Chapter 1: The Mirror Doesn't Lie (But It Should)

Skylar Reeves woke up to the smell of dust and old paper.

That was wrong. Her apartment smelled like vanilla candles and leftover coffee. She blinked at the ceiling, waiting for her eyes to adjust, but nothing about the ceiling looked familiar either. Wooden beams. Cracks running through old plaster. A single bulb swinging slightly, though there was no wind.

She sat up too fast and her back screamed in protest.

"Okay, ow," she muttered. "Since when do I have a back that does that?"

Her voice came out wrong too. Thin. Papery. Like it belonged to someone twice her age.

She dragged herself out of the unfamiliar bed and toward what looked like a cracked mirror propped against the wall. Her hand — spotted, wrinkled, definitely not the hand she'd gone to sleep with — reached out and wiped the dust off the glass.

For a full five seconds, Skylar simply stared.

An old woman stared back. Silver hair, thin and dry, escaping a braid. A face lined with wrinkles deep enough to hide secrets in. Sunken cheeks. Tired eyes that were, somehow, still hers — she recognized the shape of them, the same stubborn slant she'd had at twenty-six.

"No," she said flatly. "Absolutely not."

She turned her head left, then right, like the angle might fix it. It did not fix it.

"Whose grandmother is this," she asked the mirror, "and why is she in my body?"

The mirror did not answer. Something else did.

[System Initializing...]

Skylar froze. Blue text unfurled in the air in front of her, hanging there like it belonged, like this was a completely normal Tuesday.

[Host Identified: Skylar Reeves]

[Age: 68]

[Beauty Rating: 12/100]

[Survival Probability: 0.7%]

"You didn't have to put a number on it," she said out loud. "And a low number, at that."

[System Note: Accuracy is a core function. Host is advised to accept this.]

"I did not ask for accuracy. I asked for tact."

The system said nothing further, which felt like its own kind of insult. Skylar pressed both palms against the cracked mirror and leaned closer, examining the stranger's face that was apparently now hers. She looked, she decided, like she'd lived through several wars and hadn't enjoyed any of them.

Before she could spiral further, voices drifted in from outside — young, sharp, and already laughing at something.

Skylar shuffled to the window. Her knees popped with every step, which she chose to ignore out of sheer principle.

Two girls stood in the narrow street below, both dressed in clothes far nicer than the crumbling building suggested anyone around here could afford. One had glossy dark hair pulled into a high ponytail; the other kept touching her own face like she was checking it was still pretty.

"Did you see the state of that building?" Ponytail Girl said, wrinkling her nose. "I can't believe people still live in places like that."

"Probably some old hag rotting away in there," the other replied, and they both laughed.

Skylar's eye twitched.

As if sensing eyes on them, the two girls looked up — right at her, framed in the window like an unfortunate painting.

There was a pause.

Then Ponytail Girl burst out laughing so hard she nearly doubled over. "Oh my god, there really is an old hag. Hi, granny! Move out of the way of the window, you're scaring the pigeons."

"Ew," the other one added, not even bothering to lower her voice. "Imagine looking like that. I'd rather not survive whatever's coming."

They walked off, still giggling, without a shred of guilt.

Skylar stood very still.

She was, by nature, not a person who let insults slide — she'd once argued with a parking attendant for twenty minutes over a technicality just to prove a point nobody cared about. But this new body's throat felt tight and dry, and for one humiliating second, she thought she might actually cry over being called an old hag by two strangers in the street.

She didn't. Instead, she took a slow breath and pointed a shaky, wrinkled finger at the empty air where they'd been standing.

"Noted," she said. "Both of you. I am very good at remembering faces."

[System: Would Host like to log target names for future reference?]

"Wait, you can do that?"

[Affirmative. Facial recognition module: Active.]

"Oh, we are going to get along fine," Skylar said, suddenly feeling marginally better about the blue text floating in her vision. "Log them both. Category: Unfinished Business."

[Logged.]

She turned back to the mirror, studying the deep lines around her stranger's-eyes, and something about the whole absurd morning finally caught up to her — the unfamiliar room, the unfamiliar hands, the systemic honesty about her own survival odds, the two girls who'd laughed at a face that was, unfortunately, currently her face.

"Okay," she said slowly, mostly to herself. "Let's establish some facts. I went to sleep twenty-six. I woke up sixty-eight. There is a floating blue menu insulting me with statistics. And two children just called me an old hag to my face, correctly."

She sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, ancient joints creaking their agreement.

"This is either the weirdest fever dream of my life," she muttered, "or something has gone catastrophically wrong with the universe."

[System: Neither. Host is advised to remain calm. Explanation forthcoming.]

Skylar stared at the words hovering patiently in the air, unimpressed.

"You couldn't have led with that?"

[System: Host did not ask.]

"I'm sixty-eight years old and arguing with a menu," she said to no one. "Fantastic. Off to a great start."

Outside, the sun was rising over a city that had exactly three days left before it stopped looking anything like this. Skylar Reeves, wrinkled hands and all, had no idea yet just how much that mattered — only that whatever was happening to her, she intended to survive it, and possibly ruin two mean girls' week while she was at it.

She glanced back at the mirror one last time.

"Old hag," she repeated, testing the words like they'd left a bad taste. "We'll see about that."