It was morning.
At least, the sky outside pretended it was.
The six girls stood together in the hallway, each in their own small storm of dread. None of them had slept. Not really. Even Tara—who should have collapsed after what happened in the black room—looked strangely alert. Pale, but awake.
They hadn't spoken much since returning.
They didn't know what to say.
Sofi was the first to break the silence.
"We all saw it, right? The room changed. And Tara…" she looked at her friend, unsure how to continue.
Tara said it for her. "I was gone. Or almost gone."
"No," Aria corrected. "You were somewhere else. You were pulled away."
"I didn't do it on purpose."
"We know," Mina said quietly. "But that doesn't mean it won't happen again."
The way she said it made everyone pause.
Not with anger.
With resignation.
--------
They met in the study after breakfast. Or what passed for it.
Breakfast that morning had been cold toast and lukewarm broth. No staff served them. The table had already been set, and the food was already there. Calden hadn't appeared in two days.
"I don't think he leaves that room upstairs," Lina muttered.
"He doesn't have to," Reya said. "The house does everything."
They gathered around the fireplace in the study, where dust covered all the books except the ones that hadn't been there yesterday. Six books on the table. All bound in leather. No titles.
Reya opened the one in front of her.
The pages were blank.
At first.
Then words appeared. Slowly. Like something was writing them from behind the paper.
"There are six of you. But only five will see the door."
Lina looked up. "Door? What door?"
"There is a way out, but it requires forgetting. One of you must not remember how she got here. One of you must forget the others ever existed."
Sofi flinched. "That's not escape. That's erasure."
"The house feeds on memory. If you starve it, you might leave."
Suddenly, the text vanished.
Reya slammed the book shut.
"What if that's what happened to the other kids?" Mina whispered. "The ones in the paintings. The ones we never hear walking."
"They forgot themselves," Tara said. "Or the house made them forget."
"And then the house kept them," Aria added. "As furniture. As shadows."
---
Later, they returned to their rooms separately—at least, they tried to.
Because something had changed.
The mirrors.
Every hallway mirror now stood perfectly polished, gleaming unnaturally in the dim corridors. Full-length, tall enough to reflect the ceiling, positioned at strange angles.
Lina paused in front of one and blinked.
"Is it just me, or…"
Her reflection didn't move.
Everyone froze.
Lina waved her hand.
Her reflection stared blankly forward.
"That's not me," she whispered.
Aria stepped closer. "It's… someone wearing your face."
Reya moved next to her own reflection. "Wait. Look closely. It's me, but… younger. I had that scar when I was nine."
"I don't see myself at all," Mina muttered. "I see…"
She didn't finish.
Tara didn't approach the mirrors.
"I know what I'll see," she said.
Sofi glanced at her. "You?"
Tara nodded. "Me. Standing. Smiling. No crutches. No limp. Just me… before."
"Before what?" Aria asked.
"Before the lie started."
--------
The mirrors didn't stop appearing.
By that evening, they were in every room.
The attic. The parlor. Even inside closets.
No one dared look too long anymore.
Because it wasn't just reflections.
Some moved when you didn't. Some whispered things in languages you didn't know. Some smiled back when you were crying.
And some—just a few—showed seven girls.
--------
They held another meeting that night, this time in the second-floor music room. The piano no longer played on its own. The strings had snapped.
Reya set a new map on the table, drawn hastily with charcoal and ink. It showed a newly appeared corridor just off the west wing.
"I found this today," she said. "And when I tried to walk it—"
"You didn't get anywhere?" Mina guessed.
"No. I got somewhere. But it wasn't real. It was a room made of mirrors."
Lina shivered. "And?"
"They weren't reflecting me. They were… showing things."
"What kinds of things?" Aria asked.
"My old school. My front porch. My mom. My sister. Things I hadn't thought about in weeks. Months."
"The house is feeding," Tara said.
"On what?"
"On us. On memory. Maybe even on choices."
They all turned to her.
She looked exhausted but resolute.
"It keeps showing us ways out. But every one has a price. That black room? It said not to speak my name. Why? Because names are ties. To each other. To ourselves. Once you stop speaking a name… you forget the person."
She glanced around.
"If you forget me, maybe you can leave."
Sofi shook her head. "We're not doing that."
"No," Mina agreed. "There has to be another way."
Reya hesitated. "What if there isn't?"
-------
That night, Aria took first watch.
They slept in shifts now.
Too much had happened. Too much could happen.
She sat on the windowsill with a candle beside her, sharpening one of the broken piano keys into something vaguely weapon-like.
Then she noticed the mirror across from Tara's bed.
It wasn't showing Tara.
It was showing Sofi.
But Sofi was already asleep—right there on the floor next to her friend.
Aria stood slowly, crept toward the mirror.
Sofi's reflection turned toward her.
It blinked. Smiled.
And whispered, in Tara's voice: "Little dove… they'll choose soon."