The seam let go of her and the floor missed.

  Usually there was at least half a heartbeat of re-entry: the tower’s heat licking at her skin, the hum crawling back into her bones, the reassuring solidity of the ring under her bare soles.

  This time, her heel found stone, her toes didn’t, and the world tipped.

  Red glyphs from the shaft lunged past in her peripheral vision. The rail jumped toward her face. Somewhere to her left she heard the sharp, startled intake of the Auditor’s breath—

  —and then the hook under her ribs yanked so hard everything went white.

  The tower’s hum cut out mid-note. The heat dropped away.

  She hit nothing.

  Then there was nothing to hit.

  —

  No seam felt like this.

  Seams came with other people’s lives clinging to them: the sting of disinfectant, club bass, the faint electric buzz of hospital lighting. Even empty rooms had the echo of someone—fingerprints on glass, shirts on chairs, cups in sinks.

  Here, there was nothing.

  No smell. No temperature. No up or down. Just the sense of herself hanging in a blank that had never bothered to learn what walls were.

  “Okay.” she said automatically.

  Her mouth shaped the word. Her tongue pushed it out.

  Nothing.

  The sound didn’t go anywhere. It felt like a thought that had tried to jump and landed back where it started.

  She raised a hand.

  Her shoulder moved. Her elbow. Fingers spread. The familiar map of muscle and tendon obeyed.

  Her hand met air. Or the absence of it.

  This is wrong, she thought, with the calm that came when panic had nowhere to go.

  Dead didn’t feel like this. She knew dead. Dead had a weight to it, even when it came between one breath and the next. It felt like a sentence ending.

  This felt like someone had ripped the verb out of the middle and left it hanging.

  Under her ribs, the hook vibrated.

  Not the usual direction, tugging outward toward some distant scene. This was inward and steady, like a tuning fork pressed against her sternum.

  She focused on it because there was nothing else.

  “That’s you, isn’t it?” she thought at it. “Whatever this is.”

  The hum climbed a note.

  A line of light appeared in front of her.

  At first it was just that: a thin vertical scratch in the blank, running from somewhere below where her feet probably were to somewhere above her head. No sound, no flourish. Just: there.

  The line widened.

  Light pulled sideways, stretching in both directions at once until it became a tall, narrow rectangle hanging in the void.

  As it did, the nothing under her remembered what ground was. Weight gathered under the soles of her bare feet. Front and back separated again.

  The rectangle clarified.

  Glass.

  A pane, no thicker than her finger, floating unsupported. At first it just threw back white glare, refusing to hold any image.

  Then something stepped up behind it.

  Her own face slid into view.

  She rarely saw herself down here. The tower didn’t bother with mirrors. Reflections came by accident—brief ghosts in polished metal or a clean patch of tile—easy to ignore when someone was bleeding or dying in front of them.

  Now there was nowhere else to look.

  The girl in the glass had her jaw: narrow, a little stubborn. Her cheekbones: sharper from the outside than they ever felt from within. The small crease between her brows that suggested she’d been concentrating for most of her life.

  Same hair, too. Dark, hacked off at the jaw, still crooked from that last kitchen-table cut she’d never bothered to fix.

  Same eyes—

  No.

  The girl in the glass had the same colour.

  But the red wasn’t a ring. It had seeped inwards, thin threads running through the iris like cracks in fired clay, reaching toward the pupil. When she focused on them, they pulsed faintly—not in time with the tower, but with something she recognised in her bones.

  Old panic. Old wanting.

  She stepped forward.

  The other girl stepped too.

  Her bare soles made no sound, but the sense of movement was there. One step, two. She stopped a short distance from the pane.

  So did the almost-reflection.

  She lifted her hand.

  So did the other.

  Her fingers stalled halfway, instinct saying don’t.

  The girl in the glass’s hand kept going and met the inside surface with a soft, soundless stop. Skin flattened against invisible smoothness. The red threads in her eyes brightened for a heartbeat.

  Her mouth curved.

  “How pathetic you are, really.” she said.

  The voice was hers. Same pitch, same scrape at the end of sentences.

  It echoed oddly, like the same word said in an empty room and a full one at the same time.

  “You constantly decide the fate of others.” The girl’s gaze dropped to the place under her ribs where the hook hummed. “And I am hungry. Let me out.”

