[3] - The Passenger

A week passed, and the digital world had a long memory. Stellar posted content from the deep archives of her phone, photos and videos from before the disastrous stream. The hateful comments were a persistent drizzle now, a constant background noise to her online existence. "Fake." "Emotionless robot." "How could you smile?" Her follower count, once a soaring skyscraper, now had cracks in its foundation, and people were quietly leaving.

She still performed the ritual. Each morning, the mirror made her pretty again. Her body was a temple, but the priestess was losing control of the rites. She tried to take a new picture for a beauty brand collaboration, but her face, in the lens, twisted into a mask of pure disgust. It was becoming harder to hide the fact that her face was no longer her own.

She went to a doctor, a sleek professional in a white coat who ran tests and scans. "You are in perfect health," the doctor said, looking at charts. "Peak physical condition." There was nothing medically wrong with the perfect vessel she inhabited.

She considered therapy, a real, human conversation about the terror growing inside her. But she imagined the headlines, the whispers. Her perfect image was a glass sculpture, and she feared any touch would shatter it. So she did not go.

One night, the silence in the penthouse became a physical weight. With no one to talk to, she found herself speaking to the only thing that truly knew her. She picked up the broken mirror.

She talked. She told the cracked glass about her fear, the anxiety that coiled in her stomach like a cold snake. She cried, her tears falling on the dressing table, making tiny dark stars on the wood. She confessed her sins to it, the vanity, the lies. And somehow, it helped. The act of pouring her desperation into the mirror seemed to calm the storm inside her. By morning, she felt lighter, the ritual of the night as important as the ritual of the morning.

---

For a few months, it worked. She crafted a new narrative for her followers, one of being broken by grief and slowly healing. It was a story they understood, and they began to return. The traction was slow, but it was there. She was making a comeback.

---

Then, one night in the middle of 2025, she saw it. She was about to blink, and in the mirror, her reflection blinked first.

Her blood ran cold. She tried a smile. The reflection in the broken mirror mirrored it almost perfectly. Almost. The smile appeared a heartbeat too late, or the frown began a moment too soon. It was no longer a perfect copy. It was an imperfect mimic, learning its steps.

Maybe she was just tired. Maybe she had drunk too much expensive wine. She put the mirror face down on the table, a small act of defiance, and went to sleep.

In the morning, the mirror was already perched upright, as if it had spent the long night watching her sleep.

Fear curdled into anger. She snatched the mirror from the table. "What do you want?" she yelled at the silvered surface, her voice cracking. "Just tell me what the fuck you want from me!"

The mirror showed only her reflection, her angry, frightened face. And then, as she watched, the anger melted away, replaced by the old, familiar ugliness. It was happening without her willing it. The magic was turning against her.

Terror washed over her again, fresh and paralyzing. The anger vanished. She was begging again. "I'm sorry. Please. I'll do anything. Just let me keep this. Let me be perfect."

The reflection in the broken mirror smiled. It was a wide, stretching, impossible smile that did not reach its eyes. And then, silently, it began to laugh. A soundless, horrifying laugh that shook its shoulders.

Stellar watched, scared and confused, but also feeling a strange sense of relief as her reflection's face began to smooth and beautify once more.

"What should I do?" she whispered, pressing her forehead to the cold glass. "Tell me what to do. Please."

The reflection stopped laughing. It looked at her, its head tilted. Then it raised a single finger and pressed it to its own lips. Shhh.

Then it pointed. It pointed to its own chest.

Stellar was confused. She looked at what the reflection was pointing to. It was wearing her own merchandise shirt, the one with "Stellar" written across the chest in bold letters. But the word was not mirrored. In the reflection, the word read correctly, left to right, just as it should. But that was impossible.

She looked down at the shirt she was actually wearing.

The word "Stellar" was written correctly on it. The shirt in the mirror was a perfect, impossible match.

The world around her dissolved. Her penthouse, the city lights, everything vanished. She was standing in an infinite white room, empty except for her and the mirror. But the mirror was no longer small. It was growing, expanding, until it was as vast as a billboard in Times Square, and she was small before it.

The perspective within the giant mirror shifted. It was no longer showing a reflection of the room. It was showing her perspective. She was looking through her own eyes, at the mirror, from the other side.

And in that moment of perfect, silent horror, she understood. She was not looking at a reflection. She was looking out from inside the glass. And the thing that was wearing her face, the thing that had practiced expressions while she slept, was now looking back in. It was not her reflection that had become a passenger.

She is the passenger. The thing in the mirror was the driver.