The older version of herself stared with eyes clouded white, blind yet somehow knowing.

  “I tried to warn you,” she said gently. “I tried to make you forget. But it always loops back, doesn’t it?”

  Ira stood frozen in the doorway.

  “This isn’t possible,” she whispered. “You’re not real.”

  The woman in the chair smiled—a soft, pitying thing.

  “I’m as real as you. Maybe more.”

  She reached to the side and picked up a cracked mirror resting on her lap.

  It wasn’t a reflection—it was a window.

  Inside it, Ira saw moments she couldn’t remember living.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  The village burning.

  Children made of ash and bone running through tunnels of teeth.

  A stone cradle in the woods where something writhed—waiting.

  “I don’t remember this,” Ira said.

  The woman nodded. “That’s the point. The Kala feeds on what’s forgotten. And what it keeps buried... becomes real again.”

  Ira stepped back, the black veins on her arms now reaching her collarbones.

  “I don’t want this,” she said, barely holding it together. “I want to go home.”

  The blind woman slowly stood, the mirror vanishing from her hands like steam.

  “You are home,” she said, gently brushing a hand over Ira’s cheek.

  Her touch was ice and static.

  “You just haven’t been claimed yet.”

  Suddenly, the house groaned. The ceiling above cracked.

  From between the boards, thick ropes of dark mist spilled downward—slow at first, then pouring like water from a burst dam.

  Ira turned to run—

  But the door was gone.

  In its place stood a hallway full of mirrors.

  And every one showed a version of her that had already stayed.