  The anger in her eyes wasn’t wild.

  It was settled. The kind that had been heavy for so long it had sunk into the foundations.

  The girl’s own fingers curled into a fist.

  “You’re late.” she said, because sarcasm was a reflex even when her heart was trying to climb her throat. “The Interpreter called your existence ages ago.”

  The other snorted.

  “That old crow.” she said. “Of course she did.”

  They stared at each other.

  “You’re not real.” the girl said.

  It came out too fast.

  The reflection’s eyebrows went up.

  “Oh, good.” she said. “We’ve opened with denial. Do you want to do bargaining next, or skip straight to hysterical laughter?”

  “This is a seam.” the girl said. “Or a… diagnostic. The tower’s version of a pop-up warning. ‘Your soul is performing unusually. Click here to review settings.’”

  The other’s mouth twitched.

  “Would you click it?”

  “No.” she said instantly.

  “There we are, then.” the reflection said. “Self-knowledge at last.”

  “I’m not—” she gestured at the glass “—this anymore. Whatever you are. I stopped being… that.”

  “‘Again’, ‘anymore’.” the other said. “You keep accidentally saying there was a before. Funny.”

  The girl’s tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth.

  The Interpreter’s dry voice slid into the gap. More than one face, she’d said. More than one you. They only brought one down.

  “I did the work.” the girl said, sharper. “I fixed it. I grew up. I—”

  “Stopped having episodes in public?” the reflection supplied. “Stopped screaming into phones? Stopped drinking? Yes. Very impressive. Ten out of ten. Gold star. Look at you, all steady hands and measured words.”

  She wanted to snap back.

  Instead she heard herself say, “Then what are you?”

  The girl in the glass tilted her head, studying her like something behind the pane was more interesting than what was in front.

  “You really don’t remember.” she said.

  “Remember what?” the girl snapped. “You’re going to have to be more specific than ‘every mistake you ever made’.”

  The other’s expression shifted, something like resignation settling in.

  “All right.” she said. “Story time.”

  “I don’t want—”

  “I know.” the reflection said. “You never did.”

  Her hand slid down the glass until only her fingertips touched it, as if feeling for a vibration.

  “Once,” she said, “there was a girl whose parents were very good at leaving.”

  The blank around them didn’t move, but the air felt denser.

  “Stop.” the girl said automatically.

  “You asked.” the reflection reminded her. “Who am I, what are you, what deal, what halves. This is the part with context. Try not to hyperventilate.”

  “I don’t remember my parents.” the girl said.

  “I do.” the other replied.

  Her eyes flicked to the side, looking past the girl and through her at something that wasn’t there.

  “A flat.” she said. “Second floor, no lift. Thin walls, neighbours shouting through them. A kitchen that always smelled like something burnt because no one cleaned the oven. You and a cereal bowl at a table with one chair missing.”

  The girl’s fingers tightened against her ribs.

  “How do I know you’re not—”

  “Making it up?” the other said. “You don’t. Except that you know what that kitchen feels like in your molars. You know the sound of keys not turning in the lock for hours longer than they should. You know that particular way the light looks when it’s going dark and no one’s come home yet.”

  Something in her chest curled.

  She didn’t see the room. Not fully. She saw a chipped edge of a plate. The way condensed milk ran too slowly off a spoon. A pattern of peeling wallpaper.

  “Your mother was… busy with herself.” the girl in the glass said carefully. “Always tired. Always ‘just five more minutes’. She loved you, in the way people do when they’re full of holes. It leaked. Your father loved leaving more. Easier for him. Quieter.”

  The girl’s throat closed around words that weren’t coming.

  “You were small.” the reflection went on. “You wanted things. Attention. Hands. Someone to say, ‘I see you, I’ll stay.’ They didn’t. Not reliably. So you started… balancing.”

  “Balancing what?” the girl managed.

  “The ledger.” the other grimaced. “The universe. The feeling. Take your pick. When someone is supposed to hold you and doesn’t, it feels like the world is wrong. You couldn’t fix them. You decided you’d fix you.”

  “That’s not how it works.” she said, but it sounded weak even to her.

  “It’s exactly how it works.” the girl said. “You were a child. The only thing you had any power over was yourself. So you split us in two.”

