But there... it seemed we are dead.

Nimdok paced the confines of his dimly lit room, the shadows stretching and twisting with his erratic movement. His chest was a drumbeat of agony, each thud louder than the last, his breath shallow and frantic. He’d forgotten his clothes, but modesty was the furthest thing from his mind. The pain was unbearable, clawing at him from the inside.

His trembling hands rifled through drawers, shelves, and dusty boxes. He searched for something—anything—that could bring him relief. And then, under the false bottom of an old wooden chest, his fingers closed around it. A small amber bottle.

The label was faded, the words barely legible, but he recognized it instantly. These were the pills. The ones Darcia thought she’d destroyed. The ones she didn’t want him to have.

He turned the bottle over in his hand, his vision swimming as he considered it. Somewhere on his desk was the medical book he’d borrowed from the apothecary’s library. He could look it up. He could find out exactly what these pills did. But his heart raced even faster at the thought. What if it’s something I don’t want to know?

A voice broke through the storm in his mind. Smooth, silken, and laced with a dangerous charm.

“Don’t do it,” it purred.

Nimdok froze, his gaze snapping to the mirror on the far wall. The dim light cast his reflection in stark relief, but it wasn’t his face staring back at him. It was someone else. A dark silhouette of a man, his sharp features half-obscured by shadow. The unmistakable outline of a fox’s ears framed his head, his eyes gleaming with a cunning light.

“Forget about the pills,” the figure said, leaning closer to the glass as though it were a window between them. “Trust me, Nimdok. You don’t want to know.”

Nimdok stumbled back, clutching the bottle to his chest. “Who—who are you?”

“You know who I am.” The figure’s grin was sharp and gleaming, his voice a honeyed melody. “I’m your shadow, your doubt, your guilty conscience. But you can call me Mr. Fox.”

“That’s not… you’re not real,” Nimdok stammered, his voice cracking. “You’re in my head.”

The silhouette laughed, a sound like silk tearing. “Oh, darling boy, everything is in your head. But that doesn’t mean I’m not real.”

Nimdok’s grip on the bottle tightened. “What do you want?”

“It’s not about what I want. It’s about what you want.” Mr. Fox’s grin widened, his eyes narrowing to slits. “You want to open that bottle, don’t you? Swallow a pill, figure out what they are. Solve the mystery.”

“I… I have to know,” Nimdok whispered, his voice trembling.

“Do you?” The silhouette tilted his head, his tone playful but edged with menace. “What happens if you find out something you can’t live with? What if the truth is worse than the ignorance? Trust me, darling, some questions aren’t worth answering.”

Nimdok swallowed hard, his hands shaking so violently the bottle nearly slipped from his grip. “I… I need to know. I need to fix this.”

“You think a pill will fix you?” Mr. Fox sneered, his voice turning cold. “You’re broken, Nimdok. Splintered into a thousand little pieces. And do you know what happens when you try to glue something like that back together?” He leaned closer, his voice a whisper now. “It shatters even more.”

Tears pricked Nimdok’s eyes as he clutched the bottle tighter. “What do you know? You’re just a voice in a mirror.”

“Oh, Nimdok,” the silhouette said softly, almost pityingly. “I know everything. I know your fears, your regrets, your secrets. And I know this: if you take that pill, you’ll hate yourself for it. You’ll wish you hadn’t. So, go ahead. Open the bottle. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Nimdok’s knees buckled, and he sank to the floor, the bottle clutched to his chest like a lifeline. His reflection—or the thing in it—watched him with cold amusement, its grin unwavering. The room seemed to close in around him, the walls pressing tighter, the shadows growing darker.

He stared at the bottle in his hands, his mind a whirlwind of doubt and fear. The silhouette’s words echoed in his ears. What if the truth is worse? What if this doesn’t fix anything? What if I’m beyond fixing?

The room fell silent except for the rain tapping against the window, each drop a tiny hammer driving the weight of his indecision deeper into his chest. He wanted to scream, to break the mirror, to shatter the image of the grinning fox who seemed to know him better than he knew himself.

But he couldn’t move. He couldn’t speak. He could only sit there, trapped in his own mind, the bottle still sealed in his trembling hands.