Inside Eli
They didn't want to do it.
But they didn't have a choice.
Eli was slipping—each hour, less him, more mirror. His eyes fogged at the edges, like condensation forming on glass. He spoke in half-phrases. He didn't blink.
"He's still in there," Jess insisted.
"He's not gone yet," Sky agreed. "We can still reach him."
Lumen set the locket on the table. It pulsed faintly, reacting to Eli's presence. "This is how we got in last time. Maybe it still works."
"Or maybe," Nori warned, "we're just inviting him in."
Max shrugged. "Then we punch him on the way out."
---
They formed a circle, again.
The locket in the middle. Eli beside them, breathing shallow.
They each pressed a finger to the metal.
And whispered:
"Find the fracture."
---
The world flipped.
Sound peeled away.
Color drained.
They were in.
---
Eli's mind wasn't like their own dreams.
It was darker. Stilled.
Like a photograph, water-damaged and left in the rain.
The air stank of mold and static. The sky above them was a ceiling of mirrors, each showing flickers of Eli's memories—distorted, looping.
A hallway stretched ahead. Endless. Door after door.
Every one had a name carved into it.
Theirs.
---
They ran past the first few.
Sky. Jess. Nori.
Each door pulsed as they passed, tempting them, trying to distract them.
Then they found it.
A door with no name.
Just a symbol: a chair, drawn in ash.
---
Inside: a room with no floor. No ceiling.
Just Eli.
Sitting in the same old chair.
Only this time, his face was cracked like porcelain.
And standing behind him—
The boy.
Smiling.
"Why do you keep following me?" the boy asked.
Lumen stepped forward. "Because you never stop."
"You think you're awake," the boy whispered. "But you're mine now. He's mine."
He put a hand on Eli's shoulder—and Eli didn't flinch.
Sky looked around. "What is this place?"
"My reflection," the boy said. "The one no one ever wanted to see."
---
The group locked hands.
Nori took the locket from her pocket. It glowed white-hot now.
"We're not leaving without him," Jess said.
The boy smiled wider.
"You already did."
Then—he screamed.
A sound like every mirror breaking at once.
Eli's face cracked.
And then—
Light.
---
They woke gasping.
Back in the room.
Eli shot upright, coughing, eyes wide. Normal.
Breathing.
Alive.
---
No one spoke.
But they all noticed something:
The mirror in the corner—the one that hadn't belonged to anyone?
It was gone.
But on the wall, where it had been, six words were burned into the wood:
"One of you still belongs here."