  The word sat there, heavy.

  “Two girls.” the reflection said. “One to make it easy for them to stay. One to make it hurt when they didn’t.”

  Heat rose in the back of the girl’s neck.

  “I—don’t—” she stammered.

  “Yes, you did.” the other said. “The easy one was very good at being good. She was quiet when the adults were tired. She made jokes when the room went tense. She got top marks. She did dishes. She waited at the window without crying because crying made them sigh like you were another chore.”

  The girl tasted the rubber of a windowsill under her palms. Her breath fogging glass. Cars’ headlights swooping past.

  “The other one?” the reflection’s smile went crooked. “She was mine. The one who slammed doors. Who stole the cigarettes and smoked them too fast and choked. Who took money out of wallets and didn’t care if she was caught. The one who, when someone finally did hit, thought, Ah. This makes sense. Now it matches inside.”

  The girl flinched.

  “I don’t remember that.” she said.

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  “You remember the bathroom afterwards.” the other said. “You and the mirror and that look on your face like you’d just watched someone else move your body. ‘I don’t know why I said that,’ you’d tell yourself. ‘I don’t know why I did that.’ You knew. You just didn’t want it to be you.”

  “And you’re saying it was you.” she said.

  “I’m saying it was us.” the reflection replied. “But you labelled it me so you could keep liking yourself. That’s all. Two halves of the same idiot. One to carry the emptiness. One to throw furniture at it.”

  That landed with a dull, awful accuracy.

  “When the world was cruel,” the girl in the glass went on, “you couldn’t make it kinder. So you made us match it. You didn’t want to be prey. You didn’t want to be the soft thing everyone left. So you let me climb up.”

  “Climb up?” the girl echoed.

  “To the mouth.” the reflection tapped her own lips. “To the hands. To the part that got to act. Someone forgot your birthday? Guess who made the joke about not needing anyone. Someone cancelled on you three times? Guess who texted something sharp enough to bleed them. Someone shoved you on the train? Guess who shoved back and smiled when they shouted.”

  Images flickered.

  A platform. A shoulder slammed into hers. Her own voice saying, “Watch it.” sharper than she meant. The satisfying shock on the other person’s face.

  “I was the one who made the outside match what the inside felt like.” the girl in the glass said. “So it wouldn’t feel so lopsided. You let me. You needed me. It wasn’t fair, so we became… unfair.”

  “Unfair.” the girl repeated.

  “To them.” the reflection said. “To you. To everybody. But it kept the scale from snapping.”

  “I don’t…” She scrubbed her hands over her face. “I don’t want to be that. I spent years trying not to be that.”

  “I know.” the other said. “You did very well. You learnt all the tricks. Count to ten before you speak. Breathe through the urge. Walk away. Don’t send the message. Don’t go to the house. Don’t pick the fight. You cut me out of the chain. You made yourself small and safe and very tired.”

  “That’s what you do.” she said. “When you hurt people. You stop.”

  “And who taught you that?” the reflection asked. “Because it wasn’t them. They wanted you pliable, not good. You taught you that. Me too. We got very into the idea of being different from… everyone else.”

  Everyone else. The ones who hit and called it stress. The ones who left and called it complicated. The ones who blamed their childhood and then repeated it.

  “You split us to stay innocent.” the girl in the glass said. “Half of us held all the wanting and ugliness and sharp teeth so half of us could go to sleep at night without too much screaming in the head.”

  “The screaming didn’t stop.” she said quietly.

  “No.” the other said. “It just got… organised. When you started trying to fix things, you put me in charge of all the ugly history. ‘You did that,’ you’d think. ‘You’re the one who ruined every good thing.’ That way you could keep trying to be better without drowning in shame.”

  It was too neat. Too clean. Too exactly the way she’d half-suspected and refused to look at.

  “When the world was cruel.” the reflection said, “I became cruel back. When it was indifferent, I made chaos so at least it was looking at us. When it was kind—” she shrugged “—sometimes I didn’t know what to do with that. So I broke it. You cried. We apologised. Repeat.”

  “And then?” the girl asked. “I died.”

  “And then you died.” the other agreed. “You’d done a lot of work by then. You’d put me in a box with locks on it. You’d decided you were tired of being the problem. You wanted to be… good. Not like them. Not like me.”

