I was seven years old again, watching a boy with messy blonde hair and bright green eyes stand on the top rung of the playground equipment like a tiny conqueror surveying his kingdom. "The only way into my castle is payment in the form of a kiss!" he declared, his arms crossed over his chest with all the authority a second-grader could muster.

We were ten, holding hands as we sat side by side on the swings, kicking our legs lazily so we wouldn't lose pace with each other, talking about what we wanted to be when we grew up while the sun painted the sky in brilliant oranges and pinks behind us. Patrick wanted to be a hero who could leap through burning infernos to rescue people who needed him. I wanted to be a teacher at the time. 

We were thirteen, and the blonde-haired boy had grown his hair out to his shirt collar, his eyes still holding that same mischievous glint from his youth, as he carefully carved "PH + AM 4ever" into the bark of the old oak tree with the pocket knife he'd gotten for his birthday. His tongue poked out slightly in concentration as he worked, determined to make the letters perfect, permanent, a promise carved in living wood.

We were sixteen, sneaking away from our friends onto the wooded trail behind the park to steal moments alone, where his lips would trace the curve of my neck and he’d whisper promises about our future together. We’d talked about college, about living together, about building the life we’d dreamed of since we were ten years old on those swings.

We were seventeen, and I was walking away from him for what I thought would be the last time, breaking both our hearts because I thought it was the only way to save us….No to save myself  from the grief I was drowning in.

Now I was twenty-five, standing in the shadow of that same oak tree where true love and blossomed, and everything was wrong with the world because he was gone forever. The tree looked older, more weathered, but our initials were still there—faded but visible, a ghost of promises we'd never get to keep.

The park felt different now that he was missing from this world, transformed from the familiar playground of my childhood into something darker and more mysterious. Shadows stretched longer than they should, and the familiar landmarks seemed shifted, like someone had moved everything just slightly to the left while I wasn't looking.

I started walking toward the trail where we'd spent countless hours lost in each other, where we'd shared secrets and dreams and kisses as young lovers under the canopy of leaves. 

The crickets’ chorus was the only sound in the heavy night air, a symphony of loneliness that matched the hollow ache in my chest

Finding the hidden trail was still easy after all this time, like my feet remembered the path even when my mind couldn't quite grasp why I was here or what I was hoping to find. The familiar entrance was marked by two large rocks that had always looked like sentinels guarding the way into our secret world.

My feet easily picked up the path, carrying me deeper into the woods that had once felt like our private kingdom. I turned my mind off as I wandered, trying to go numb from the all-consuming pain that was eating me alive from the inside out. Every step took me further from the real world, from Sandy's worried face and the empty house and the constant reminders that Patrick was gone.

“I lost track of time in the darkness, one step blending into the next. 

The only proof that hours had passed was the gradual darkening of the sky above me, the way the last traces of twilight faded into true night. I was so deep in the woods now that the only light to guide my feet was the full moon, hanging in the sky like a watching eye, cold and distant and offering no comfort.

When the pain in my feet began to register through the numbness that had settled over me, I realized I'd walked much further than Patrick and I had ever ventured together. The familiar landmarks—the fallen log where we used to sit and plan our futures, the small clearing where we'd had our first real kiss, the bent tree that looked like it was bowing—had long since disappeared behind me.

These trees were older, more gnarled, their branches reaching toward each other like arthritic fingers that could never quite touch, always stretching but never able to embrace. The wicked similarities weren't lost on me—like Patrick and me, always reaching for each other across time and distance but never quite able to hold on.

I should have been scared. Should have turned back. But something kept pulling me forward, deeper into the unknown darkness like an invisible rope around my chest, tugging me toward something I couldn't name. My feet hurt, my legs ached, but no matter how much I wanted to stop, I couldn't seem to break the forward motion that carried me deeper and deeper into the woods.

The trees grew thicker here, their canopy so dense that the moonlight could barely penetrate the layers of leaves above. The air felt different too—heavier, charged with something I couldn't identify. It reminded me of the feeling right before a thunderstorm, when the atmosphere is pregnant with electricity and possibility.

That's when I saw it.

Through the thick canopy of leaves, a soft, warm light flickered between the trees like a beacon calling to me.  Not the harsh glare of a flashlight or the artificial glow of a phone screen, but something gentle and organic that seemed to pulse with its own heartbeat. The light was beautiful, mesmerizing, unlike anything I'd ever seen before.

I pushed through the undergrowth, branches catching at my college sweatshirt and leaving scratches on my arms that I barely felt. Thorns snagged my hair and tore at my clothes, but I kept moving toward that impossible light, drawn by something stronger. 

Finally, I stumbled into a small clearing I'd never seen before, despite years of exploring these woods with Patrick. And there, rising from the center of the space like something from a fairy tale, was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.

