The storm hadn't let up by morning.
Thunder rolled over Duskmoor's brooding skyline, washing the rooftops in flashes of electric blue. The gutters overflowed, the streets shimmered with oily puddles, and the wind howled between buildings like a hungry animal. In a cramped kitchen on the fourth floor of a crumbling apartment block, Elias sat motionless at the table, still in last night's clothes. His eyes were bloodshot, locked on the papers in front of him — notes Dr. Vale had pressed into his hands. He hadn't moved in hours.
Looping phrases. Cryptic symbols. Margins scratched with erratic, obsessive strokes. The handwriting looked like his. It was his.
But it didn't feel like him.
He hadn't slept — not really. Every time he closed his eyes, that image from last night clawed back into his mind.
The reflection.
That impossible grin in the mirror.
It hadn't followed his face. It had watched his.
He told himself it was the storm, stress, sleeplessness. Just tricks of the mind. But the fear lingered, sharp and raw. A primitive fear — like a child realizing there's something under the bed, and it knows his name.
---
Around noon, Elias finally left the apartment. The sky was iron-grey, spitting cold rain. He walked without a plan, letting his feet carry him through Duskmoor's winding streets. He passed familiar intersections, hollow-eyed pedestrians, neon signs flickering in the mist — until the city began to change around him.
Here, the buildings leaned too close together, like conspirators whispering above the alleys. Windows were boarded up. Paint peeled in long, sickly strips. The walls here watched, and every crack felt deliberate.
He didn't know why he'd come this way.
Only that he had to.
A rundown café with dusty windows. A pawn shop missing its sign. A tattoo parlor with a neon skull blinking in red. And just beyond that — a storefront he'd never seen before.
"Lucien's Curiosities — Objects of Memory & Mind"
The words were burned into a warped wooden sign above the door. The letters shimmered slightly, like they didn't belong entirely in this world.
It hadn't been there last week.
He was sure of it.
---
The bell above the door jingled softly as he entered. Inside, time felt slower — the air thick with incense and something metallic, almost like copper. Shelves lined the narrow space, crammed with glass bottles, old keys, cracked dolls, faded journals. Dust swirled in the amber light like forgotten voices.
Behind the counter stood a man.
He was tall, dressed in a dark velvet coat with silver buttons, his fingers adorned with thin rings. His hair was shoulder-length and silver-white, but his face looked ageless — smooth, precise, like a porcelain mask that remembered how to smile.
"You're late," the man said.
Elias blinked. "Do I know you?"
The man smiled. Slow. Calculated. "Not yet. But you've been dreaming about me."
"...What?"
"Lucien," he said, with a small bow. "I collect things. Not things you can buy. Things that are lost, hidden, denied — thoughts, echoes, splinters of the soul." His eyes gleamed with quiet hunger. "And you, Elias Cross, are a man very much… in pieces."
Elias stiffened. His fingers curled. "How do you know my name?"
Lucien's smile sharpened. "Names aren't as private as people think. Especially not when someone's been carving them into walls. Or bleeding them onto parchment."
Elias backed away. "I'm leaving."
Lucien didn't move, didn't stop him. Just said, "The man in the mirror — he's not done with you."
That stopped Elias cold.
His breath hitched, pulse thudding like a war drum.
Lucien turned and gestured toward a tall, black antique mirror leaning against the far wall. Its surface was tarnished, but beneath the grime, something moved. Faint and slow — like smoke trapped behind glass.
"You've felt it, haven't you?" Lucien asked, his voice like wind in a crypt. "The pull. The gaze. The shift when you're not looking quite directly. A crack, Elias. A fracture."
Elias stared at the mirror. For a heartbeat, he swore he saw the edge of a smile forming — not his. Not even fully human.
Lucien lowered his voice to a whisper. "When a soul breaks, the pieces don't always scatter. Sometimes they… nest. They grow in silence. They wait. And when the mind is weak… they whisper."
A rush of air swept through the room, cold and sharp.
Elias turned and left without another word, the shop door slamming behind him with a hollow clang.
---
The rain hadn't stopped. If anything, it had grown colder. Harsher.
Elias pulled his coat tight as he walked, trying to shake off what had just happened. Lucien was mad. A trickster. A con man playing with trauma. That's all it was.
But something gnawed at him. Not fear — recognition.
The things Lucien said… part of him believed them.
Back home, Elias avoided every reflective surface. He kept the lights on. Brushed his teeth with the medicine cabinet closed. Even unplugged the television, just in case.
But when sleep finally dragged him down, the shadows came with it.
He stood in a dream — or perhaps a memory — inside an old asylum hallway, doors swinging, walls bleeding flickers of light. Something paced on the other side of a mirror. He could hear the tap tap tap of fingernails on glass.
Then a voice. Low. Ancient. Familiar.
> "Let me speak." "You promised you'd listen." "You are not the only one dreaming."
He awoke gasping, drenched in sweat, fingers trembling.
The apartment was silent.
He dragged himself into the bathroom, splashing cold water on his face. For a moment, it grounded him.
Then he looked up.
On the mirror, written in condensation, were four words — just starting to fade:
We're not alone anymore.
---