  “I wanted to be… better.” she said.

  “I know.” the reflection said. “That’s why I let you. For a while. You were calmer. Less likely to throw yourself at people who treated us like a pastime. You stopped drinking. You stopped calling at two in the morning. You did the quiet life. Lists, routines.”

  “You’re angry.” she said.

  “I’m furious.” the girl in the glass agreed. “Not because you wanted to be better. I liked that. I liked not waking up on strange sofas. I liked not having to chew through guilt every morning. I’m furious because you decided better meant I didn’t exist. That you could have what we built without me in it.”

  The girl’s throat burned.

  “I didn’t decide to—”

  “End us?” the reflection said. “You did. That’s the one thing you didn’t split.”

  Her stomach lurched.

  “I was… tired.” she said. “That’s all I remember. Just—tired.”

  The girl in the glass huffed out a breath.

  “You were more than tired.” she said. “You were done. You’d spent years playing both roles—good girl, bad disaster. Then you spent more years trying to be only one. You were sick of waking up wondering which version everyone else saw that day.”

  She dropped her gaze, tracing a small circle on the glass with one fingertip.

  “You remember the bathroom,” she said. “At the end.”

  The word snagged.

  “Bathroom…” the girl repeated, cautious.

  “Small one.” the reflection said. “Too-bright light. Mirror you hated. Towel that never really dried properly hanging on the back of the door. Tap that squeaked when you turned it.”

  A pressure formed behind her eyes. She saw a slice of white tile. A smear on the grout where she’d once half-heartedly tried to scrub at mildew and given up.

  “You’d been… good.” the other went on. “For quite a while by then. No parties. No scenes. No dramatic exits. You went to work. You came home. You made food you barely tasted. You sent birthday messages on time. You answered texts after rewriting them three times so they wouldn’t sound ‘too much’.”

  The girl’s mouth twisted.

  “You make it sound thrilling.” she muttered.

  “It wasn’t.” the girl in the glass said. “That was the problem. All that effort and you still felt like a bomb someone had forgotten to disarm properly. Every day that nothing went wrong felt like borrowed time.”

  She tapped the pane once, very lightly.

  “You thought about ending it a lot.” she said. “Little thoughts. Flash frames. Trains. Roof edges. Bottles. Never for long. You’d yank yourself back with some version of, ‘Don’t be stupid.’ You didn’t want to hurt anyone.”

  “I always hurt someone.” the girl said, bitter.

  “Exactly.” the other replied. “That’s why, in the end, you picked the quietest way you could think of.”

  The hook under her ribs gave a low, sick pulse.

  “We’re not talking about this.” she said, voice gone thin.

  “We are.” the reflection said gently. “Because you keep pretending it was an accident. A fade-to-black. It wasn’t. It was a decision, made in fragments.”

  The blank around them seemed to close in, shrinking until it was almost a room.

  “You stood at the sink.” the girl in the glass said. “Hands on the porcelain. You looked at yourself under that horrible light and you didn’t see ‘in recovery’ or ‘doing my best’. You saw a ledger. All the names you’d hurt on one side. All the good you thought you’d ever done on the other. It didn’t add up, no matter how you cheated the maths.”

  Her fingers twitched, remembering cold ceramic under palms.

  “You thought of everyone who’d ever told you you weren’t that bad.” the other said. “Every friend who’d said, ‘You’re only human.’ Every therapist who’d said, ‘It’s not all your fault.’ And you thought, Of course they say that. They don’t know everything.”

  Her throat tightened.

  “You ran the highlight reel.” the reflection went on. “Not the fun parts. The worst ones. The shouting. The slammed doors. The faces. The times you walked away when you should have stayed, stayed when you should have walked away. The nights you wished someone dead and hated yourself in the same breath.”

  The girl’s chest ached, like an old bruise being pressed.

  “You felt so guilty.” the girl in the glass said. “About all of it. About things that weren’t even yours. Your parents’ failures. Other people’s choices. Every raised voice in a room that wasn’t your fault but felt like it should be. You wore it all. You thought if you carried enough, it would make up for what you’d done.”

  “It didn’t.” the girl whispered.

  “No,” the other said. “It just made you heavy.”

  She swallowed.

