Kôra awoke with a gasp. He jolted into a sitting position on his bed. Cold sweat ran down his freckled cheeks,  further soaking his gray nightshirt. His heartbeat was rushed, pounding inside the right side of his rib cage.
The boy looked around. He found himself again in this bedroom, with a recurring sense of displacement. That nightmare was something else, Kôra was wary to even blink. A certain thing was watching him; he knew it. Once he closed his eyes, it could get him at any time. It was this unknown yet persistent feeling that kept him awake for days, as made evident by the dark circles under his eyes. Every passing second dragged like an ominous minute.

This neglected chamber was formerly a storage room; the strong naphthalene stench overpowered its musty air. The boy could see and observe thanks to the faint light of the moon infiltrating the window. His light lilac eyes scanned the entire room, gleaming with vigilance. He started from his messy bed, a nightstand next to it, to his cluttered study desk near the bed. An old wardrobe stood across him, with some appliances which had not been arranged yet. It felt deceivingly normal, he redid the check to every gap and corner he could see.

In each corner of his room hung orderly pieces of spell papers. Familiar abugidas of enchantments were written on them with fluorescent ink. He noticed a new spell; the spell inscriptions were changed periodically by a noticeable habit. It was supposed to repel works of evil as a protection, however, it did not seem to be working.

From his bed, Kôra stared at his school timetable. His Latin alphabet writing looked awkward, but it was clear enough that tomorrow was Monday. Kôra was tired, his senses were warped and unsettled, yet he knew he must not succumb to the unrest for the next day. He tried to turn away and close his eyes.
Yet, the kid's peripheral sight glimpsed his own reflection in a mirror. A startling image. That mirror on the wardrobe door was the source. Feeling uncomfortable, he averted his gaze elsewhere, before he saw pieces of newspapers scattered below.

That was it, Kôra realized. The newspaper which ought to have covered the mirror had torn clean and fallen off. He took the paper piece and examined it. The taped edges were excised from the rest, and the tape itself was still sticky. Kôra grabbed a pair of scissors and the adhesive tape which were sitting nearby, along with extra sheets of scrap paper he had prepared.

Kôra stuck the newspaper back up with an extra tape, while avoiding to look directly at the mirror. He could catch glimpses and flashes of his reflection. He could track his own movements; or worse, those that were not his.

It blinked.

As he too, blinked.

It disappeared.

Kôra paused and checked the mirror.

The mirror was now empty white.

Kôra darted back, only to bump into something. It was unlike an object, it was just like a person. What was supposed to be inside the mirror, was now behind him. Another him; a mirror image.

"Found you," the reflection greeted.

Those words petrified Kôra to the miniscule fibers of his skeletal muscles. His nerves was frozen by such reality. The boy was palpitating, perspiring, almost breathless. That reflection had his mellow voice twisted in a peculiar accent that evoked a sense of familiarity. Eerie; so much that Kôra repeatedly convinced himself it was not real.

"You look familiar," the thing concluded after examining the boy with its tilted head. Smiling.

The being pinned him to his bed in a flash of movement, still inspecting him. Its face was a flawless copy of his, to the individual strand of his cinnamon brown hair. All except the eyes which instead resembled dead things. Those were the same eyes that Kôra saw on dead animals, or on forgeries meant to mimic the living. Their gazes locked and reciprocated into a repeating abyss. Kôra's heartbeat raced to a new acceleration, his tongue pushed words of prayers to no avail. His body did not even twitch in anticipation.

"We dead people, fellow people," it said. 

I am not dead!

" Please cooperate and wait for truth."

No!

Its grip was forceful despite the small body it mimicked; or it was the sheer uncanny semblance that held Kôra's paralyzed body back. The boy was mustering his strength to do something with a glowing white object in that reflection's right hand. The thing swung down, surpassing his reflexes. A sharp stab to the eye.

Kôra flinched. The stinging pain forced him to scream. It penetrated and peeled every ocular layer, exposing its nerve ends to a burning sensation. Just as how a drop of ink disperses in clear water, the jolting sensation spread to his whole body.

During the confusion and struggle, the teen blindly reacted. His head hit the headboard and his leg kicked the nightstand. A mug on the nightstand fell to the floor and broke, spilling the tea. He tumbled, rolled on the wet porcelain shards.

The boy opened both of his eyes. The vision of his left eye had gone blurry due to the tears that kept flowing from it. His eyelids twitched repeatedly, the throbbing orbital pain has not subsided; the boy's head was starting to ache. He caught a glimpse of his assailant crouching in front of the door mirror; panting out of its breath. Only a partial second passed before a jarring cracking noise broke the silence.

Then, the reflection was nowhere to be found. Only a fractured mirror remained.

The atmosphere faded back to besieging tranquillity; the air weighed heavy. A faint smell of flowers and incense tingled Kôra’s nose, along with the artificial aroma of herbal tea. All the spell papers were torn and burnt. Mug shards lacerated Kôra's hand. Blood dripped, the pain seeped. He stood up with stained clothes, wiping a thick liquid oozing from his eye that he thought was blood.

Kôra approached the cracked mirror. It distorted and repeated his image. There, he still could see himself; only with his left eye that was now viridian. On his hand a trace of deep purple fluid remained. He glared at it with disbelief.

Having no time to wonder, the boy heard a rushing footstep approaching. He was hurt, his entire body ached. What awaited him behind those steps was unthinkable. With a faint voice, he muttered a prayer for protection, along with hope and a sincere wish.

“I wish for an end—I miss my home.”