The rain hadn't stopped since dawn.
Dark clouds pressed low over the school, casting eerie shadows across the stone hallways. Students whispered of ghosts in the dormitory, of footsteps in the attic, of teachers who were there… and then not.
But Amara?
She wasn't scared anymore.
She was angry.
Because the lullaby—that lullaby—wasn't just a haunting tune from the mirror-child. It was from her past. From her mother.
The realization twisted inside her like a knife.
Selene sat cross-legged on the floor of their shared dorm, flipping through an ancient grimoire wrapped in bark and bound with blood-inked thread. Her hair was loose tonight, her face drawn and pale.
"You heard the lullaby again?" she asked without looking up.
Amara nodded, arms crossed. "It was my mother's."
Selene's fingers froze on a page.
Then she turned it.
Slowly.
"Amara… have you ever asked what your mother was before she died?"
Amara blinked. "A healer. A forest-dweller. She died giving birth to me."
"That's the lie," Selene said. "Your mother was a binder. A Moon-Witch."
The air turned colder.
"Moon-Witch?" Amara whispered.
"They don't just heal. They seal things. Secrets. Spirits. Creatures that shouldn't walk in this world."
Amara sat down, dizzy. "You're saying my mother sealed… what? Him?"
Selene nodded.
"I think you're the seal now. When she died… the burden passed to you."
Later that night, Amara crept into the abandoned archive wing.
Every school had one—old scrolls, forbidden spellbooks, forgotten journals.
She found the door half-rotted, the lock already broken.
Inside: dust, silence, and the scent of old magic.
She lit a single candle and began searching.
Hours passed.
Then—under a floorboard—she found it.
A journal.
Her mother's.
The first page was blank.
The second held a drawing of a mirror.
The third…
"To my daughter,
If you are reading this… then the moon has turned its eye to you."
Amara read every page. Every trembling line. Tears slid down her cheeks as the truth spilled out.
Her mother had once fallen in love.
Not with a man.
But with a spirit. A creature bound to the moonlight—something older than the forest, with a voice like a god and eyes like sorrow.
It loved her back.
But it couldn't stay in this world.
So she tried to bind it.
To give it shape.
A child.
But it was never meant to be born.
So she sealed it into a mirror… and died protecting the key.
That key was Amara.
A soft thud behind her.
She turned.
Micah.
Or the thing wearing him.
He stood just beyond the flickering light, head tilted, smiling.
"You found her story," he said softly.
"You're not him," Amara snapped.
"No. But I was born of her love, too. Doesn't that make me your brother?" He stepped closer. "Your twin, even?"
"I will not let you in," she said, clutching the journal to her chest.
"But I'm already inside."
He touched his temple, then hers.
"In the blood. In the soul. In the dark places you close your eyes to."
He vanished again.
Like smoke.
Like memory.
Amara staggered back to her room, trembling.
Selene looked up, alarmed. "What happened?"
Amara held out the journal, tears in her eyes.
"I know what he is."
"And?" Selene asked.
"He's not just a curse."
She swallowed.
"He's family."