what we were experiencing.
“This mirror’s lying,” I murmured.
“Or reality is,” Raven replied softly.
A floorboard creaked behind us. I spun around, startled.
Head tilted in curious observation, Earnestine stood at the end of the hallway. “You kids want some coffee? Got a little left. Been saving it.”
Without waiting for an answer, she turned and shuffled back toward the kitchen, the soft tap of her slippers on the bare floor fading as she moved away. Carefully, like her tendons no longer worked and her feet could function only if they were flat against the floor, she walked.
We followed her, but the dim light that had illuminated the hallway vanished suddenly, plunging us into near-darkness.
My breath caught as the temperature seemed to plummet. I could see my exhalations forming small clouds in front of my face. Pressing against my skin, the darkness felt almost solid.
“Power surges.” Raven’s hand found mine in the gloom. “Reality’s still settling around us.”
The house felt colder now, the silence deeper. When we reached the kitchen, only candlelight illuminated the space.
Coaxing a small flame beneath a dented metal pot, Earnestine crouched at the ancient gas stove.
“The gas still works?”
“Sometimes,” she replied without turning around. “Never know which morning will be the last. Treasure the small comforts while they’re here.”
Uncomfortable with accepting more of her limited resources, I stepped forward. “Please don’t go to the trouble. We need to be on the road soon anyway.”
Brow furrowed in confusion, Earnestine turned. “We?”
The single word sent ice through my veins. Something had shifted—I could feel it like a change in atmospheric pressure, a ripple through the magical protections surrounding us. I hesitated, suddenly uncertain. “Raven and I.”
Earnestine’s confusion deepened. “Who?”
I felt the blood drain from my face. Tension radiating from him in waves my empathic senses could detect even through the lingering fog of whatever drug had been in our systems, Raven stood perfectly still beside me.
I pointed directly at him, standing less than three feet away. “Him. Right here.”
“Earnestine,” Raven said, his voice steady despite the panic I could feel building within him. “I’m standing right in front of you.”
She didn’t react to his words. Didn’t even glance in his direction. Her gaze remained fixed on me, sliding past him as if he were invisible.
Staring at me for a long moment, Earnestine’s expression softened with something like pity, then she spoke gently—the voice of a teacher comforting a troubled child: “Poor thing. You’ve gone and lost your mind. There’s no one here but you and me.”
My chest seized. “No,” I insisted, reaching for Raven’s arm. My fingers closed around solid muscle and bone. He was undeniably, physically present. “He’s right here. I can touch him!”
“That’s your grief talking,” Earnestine said with gentle authority. “It happens to the best of us. We start to see the ones we’ve lost.”
“I’m not lost,” Raven said, an edge of desperation creeping into his voice. Moving directly into Earnestine’s line of sight, he positioned himself between us. “I’m right here.”
She didn’t react, didn’t blink, didn’t shift her focus. As if Raven weren’t standing between us, her eyes remained locked on me.
The coffee pot began to whistle. Retrieving two mugs from the counter, Earnestine turned. She poured the steaming liquid into both cups with steady hands.
“See?” I said desperately, pointing to the second mug. “You poured two cups. One for him.”
Earnestine glanced down. “I only poured one, dear.”
Yet there they sat—two distinct mugs, wisps of steam curling upward from both. This was impossible—concrete proof that something supernatural was happening, that reality itself was fracturing around us.
Seeming to come from a great distance, when Raven spoke, his voice sounded hollow to my ears.
“Lilah,” he whispered, real fear in his eyes now. “She can’t see me.”
Our fingers intertwining, I reached for his hand. I could feel his warmth, his strength, the slight tremor he was trying to control. But when I looked back at Earnestine, as if I were holding hands with empty air, her gaze tracked only my movements.
“What’s happening?”
Tightening on my hand, Raven’s grip grew stronger. “I think,” he said with terrible certainty, “I’ve been erased.”
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