A full-length mirror with an ornate gold frame stood alone in the clearing, leaning against the thick trunk of an ancient oak tree that must have been centuries old. The frame was a work of art—swirling and twisting like liquid metal caught mid-flow, carved with intricate patterns that seemed to move and shift in the moonlight.

But it was the light emanating from the mirror itself that took my breath away. The glass seemed to glow from within, casting that soft, ethereal radiance that had drawn me here. The light pulsed gently, like a heartbeat, like something alive and waiting.

The mirror seemed to belong here, as if it had always been part of this clearing, part of this ancient tree. There was something timeless about it, something that made me feel like I was looking at an artifact from another world, another time.

I walked slowly toward the mirror, drawn by an irresistible urge to touch the elegant swirls that adorned its golden frame. Each step felt deliberate, like I was walking toward my destiny, toward something that had been waiting for me all along.

The closer I got, the more details I could see in the intricate metalwork. The swirls weren't random—they formed patterns, symbols, designs that seemed to tell a story I couldn't quite read. Some of the patterns looked almost like faces, others like landscapes, as if the entire history of the world had been captured in gold and frozen in this single moment. What I had initially thought was a mirror leaning against the tree, I now realized was actually something far more extraordinary. The mirror was part of the tree itself—the rough bark and the swirling metal of the frame blended together seamlessly, as if the ancient oak had grown around the mirror over centuries, embracing it, making it an integral part of its very being.

My reflection stared back at me through the glass—the dark woods imposing and mysterious behind my silhouette. I could see the grief etched into every line of my face, the shadows that haunted my now-dull blue eyes, the way loss had hollowed out my cheeks and made me look older than my twenty-five years.

But something was off about my reflection. Just slightly. Something I couldn't quite put my finger on, like staring at a photograph where one small detail had been changed and you couldn't figure out what was different.

I leaned closer, studying my reflection more carefully, trying to identify what was wrong. That's when the fear began—a cold whisper in the back of my mind that something was terribly, fundamentally wrong with this entire situation.

The clearing was too perfect, too much like something from a dream. The mirror was too beautiful, too conveniently placed exactly where I needed to find it. And my reflection... my reflection was looking at me with an expression I wasn't making.

I reached forward tentatively, my fingertips hovering inches from the ornate frame. The metal seemed to pulse with warmth, almost like it was alive, like it had a heartbeat of its own that synchronized with mine.

That's when my reflection smiled.

Not me. My reflection. While my own face remained frozen in horror and confusion, the woman in the mirror curved her lips into a slow, knowing smile that sent ice through my veins. Her eyes—my eyes—sparkled with a malicious intelligence that I didn't recognize.

Before I could step back, before I could scream, before I could run back through the woods toward safety and sanity, a hand—my hand, but not my hand—pushed through the glass like it was made of water. The surface rippled around the intrusion, sending concentric circles across the mirror like a stone dropped in a still pond.

Cold fingers wrapped around my wrist with inhuman strength, and I felt the mirror's surface ripple against my skin like liquid mercury. The touch was wrong in every way—too cold, too strong, too real for something that should have been impossible.

"No—" I started to gasp, but the word was cut off as liquid metal began flowing from those fingertips like quicksilver, spreading up my arm in slow, deliberate waves that burned and froze at the same time.

The pain hit me like lightning—not just burning, but consuming, a white-hot agony that defied every sensation I'd ever experienced. It felt like liquid fire eating away at my flesh, but worse than that—it was as if the metal was rewriting me at a molecular level, breaking down every cell, every nerve ending, every piece of who I was and rebuilding it into something else entirely.

I tried to scream, but the sound that emerged was inhuman, a raw howl of anguish that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than my throat. I tried to pull away, my free hand clawing desperately at the metal spreading across my skin, but it was like trying to stop a river with my bare hands. The metal continued its relentless climb up my arm, each inch of progress bringing a new wave of excruciating sensation—burning and freezing simultaneously, electric jolts that made my teeth ache and my vision blur.

When it reached my shoulder, the pain intensified beyond anything I thought possible. It felt like being flayed alive while lightning coursed through my veins, like every nerve in my body was being slowly unraveled and rewoven. The metal wrapped around my throat like a living noose, pulsing with its own heartbeat, and I could feel it beginning to change not just my body, but something fundamental about my very existence.

The world started to fade around the edges, darkness creeping in from all sides as the metal covered more of my body. I could feel myself being pulled forward, drawn into the mirror, into whatever impossible space existed beyond that glass.

The last thing I saw before the metal covered my eyes was my reflection's smile growing wider, more satisfied, as if it had been waiting for this moment all along. As if this had always been the plan.

Then darkness swallowed me whole.