Rain traced slow arcs against the glass of their Victorian home's skylight, each droplet a rhythmic tap in the stillness. Kayla sat in the attic alone, her legs crossed beside a trunk overflowing with old journals and fractured tech. The rain outside didn't match the forecast. She checked twice. Something was off again.
She turned over one of the journals. Not Elena's. This one was newer—stitched in deep indigo leather and bearing no title. Just a spiral sigil etched into the center.
She opened it.
The first page was blank. Then, slowly, words began to appear—handwritten in her own handwriting, though she'd never seen it before.
"The timelines are not healed. Only hiding."
Kayla's breath caught. She flipped the page. More appeared.
"In the mirror house, time shivers. What was lost will seek return. Look beneath the veil."
A sudden knock snapped her out of her trance. Amaira stood at the attic door, eyes wide. "It's back."
"What is?"
Amaira held up a crumpled drawing. A spiral tower in flames—something she hadn't drawn. But the crayon was hers.
"It was under my bed," she whispered. "And… I remember it now. Like I've been there."
Tylor rushed in, holding a flickering screen. "Satellite feed from the Hub ruins. There's movement—shadows, shapes walking against the burn pattern. It's not possible."
Kayla closed the journal. "Unless the Hub wasn't fully destroyed."
Outside, thunder cracked—twice, then a third time, followed by silence. The kind that feels intentional.
They gathered in the basement, Elias already tracing the strange electrical surge pattern on a chalkboard, veins of blue looping like temporal arteries. He glanced up.
"It's not over. We might've ended the Architect… but something survived in the fractures. A resonance."
"What kind of resonance?" Tylor asked.
"The kind that replays events. Echoes… that grow louder."
Amaira stepped forward. "We need to go back. The mirror house. I saw it again."
Elias stiffened. "You've been there?"
"In a dream," she admitted. "And maybe… not just a dream."
Kayla nodded slowly. "The journal says it hides what time rejects."
As if answering their thoughts, the old spiral key glowed faintly on the basement table—warm, pulsing.
The basement walls began to hum.
A light split open in the far corner, forming an archway carved from mist and memory. Through it, a hall of mirrors shimmered—each reflecting different versions of them: older, broken, victorious, forgotten.
Tylor swallowed hard. "We walk through that… what do we become?"
Kayla touched his arm gently. "Whatever we need to. Because this isn't just a memory anymore. It's unfinished time."
And together, they stepped into the mirror house—where reflections whispered, fractures stirred, and the next riddle waited to be solved