Amanda sat on the edge of the bed, arms wrapped around herself. She hadn't moved in half an hour. The window was open. The air was cold. She didn't care.
Lucan stood across the room near the fireplace, motionless. Not resting. Not observing. Just still like stone waiting for erosion.
"You were kneeling," she said finally. "In the vision."
Lucan said nothing.
"You didn't fight."
Still nothing.
Amanda turned to face him. Her voice was quiet but tight. "So that's it? You burn out? And I'm just a detour on the way there?"
Lucan didn't flinch. "You saw one possibility."
Amanda stood, walked slowly toward him. "It didn't feel like a possibility. It felt like you."
Lucan's voice was calm. "That's your power talking."
"No," she snapped. "That's me talking. Watching the most terrifying thing I've ever known give up like it doesn't matter."
Lucan finally looked at her. His eyes weren't angry. They were hollow.
"I've been close," Lucan said.
Amanda frowned. "To what?"
"Oblivion."
He didn't blink.
"Silver in the chest. Fire on the skin. I've watched pieces of myself rot before the rest could catch up."
He looked past her, into nothing.
"There was a time I stayed buried. Not because I had to. Because I didn't see the point in rising."
She stared at him. "But you came back."
He nodded once.
"Then why stop now?"
Lucan turned away. "Because maybe the next time I don't."
Amanda's voice cracked. "So you're just waiting?"
Lucan stepped forward, slow, but sharp. She didn't back up.
"You think I brought you here because I needed help?"
Amanda's jaw tightened. "No. I think you brought me here because you needed someone to watch you burn."
Lucan's eyes narrowed just slightly.
Then he said, "I brought you here because you were already burning."
Amanda didn't look away.
And neither did he.
-----
Lucan left without warning. He always did. No explanation. No time frame. Amanda didn't ask where he went. She never did. But this time, when the door closed behind him, the air didn't settle.
It tightened.
The silence felt pressurized, like something was breathing in the walls.
She stayed still for ten minutes.
Then twenty.
Then she moved. Not to escape. To confirm. She walked to the hallway mirror. The one that had been broken once, replaced in silence, like nothing had happened. Her reflection stared back.
It blinked when she did.
It tilted its head first.
Amanda froze.
No shift in the glass. No ripple. Just a second of imbalance. A moment where her body and her image weren't in sync.
Then it was gone.
She stepped closer.
"You're not a memory," she whispered.
Nothing answered.
But the weight in the air responded. Like a hand against her back, not pushing, just reminding her it was there.
"You've been waiting for him to leave."
The air tightened again.
Amanda's throat felt dry.
"I'm not afraid of you." That was a lie.
The mirror didn't move.
But her skin did.
Tiny ripples under the surface, nerves twitching in recognition of something unseen. The hair on her arms stood up. Her heart didn't race. It slowed.
She whispered, "Do you know me?"
The answer wasn't in words. It was in her reflection leaning forward while she stayed still.
It smiled.
Only a little. Then returned to perfect stillness.
Amanda didn't run, but she didn't stay. She closed the door to the hallway. Sat down on the living room floor and didn't blink again for a long time.
-----
Lucan landed quietly, boots brushing the grass outside Amanda's porch like he weighed less than the night itself.
But something was wrong.
He could feel it before he touched the door. The energy around the house, usually heavy with death and decay, the residue of tethered minds was different now. Thinner. Sharper. Like something had cut into the atmosphere and then just... waited.
He entered without a sound. The lights were on, but Amanda wasn't in the main room. He didn't call her name. He didn't need to. Her heartbeat was steady, low. She wasn't afraid.
She was focused.
He found her sitting in the hallway, just outside the bathroom, her arms around her knees. The hallway mirror stood across from her clean, unbroken, wrong.
Lucan didn't speak at first.
Amanda did.
"It smiled at me."
Lucan's head tilted slightly. "The reflection?"
She nodded. "It didn't try to speak this time. Just watched. Then moved."
Lucan stepped closer to the mirror. He didn't look into it. Not yet. Just near enough to sense the air around it. The pressure Amanda had felt was still there. Subtle, but active.
"You didn't touch it?" he asked.
"No."
Lucan raised his hand, stopped an inch from the glass.
The mirror pulsed.
It was barely visible, a shimmer, a breath caught in crystal, but it was there.
His eyes narrowed.
Then the glass darkened, only for a second. His reflection was gone. Amanda's was gone. The mirror became empty.
And then...
"I know you."
The voice wasn't Amanda's. It wasn't in the room. It was behind the glass, low, almost gentle. Ancient, but not cracked. It spoke like it had been waiting for this moment since long before either of them were born.
Lucan didn't move. "What are you?"
"I am what you buried. What you fed when you thought you were killing."
Amanda's breath caught. She moved to her feet, standing behind Lucan but not speaking.
"You wore the dead like a cloak and thought nothing inside them would survive."
The mirror began to haze. Not fog. Smoke.
Lucan's hand hovered just a fraction closer.
"You're inside her."
"No. She's the door. You were the key."
Amanda stepped forward now. "Why now?"
The voice didn't answer her.
It only addressed Lucan.
"You should have stayed gone."
Lucan's eyes narrowed. "And you should have stayed dead."
A pause.
Then the smoke cleared. The mirror returned to normal. Their reflections appeared again, his unreadable, hers pale and tense.
Amanda exhaled hard.
Lucan lowered his hand.
"She's accelerating," he whispered to himself.
Amanda looked at him.
"Me?"
Lucan nodded once. "Whatever this is, it's not just watching anymore. It wants something."
Amanda swallowed.
"And what if I give it?"
Lucan didn't answer.
But this time, it wasn't because he didn't know.
It was because he did.
And it wasn't a price he was willing to name.