Mirror (Part I)

The crack in the mirror was the first thing Simon noticed.

The vanity — a hideous relic of some forgotten era — was part of the furnished room he rented. His landlord, whose voice carried the melody of a crow in distress, had proudly declared that it all came “at no extra charge,” a phrase she seemed to find rather amusing.

Simon didn’t.

Especially not when it came to the mirror.

Its cream-and-gold frame was an eyesore — loud and overdesigned — clashing hard with his self-professed minimalist sensibilities. It had always been a background annoyance, nothing more. The flat itself was barely habitable, and that occupied most of his daily complaints. The floorboards creaked like they were grieving. The windows leaked a constant chill. It was, in every sense of the word, a shithole.

But it was cheap. And that was enough.

That evening, glass of water in hand, Simon paused on his way back from the bathroom. The crack hadn’t been there before. At first glance, it looked like a hairline fracture — just another flaw on an already flawed surface. But the pattern caught his eye. It sprawled across the mirror like a spiderweb, intricate and deliberate. At the centre of the web: a number.

He reached for it, slowly.

Before his finger could meet the glass, the number shifted — morphing into something else entirely.

“What the fuck,” he muttered.

The room changed with it. The air grew heavier, as if someone had just stepped inside. The floorboards groaned, not under Simon’s feet, but under something else. Something moving.

A warm breath touched the back of his neck — too real to be imagined.

His heartbeat stuttered.

He turned.

Standing behind him, barely visible in the dim light, was a figure — or at least, the suggestion of one. It shimmered faintly, undefined, like heat rising off tarmac. Humanoid, but wrong.

A wettenbreathen.

He knew the name, though he’d never seen one — only heard the word in whispered stories told by the old and the fearful. A guardian of thresholds, they said. Of doors. Of mirrors. Anything that separated one world from another.

Now, one stood in his room. Watching. Waiting.

Its presence was overpowering — otherworldly, wet. A scent like mildew and breath. The kind of presence that you didn’t question. You just felt.

Simon didn’t run.

He didn’t speak.

Some part of him understood: the mirror wasn’t broken. The crack wasn’t a defect. It was a gateway. And the wettenbreathen was not a threat, but a sentinel.

A warning.

An invitation.

He had two choices: flee and forget… or step forward and find out.

The creature’s breath mingled with the stale air as Simon made his decision.

He stepped closer to the vanity, gaze fixed on the figure. Its form shimmered with strange fluidity — something not built of matter, but suggestion. Energy. Potential.

This time, he didn’t reach for the mirror.

He reached for it.

The wettenbreathen didn’t retreat. It only watched, its breath a slow whisper against his skin.

And as Simon’s fingers neared its presence, the world behind the glass began to shift.