🪞 Part 7: A Voice I Never Had
“When Silence Turned Toward Me”
Claire hadn’t spoken in three days.
Not because she couldn’t.
Because every time she did, her voice echoed back from the mirrors — not as her own… but as someone else's.
Lower.
Colder.
Knowing.
Nina had started sleeping in the nursery with Elara, guarding her against what neither of them could name.
But Claire wasn’t afraid for Elara anymore.
She was afraid of herself.
---
That morning, she found the old sewing machine turned on — though no one had touched it for years.
The needle moved rhythmically.
Threading something unseen.
It stitched words into fabric that wasn’t even there.
Claire knelt, heart hammering.
Each stitch wrote a name.
“Annelise.”
“Tilda.”
“Sabine.”
She knew those names.
They were her names.
Past lives.
Suppressed truths.
The names her bloodline had silenced to prevent the reflection from waking.
---
Then, the final name appeared:
“Clara.”
Not Claire.
Clara.
And suddenly — a memory that wasn’t hers cracked open like thunder inside her skull.
A house fire.
A mother’s scream.
A girl watching herself burn — but from inside the mirror.
Not dead.
Trapped.
---
Claire staggered back, gasping.
Nina rushed in. “What is it?”
Claire could barely whisper: “I think I was her.”
Nina froze. “You mean—”
Claire nodded.
“I think I was the first one who started this.”
---
Later that day, Claire opened the letter hidden in Elara’s crib. It had appeared overnight.
It wasn’t written by Elara.
It wasn’t written by Claire.
It simply read:
> “The silence you wear was never meant for you.
Speak the name.
Wake her.”
---
That night, Claire finally did it.
She stood before the old mirror wrapped in silk.
Uncovered it.
Stared at her reflection.
And whispered:
“Clara.”
The glass cracked.
But instead of shattering — it opened.
---
Inside was a corridor made of memories. Floating frames, lit by candlelight, spinning slowly in the dark.
Claire stepped through.
Each memory she passed — some hers, some not — whispered her name in different tongues.
Then she saw it:
A child sitting in a chair, arms bound, mouth sewn shut.
She turned.
It was Claire.
But younger.
Paler.
Eyes filled with agony and obedience.
---
A voice echoed:
“You chose the silence.
Now choose the scream.”
---
Back in the real world, Elara stood in her room, eyes glowing faintly with blue.
Nina watched in terror as Elara whispered into the air:
“She’s coming. Mama’s remembering. And when she does… we all change.”
---
Claire returned from the mirror realm in a gasp of breath.
She looked at Nina.
“I remember everything.”
Her voice had changed.
Deeper. Fuller.
Not possessed.
Restored.
---
But in her reflection — only half her face mirrored back.
The other half belonged to Clara.
“Clara and the Broken Line”
Claire stared at the mirror again.
Only half of her face reflected true.
The other half…
Clara.
Same eyes.
Same jawline.
But where Claire carried pain, Clara carried something worse:
Purpose.
---
Nina locked the nursery door.
"She’s not just you," she said, trembling. "She's what you were meant to become. Before the silence was placed on your tongue. Before they started hiding names in mirrors and walls."
Claire whispered, “Why didn’t I remember?”
Nina finally looked her in the eye.
“Because I helped make you forget.”
---
Claire stepped back.
“What are you saying?”
Nina removed her necklace — a twisted metal pendant shaped like a spiral flame.
“Your grandmother tasked me with binding your voice. Not with magic. With trust. With lies. I raised you close, made you doubt, filled your head with logic.”
“Why?”
“Because she believed you’d be stronger if you remembered on your own.”
---
Claire’s hands began to tremble.
The lights flickered.
And for the first time, her voice echoed outside the mirror.
Not inside.
Outside.
That meant…
The Veil was thinning.
---
In the corner of the hallway, the old mirror frame Elara used for drawings had changed.
All her childish sketches were gone.
In their place was a single phrase carved into the glass itself:
> “The Echo needs a vessel.
The vessel must choose.”
---
Elara didn’t cry.
She walked into the living room that night, sat between Nina and Claire, and said, softly:
> “She talks to me in dreams now.
She says I was her once too.
But I don’t want to be her again.”
Claire touched her daughter’s hair.
“You won’t be.”
---
Later, Claire descended into the basement.
There, beneath a rotting floorboard, lay a box.
Not sealed.
Not locked.
Just waiting.
Inside were six glass shards.
Each had a name written in blood beneath it.
Claire read them aloud:
“Sabine.”
“Liora.”
“Aline.”
“Tilda.”
“Annelise.”
“Clara.”
And a seventh shard — blank.
Claire touched it.
It warmed.
Then began etching a name.
“Elara.”
---
“No!” Claire screamed, throwing the shard against the wall.
It didn’t break.
Instead, it melted into smoke and vanished.
---
Claire now understood the truth:
The Mirror-Woman was never one person.
She was a fractal — a splitting of pain from generation to generation.
Each woman gave a little of herself away to keep the Mirror-Woman asleep.
But Claire?
Claire had remembered too much.
And now the fragments were reforming.
Inside her.
---
She turned to Nina.
“If I’m the key… does that mean I’m the lock too?”
Nina nodded. “But only if you close yourself. If you open… she walks again.”
---
That night, Claire didn’t sleep.
She sat at the mirror, stared into Clara’s face, and whispered:
“I forgive you.”
For a second — just one second — Clara smiled.
And vanished.
The mirror turned black.
---
But something else appeared.
Not a face.
Not a memory.
A door.
Inside the mirror.
Opening.
---
And from behind it…
A child’s voice whispered:
> “You left me too long, mother.”
