When Alina and Timur decided to leave the city behind, their friends laughed.
«You won’t last a month in the countryside,» they said.
But the couple was convinced: they needed this.
The city had drained them. Endless traffic, concrete jungles, cold faces, constant noise, and that suffocating sense that freedom had become nothing more than an illusion.
They longed for quiet mornings, for bird songs instead of sirens, for real conversations instead of glowing screens. And then they found it — a crumbling old estate buried deep in the countryside. It was crooked, moss-covered, and long forgotten… but it felt like it had been waiting for them.
What they didn’t know was that something else was waiting too.
From the very first night, something felt… off.
Not enough to panic — just enough to notice.
The floorboards creaked wrong.
The wind whispered words they couldn’t quite make out.
And the mirrors…
There were mirrors in every room.
Old, cloudy, ornate ones that the previous owners had left behind. Alina tried to move them, even cover them, but they wouldn’t budge — as if they were fused to the walls.
That’s when she noticed it: the reflections didn’t quite match.
Just a split-second delay in movement. Barely visible. But real.
She didn’t want to seem paranoid, so she kept it to herself. Timur dismissed it as stress and adjustment. But on the third night, they both woke up to a sound — three loud knocks coming from the basement.
The basement they had never even opened. The padlock was rusted shut. They didn’t have the key.
The next morning, the door was cracked open.
The lock was still in place.
But the door had opened itself.
Timur went down first.
The air was cold and damp. The flashlight barely pierced the dark as the narrow stone staircase led them deep into the earth. It smelled ancient, like rot and secrets.
There was nothing in the basement — just dust and stone.
Except for one thing.
A mirror.
Unlike the others upstairs, this one was untouched by age. Tall, golden-framed, and perfectly clean.
Timur stepped closer.
His reflection stared back — identical.
But when he turned to call Alina… the reflection didn’t move.
It kept looking at him.
Unblinking.
Smiling.
He stumbled back in shock. When he looked again — the mirror was empty.
No reflection at all.
From that night on, everything changed.
Alina grew distant. Pale. Quiet.
She said she didn’t feel like herself anymore — like she was watching someone else live her life.
She started having vivid dreams — of herself, from the outside, doing things she didn’t remember.
Timur started waking up to his name being whispered directly into his ear — but Alina was asleep.
And more than once, he found her standing motionless in front of a mirror. Eyes open. Face blank. Almost… absent.
They decided to leave.
Packed in silence.
Loaded the car.
But when Timur tried to take one last look — the mirrors wouldn’t let go.
He tried to smash one. The glass cracked, but something red seeped from the fracture like blood.
They left everything behind.
Not just furniture.
Not just memories.
Maybe even… themselves.
Because as they drove away and glanced in the rearview mirror — the faces looking back at them weren’t quite their own.
They were similar.
But something was wrong.
Now they live in another country. No one knows where.
They don’t use social media.
They don’t take photos.
They don’t own mirrors. Not even front-facing cameras on their phones.
They never talk about the house.
But sometimes, in the dead of night, Alina whispers:
«He’s watching. He still wants to come back.»
