Chapter 4 — Behind the Glass

The door clicked shut behind Ava, sealing them in the Mirror Room’s suffocating stillness. No music seeped through the walls, no whispers of the Crimson Room followed. Just her breath, ragged and unsteady, and the faint tap of her heels echoing on the polished floor. The smoked glass walls threw back fractured glimpses of her—shoulders, wrists, a sliver of her jawline—disjointed, like pieces of a stranger. Each step dragged her deeper into some uncharted corner of herself, the silence pressing against her chest.