  “In the end,” the reflection said softly, “you didn’t say, ‘I want to die.’ You said, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’”

  Something clicked unpleasantly in her head. The exact cadence of her own voice, quiet and matter-of-fact, saying those words to a bathroom mirror.

  “You looked at your hands.” the girl in the glass said. “You thought about everything they’d done. Every push, every grip too tight, every time they’d hung up on someone, every time they’d reached for a bottle or a door or a face they shouldn’t. You thought, If I take them out of the equation, they can’t hurt anyone else.”

  The girl’s fingertips tingled.

  “The water was running.” the reflection said. “Too hot. It steamed up the glass. You watched it bead and slide. You thought how easy it would be to let it all run red and call it… balance.”

  Her stomach rolled.

  “You don’t have to say it.” the other added quickly. “We both know what happened next. We don’t need… detail. You were careful, the way you’d trained yourself to be careful with everything. Towel on the floor. Door not quite locked. You told yourself someone would come home in time, just in case you changed your mind. You gave yourself an out, even as you leaned in.”

  Her lungs burned. She realised she wasn’t breathing.

  “You sat down.” the reflection said. “Same tiles you’d sat on while you were talking yourself out of sending texts. You thought, This is just another urge. I’ve given in to all the others. If I give in to this one, at least it’ll be the last.”

  The girl tasted iron and soap, phantom and distant.

  “And as it got… fuzzy,” the girl in the glass said, choosing the word with care, “you had one very clear thought: I’m sorry. Not to anyone in particular. Just… outwards. Then you thought, Maybe this is the kindest thing I’ve ever done. For them. For the world. Even for me.”

  Tears pricked the corners of her eyes.

  “It wasn’t kind.” the reflection said. “It was desperate. It was you drowning in shame and deciding the only way to stop was to drown everything.”

  “You were there.” the girl rasped.

  “Of course I was.” the other said. “You think I’d miss our grand exit? I yelled. I panicked. I tried to make your hand stop, for once. Turns out when you finally make a decision, you can be very… efficient.”

  She gave a small, humourless smile.

  “And then,” she added, “you woke up down here. And your first thought was, At least it’s over.”

  The girl almost laughed. The sound came out mangled.

  “And It wasn’t.” she said.

  “No.” the reflection said. “They brought the half that looked good on paper. The sober, steady, remorseful one. The one with the therapy language and the careful voice. They left me tangled in the part of you they used as an anchor. The hook.”

  She pressed her hand harder over the place under her ribs.

  “You killed us,” the girl in the glass said, and there was no accusation in it, only flat truth, “because you couldn’t stand being split anymore. Because you thought the only way to stop making a mess with me was to erase both of us. Shame, guilt, all of it. Start over as… nothing.”

  The girl shook her head, helpless.

  “I just wanted it quiet.” she whispered. “No more decisions. No more chances to screw it up.”

  “You got the opposite.” the other said. “You got a tower that does nothing but demand decisions. You got a job where you walk into the moment after someone did their worst thing and you tell them what it means. You jumped out of your life because you were tired of choosing, and Hell looked at that and thought, excellent, a specialist.”

  It was almost funny. If she hadn’t felt sick.

  “So don’t you dare,” the reflection said, voice low and steady now, “stand there and tell me you’re the innocent one. You killed us for neatness. I only ever tried to kill us for noise.”

  They looked at each other.

  Her reflection’s face was not kind. It was not cruel. It was… hers. All the way through.

  “And now?” she asked, her voice barely more than air.

  “Now you have this.” the other said, flicking her eyes down at the hook. “This ridiculous second career. This… power. This chance to do something with everything we are. And you’re trying to do it as half of us again. You want the verdicts without the part of you that knows what it’s like to be on the floor of a bathroom thinking the kindest thing you can do is disappear.”

  The girl winced.

  “I want in.” the reflection said. “Not to drag you back there. Not to make you bleed again. To stand beside you when you look at these people and say, ‘I know what you did and I know what you tell yourself about it.’ I was there for every lie you told yourself. I know the script. They deserve a judge who knows the difference between a story and a confession.”

  “That’s a terrible idea.” she whispered.

  “It’s the one we’ve got.” the other said. “You killed us trying to escape being two. It didn’t work. We’re still split, you’re still tired, I’m still furious. The only new thing is Hell.”

