Chapter 42 – The Reflection That Spoke

The mansion exhaled. A slow, deliberate breath, as if the walls themselves were alive. Caelum stood at the threshold of a room he did not remember entering. The floor was smooth and black, polished like obsidian, yet it did not reflect his image. The walls rippled as if woven from liquid shadow, shifting in ways that made them feel both infinite and crushingly claustrophobic.

He turned. The door behind him was gone.

Something moved in the darkness. A flicker of a figure, tall and gaunt, standing just beyond the reach of the dim, unplaceable light. Caelum’s breath hitched.

It was himself.

Or rather, something wearing his face.

The doppelgänger stepped forward, its presence wrong in a way that words could not fully capture. The features were identical—same sharp jawline, same exhausted eyes. And yet, something inside them churned, as if countless voices whispered behind its gaze. When it spoke, its voice did not echo in the room. Instead, it bypassed sound entirely, curling directly into the marrow of Caelum’s bones.

“You are running out of time.”

Caelum clenched his fists. “Time for what?”

The figure tilted its head in a way that was both thoughtful and mechanical. Like a puppet, waiting for its next command.

“You know who waits at the end of the path. You’ve always known.”

The air thickened. Something cold pressed against the edges of Caelum’s mind. A memory trying to surface.

A sterile white room. The scent of antiseptic, clinical and sharp. A voice—detached, methodical—murmuring something about “stabilization.” A prescription bottle turned in shaking hands. The label blurred, shifting before it could be fully read.

And then—a name, just a whisper.

Dr. Lorne.

A sudden nausea gripped him. The walls pulsed, as if they were watching, waiting. Caelum took a step back. “No,” he muttered, shaking his head. “I don’t—”

“You do,” the reflection interrupted. “And that is why you are afraid.”

The figure raised a hand, palm up. In its grasp, something shimmered—a jagged fragment of glass, slick with something dark. It lifted it slowly, pressing the shard against the side of its own throat.

“What will you do when you see him again?”

A pulse of memory struck Caelum like lightning.

—Hands around his throat, but whose?—

—A door locking from the outside.—

—Laughter, but it was not his own.—

Caelum staggered back. His pulse roared in his ears.

The doppelgänger did not blink.

“You know the answer.”

The shard in its hand glowed, and for a fraction of a second, Caelum saw something else reflected within it—not himself, but something twisted. A version of him that had already crossed the line.

A killer.

The room trembled violently. The walls convulsed, and the dark floor cracked apart beneath him. Caelum lurched forward, reaching—whether to strike, to take the shard, or to stop himself from falling, he did not know.

The moment his fingers brushed the reflection’s hand, the world imploded.

Caelum woke on the cold stone of a hallway that had not been there before. The mansion had shifted again.

His breath was uneven. The weight of the vision lingered in his chest, pressing against his ribs.

The shadows around him deepened, curling like waiting hands.

For the first time, the mansion did not resist.

It was leading him forward.

To the truth.

To Dr. Lorne.