The Silver Traitor

The silvered glass didn't just reflect the bathroom; it swallowed the light, leaving Elias alone with a ghost of his own making. He leaned over the porcelain sink, knuckles white against the cold marble, breathing in the scent of peppermint and damp stone. The morning light filtered through the frosted window, casting long, sickly shadows that seemed to crawl toward his feet.

He blinked, waiting for the familiar fatigue to lift, but his eyes felt heavy, as if someone else were pulling at his eyelids. He reached out to splash cold water on his face, his fingers trembling. When he looked up, the world tilted.

The man in the mirror didn't move with him.

For a heartbeat, the reflection remained perfectly still, hands resting calmly at its sides, watching Elias with a terrifying, predatory stillness.

A sudden, violent vertigo surged through Elias’s chest, a sensation of being pulled through a narrow, freezing straw. The bathroom blurred into a smear of grey and white, and the air turned thin, tasting of ozone and old mercury.

Then, silence.

Elias tried to gasp, but his lungs felt encased in glass. He pressed his hands against a surface that was impossibly hard and unnervingly smooth. He was looking out from behind the silver, watching the steam rise from a sink he could no longer touch.

On the other side of the glass, his own body straightened its posture. The reflection reached out, its fingers tracing the boundary of the mirror with a slow, rhythmic grace.

It leaned in close, eyes bright with a hunger that Elias had never possessed.

"Don't worry," his own voice drifted through the glass, sounding more alive than he ever had. "I'll take excellent care of your life."