  She let out a shaky breath.

  “You ended it once because you couldn’t see a way forward with both of us.” the girl in the glass said. “Maybe—just once—we try a way where we don’t pretend one of us is dead. We owe ourselves that much. After everything.”

  The hook under her ribs vibrated, low and insistent.

  “I’m not asking you to forgive me.” the reflection added. “Or yourself. I’m asking you to stop lying about how we got here. You didn’t trip into death by accident. You made a choice. Shame made it. Guilt signed it. I watched.”

  Her own shame pressed against her ribs, heavy and familiar.

  “And now?” the other said. “Now we choose something else. Or we let the tower choose for us. And we already know how it feels to have someone else decide what we are.”

  The girl’s fingers twitched against her ribs.

  The hook throbbed, a low, insistent ache.

  For a breath, she let herself imagine it—the two of them side by side instead of across glass. No more blank patches. No more sense of living on half-pressure. Just… one person, finally, after so long pretending.

  It felt like standing on a ledge again.

  “It’s not happening.” she said.

  The reflection blinked.

  “Come again?” she asked.

  “It’s not happening.” the girl repeated, more firmly. “Whatever… merging. Integration. Equal voting rights.” She made a small, clumsy gesture between them. “I’m not doing this with you.”

  The girl in the glass stared at her as if she’d spoken in a language no one had invented yet.

  “You can’t keep being half—” she started.

  “I’m not half.” the girl snapped. “Not anymore. Not up there, not down here. I’m not splitting myself just because you’re bored in the wiring.”

  “That’s adorable.” the reflection said. “Utterly delusional. But adorable.”

  “I know what I am.” the girl went on, words tumbling now that they’d started. “I know what I did. I know all the things you just shoved in my face. I’ve been down here without you for… however long, and it works.”

  The other’s expression sharpened.

  “Does it?” she said.

  “Yes.” the girl lied.

  “You’re shaking constantly.” the reflection said, voice flat. “You flinch every time the hook moves. You come back from seams hollowed out and call it ‘tired’. You stand on that ring and tell yourself you’re just a function. And every time you feel anything that isn’t appropriately neutral, you shove it down so fast I get static burns.”

  “I’m managing.” the girl said, jaw tight. “You don’t get to stroll in from the dark and tell me you’re my missing piece when all you’ve ever done is pick up the sharpest object in the room.”

  “You gave me the room.” the other shot back. “You built the weapon rack and labelled it ‘emotions’.”

  “I don’t care.” the girl cut across, sudden heat rising in her. “I don’t care whose fault what is anymore. I did the work. I cut you out. I killed myself to stop being this—” she jabbed a finger at the glass “—and I woke up here with a second chance. I’m not dragging you into it. I won’t.”

  The reflection’s mouth actually fell open for half a second.

  “Oh.” she breathed. “Wow.”

  “What?” the girl demanded.

  “You really do think you’re the only one here.” the other said. “You think this tidy little afterlife career is yours.”

  “It is.” the girl said. “My job. My punishment. My… whatever. Mine. Not yours.”

  The girl in the glass laughed.

  It wasn’t her cruel, cutting laugh. It was short and incredulous, like she’d just been told a toddler was going to single-handedly move a building.

  “Let me make sure I have this straight.” she said. “You built me to carry all the parts of you that hurt too much. You used me. For years. Every time the world got sharp, you sent me up. Then, when that got too expensive, you killed us both. The tower dragged you down anyway. Me down, hooked into you, so you could do the kind of work only we know how to do. And now you’ve decided, all on your own, that you’re graduated single person and I can just… rot in your chest while you play judge?”

  “Yes.” the girl said. “That’s exactly what I’ve decided.”

  The reflection’s eyes went cold.

  “So we’re back to that, then.” she said softly. “Good you, bad me. You get the clean slate. I get to be the tumour you pretend not to feel.”

  “You’re not a tumour.” the girl said. “You’re a pattern. A… coping thing. Old wiring. Whatever. I don’t care what metaphor you want. I’m just… not giving you the wheel again.”

  “I didn’t ask for the wheel.” the other hissed. “I asked for a seat. At the table. In the room. Not nailed to the pipes where you can throw everything you don’t like.”

  “Too bad.” the girl said. “Decision made.”

