Julka and Michal find a hidden mirror in a forgotten library corridor, and the reflection answers with strangers, symbols, and a voice that invites them to step through.
The old library on Maple Street had a way of swallowing sound. Even the floorboards seemed to hold their breath after dark. Julka and Michal had come because someone had sworn they heard voices from the rare-books wing after closing time, and neither of them could resist a mystery like that.
Dust hung in the air between the towers of bookcases. The place smelled of paper gone sweet with age, varnish, and the faint metallic sting of winter clinging to wet coats. Julka moved first, her torch beam skimming over spines cracked with age, while Michal followed with his rucksack bumping against his side, full of tools that were never quite as ridiculous as they looked.
He was always prepared for the impossible. Julka liked that about him.
They reached the encyclopaedia shelves at the back of the room, where the shadows seemed thicker than elsewhere. Julka stopped so abruptly that Michal nearly walked into her.
There was a door there.
Not a proper one, not really. It was narrow and set flush against the wall, hidden so neatly between shelves that it might have gone unnoticed for years. Julka touched the edge, felt the cold of the metal latch, then looked at Michal. He gave the smallest nod.
The door opened with a dry, complaining creak.
Beyond it lay a corridor so narrow they had to turn sideways to enter. The torchlight shivered over the walls and caught on something bright at the far end. A mirror stood there, tall as a person, its frame dark with age and carved all over with symbols Julka did not recognise.
When she came close enough to see her reflection, she went still.
It was not her looking back.
A woman with green eyes stared out from the glass, her cloak moving as if a wind had found her on the other side. Silver sparks drifted around her shoulders like falling embers. Beside Julka, Michal made a sharp sound under his breath. His reflection had changed too: in the mirror, a black cat sat upright where he should have been, its blue eyes bright and unnerving.
The glass gave a faint tremor.
Mist coiled across its surface, slow at first, then faster, as if something on the other side had just noticed them.
"Michal," Julka whispered, but her own voice sounded far away.
She lifted a hand. The mirror was not cold. It was warm, almost alive, and when her fingertips touched it, the surface yielded like water disturbed by a stone.
A whisper threaded through the corridor, too quiet at first to be words, then clear enough to freeze the blood in her veins.
"Come in," it said. "If you want the truth, step closer."
Behind them, the library lights went out one by one.