On Marta’s birthday, she, Tomek, and Iga break into an abandoned manor and find a mirror that should not be there. When the glass wakes up, the night turns into a choice none of them is ready to make.
It was well past midnight when Marta, Tomek, and Iga reached the manor at the forest’s edge. The house had been empty for years, or so everyone said, though the stories about it never quite died. People in the village lowered their voices whenever the place came up. Marta had chosen it anyway. For her birthday, she wanted something better than cake and candles. She wanted a story worth telling.
The front door gave way with a long, reluctant groan. Inside, the air was cold and stale, thick with dust and the wet smell of forgotten rooms. Their torch beams slid over cracked wallpaper, torn curtains, and shadows that seemed to shift whenever they looked straight at them. Every step made the floor complain. Every sound came back to them a little changed, as if the house were listening.
They found the mirror by accident, in a room at the end of a corridor that seemed to stretch farther than it should have. It stood alone beneath a row of faded portraits, enormous and dark, its frame carved with twisting shapes that looked almost alive in the torchlight. Marta stepped closer first. Her reflection was there, but not quite right, blurred at the edges, as though the glass were breathing.
"Don’t touch it," Tomek said, but he was already sounding too late.
He reached out and tapped the surface with one knuckle. The mirror shuddered. For a split second, the glass rippled like water struck by a stone. A low metallic note rang through the room, thin and cold and impossible. Then a blue light began to leak from the frame, spilling over the floorboards, climbing the walls, swallowing the portraits one by one.
Marta’s breath caught. She lifted her hand, almost against her own will, and touched the glass.
The mirror opened around her fingers. Her hand sank into it without resistance, disappearing up to the wrist, then the elbow, as if the surface had become deep, dark water. Iga cried out. Tomek grabbed Marta’s shoulder and yanked, but the mirror pulled back harder. Marta’s body jolted forward, her torch hit the floor, and the blue light flared so bright it erased everything else.
When the glare thinned, Marta was no longer standing in front of them.
Only the mirror remained, glowing softly in the dark, as if something on the other side had just noticed them and was waiting for the next one to come closer.