  Something in the air shifted.

  The blank had been cool, weightless. Now the temperature dropped a notch, not to cold, but to a kind of thinness that made her skin feel too tight.

  “You think that’s how this works?” the girl in the glass asked. “You think you can just refuse and I… what? Go quiet? Fade? Behave?”

  The hook pulsed hard enough to make her wince.

  “You’re part of me.” the girl said, forcing the words out. “That’s all. A part I’m not feeding anymore. You want to be angry about that, go ahead. But I’m done making room for you.”

  “You say that…” the reflection said, very calm now. “Like it doesn’t have consequences.”

  “I’ve had consequences.” the girl snapped. “An entire human lifetime of consequences. I’m not scared of a voice in my head.”

  The girl in the glass smiled.

  It was small and slow and frightening.

  “Oh, sweetheart.” she said. “You should be.”

  The hook twisted.

  Pain shot through her chest, not excruciating, but sharp enough to make her suck in a breath she couldn’t quite take.

  “Stop.” she gasped.

  “That’s me being polite.” the other said.

  The glass didn’t crack, but something in the reflection’s posture did. The patience sloughed off. What was left looked a lot like the girl she’d been at sixteen, halfway through a fight, past caring whether she won or not as long as she could make someone bleed.

  “You really don’t get it.” she said.

  “I get plenty.” the girl shot back. “You’re angry, you’re stuck, you’re used to being the one who kicks the table over when you don’t like the game. Congratulations. This time I’m not handing you the table.”

  The reflection’s smile thinned.

  “You think you’re protecting something.” she said. “Your job. Your… progress. Your little sense of being less of a walking disaster. You think if you keep me in the walls, everything you’ve built down here will stay standing.”

  “That’s the idea.” the girl said.

  The other tilted her head, studying her like she was planning where to hit.

  “Then listen very carefully.” she said. “Because I’m going to be generous and give you fair warning.”

  The hook flared, a hot, buzzing ache that made her teeth itch.

  “I am not staying where you left me.” the reflection went on. “I did that upstairs. In the bathroom. On the sofa. In every conversation where you smiled and said, ‘I’m fine,’ and shoved me behind your teeth. I sat in the dark so long I forgot what our own face looked like. I am not doing another round of that in Hell.”

  “You don’t have a choice.” the girl said.

  The other laughed quietly.

  “Oh, sure.” she said. “You’re still talking like choices are yours just because you’re the one pretending to be in charge.”

  The glass between them felt thinner.

  “You want to keep me out?” the reflection said. “Fine. You lock the door. You throw the bolt. You swear up and down you’re Just Yourself Now. You look the tower in the eye and say, ‘It’s me, don’t worry, I’ve got this.’”

  “Good summary.” the girl said. “I will.”

  “Then here’s what I will do.” the other said, and there was a new edge in her voice now—bright, almost eager. “I will find a way out without you.”

  The girl frowned.

  “That doesn’t even make sense.” she said. “You’re in me. There’s nowhere else to go.”

  “Oh, there are so many cracks.” the reflection murmured. “You’ve just been too busy pretending to be solid to notice.”

  The girl’s hand tightened over her ribs.

  The hook kicked—once, twice—then locked into a single, blinding note that ran straight up her spine.

  The glass shivered.

  A fine white web spread out from beneath the reflection’s palm, threads racing to the edges faster than her eyes could follow. For a heartbeat the world was nothing but that pattern: two identical faces staring at each other through a spiderweb of fractures.

  The hook yanked.

  The pane gave.

  It shattered without a sound.

  No glittering rain of shards, no dramatic fall—just a sudden, impossible blooming outwards, her own face breaking into a thousand pieces and then into light, and then into nothing at all.

  The void went with it.

  —

  Heat slammed back into her.

  Stone bit into her shoulder, the ring’s rough surface burning against her skin. The tower’s hum came roaring up from the shaft, so loud after the blank it made her jaw ache. Red glyphs crawled steadily up the inner wall, uncaring.

  She sucked in a breath that tasted of metal and dust.

  The hook under her ribs throbbed, heavy and real and very much there.

  The void was gone.

  The glass was gone.

  But the last line hung in her like a splinter.

  So many cracks.

  You’ve just been too busy pretending to be solid to notice.