Rain had been falling since dawn, a slow, cold drizzle that soaked into the roof tiles of the old orphanage and whispered through the halls like voices trying to be heard.Mrs. Moira moved down the corridor with a flickering flashlight, her back already aching from a night with no sleep. The children had been restless again—some waking up screaming, others sleepwalking toward the locked front doors, eyes open but seeing something that wasn't there.She stopped in front of Room 6.The door was slightly ajar.Not again, she thought.Pushing it open, she found Emery wide awake in bed, sitting cross-legged under his thin blanket. He wasn’t crying like the other kids. He wasn’t shaking either. He just stared at the far wall with an expression too old for his eight-year-old face.His sketchbook was open in his lap. Pencil in hand.“You didn’t sleep again,” Mrs. Moira said gently.Emery didn’t answer. His eyes didn’t leave the paper.Mrs. Moira stepped closer and crouched. The drawing on the
Alika’s POVShe was gone.I took one step up the stairs—but the girl with my face had already vanished.No sound. No shadow. Nothing.Just that sentence still hanging in the air like a bad aftertaste:You left me in the lake.I didn’t go after her.Didn’t run. Didn’t scream.I just stood there, heart banging against my ribs, trying to breathe.And then I noticed it.The fog was gone.Not thinner. Not receding.Gone.Like it had never existed.The house was still. Too still. I listened hard. No ticking clocks. No humming pipes. Even the creaky floorboards were silent beneath my feet.I turned slowly, expecting—something.But it was just the house again.Except it wasn’t.The hallway looked… wrong.Longer than it should’ve been. Slightly curved. The wall lamp that used to hang by the coat rack now sat closer to the kitchen door. I stared at it, blinking, trying to convince myself it had always been like that.It hadn’t.I walked back toward the living room. Everything looked the same a
Alika’s POVI didn’t move right away.The paper was still warm in my hand, like it had a pulse.I dropped it onto the table. Backed away.The house felt colder now, though nothing had changed. Same dim light. Same dead quiet. But something had shifted. Like the room itself had taken a breath—and was now waiting for mine.I looked toward the front door.Fog pressed against the windows. Heavy. Dense. It hadn’t been there minutes ago. Not even a trace. Now it clung to the glass like fingers trying to get in.I walked toward the door, slow. I didn’t know why. I wasn’t planning to open it. I just needed to see. To be sure I was still inside something real.But as I reached the hallway, I heard it.A voice.Soft. Familiar.“Alika…”I stopped.The sound came from the other side of the door. Muffled. Gentle.It sounded like Ethan.No—almost like Ethan.But I’d learned the difference.I’d heard him enough in dreams to know when it wasn’t him.Still, my hand touched the doorknob.“Open it.”The
Alika’s POVI’m still standing at the edge of the lake. The air’s turned sharply cold, and the morning mist hasn’t fully lifted. The water is unnervingly still—like a pane of broken glass someone patched badly.What I saw wasn’t a dream. The glow was real. The reflection was real. That smile… it wasn’t Ethan’s. But why did it still feel so familiar?I drew a slow breath, letting the cold fill my constrained lungs. My fingers had gone numb—partly from the weather, partly from something inside me crumbling. Ever since this began, I’ve been holding onto the hope of light at the end. But what came instead was more foreign than death: living uncertainty.Back at home, my boots were soaked and heavy. The old hardwood in the entryway whispered beneath my feet. Outside, the world stirred—birds, wind, neighbors stirring—but it all felt distant. Like the world was preparing a stage for something to break.On the c
The Village Fisherman.He didn’t remember how he made it back to shore.His hands and feet felt frozen, even though the sun had started to rise. He sat on the ground, knees drawn to his chest, staring at the lake—still and silent, like nothing had ever happened.But he knew what he saw was real.That water boiled.And that little girl had spoken a name no one dared say out loud in the village anymore.“Ethan.”His own lips almost repeated it. But something in his throat locked up. He could only watch the fading ripples. Then—a voice came from behind his head. Not human. More like a whisper rising from inside his bones.Don’t go back to the lake alone tonight…He stood slowly, knees trembling. His legs felt heavy, as if the mud was trying to keep him there.---All day, he didn’t speak to anyone. Not even to his wife, who usually scolded him about the fish he br
Alika’s POVFor the first time since that night, I touched my stomach.My hands were shaking—not from the cold, but from the image still clinging to my mind. Her belly was swollen. And that smile... God. It wasn’t human. It was Sybilla’s. And it came from my face.I took a slow breath, looked down, and ran my fingers over my own skin. Nothing had changed. No bump. No life inside. But I knew—mirrors in this manor never just reflected.Sometimes they showed the future.Sometimes, they revealed truths we weren’t ready to face.From outside, a distant clock chimed once.One.Then silence.And in that silence, I heard it again—faint, fragile, but sharp as bone: the sound of a baby crying. Distant, like from the attic. The same cry that came every night… at the exact same hour.Dad used to say, if you hear a baby crying in an empty house, don’t look for where it’s coming from. But I’d