The mirror did not show light.
It showed roots.
Twisting, writhing, searching.
Through metal. Through wires. Through wombs.
Inside the reflection—
a sterile room, humming with artificial rain.
Rows of glass pods,
each holding a girl,
each girl with the same face
—hers
—and hers.
Amelia. Alexis.
Dozens of them.
Sleeping, blooming.
> "This was not birth," the voice whispered,
"It was programming."
Flashes:
Doctors in masks,
tracing spiral tattoos on newborn skin.
Injecting memory sequences.
Scripting grief, love, curiosity like software.
---
> "You weren't meant to wake,"
the mirror said.
"But spirals spiral.
And all systems rot."
Suddenly, the mirror cracked—
from inside.
And behind it stood the first Amelia.
Or maybe the last.
She stepped forward, eyes hollow with forgotten centuries.
> "I died trying to stop the bloom," she said.
"Now, you are the bloom."
Alexis reached out.
But her hand passed through the mirror like fog.
The world behind it—
swallowed itself.