The Mirror
Elira woke up on her eighteenth birthday with exactly three problems:
1. Her hair was doing that thing where it defied gravity in two directions at once.
2. The kitchen downstairs smelled like someone had set toast on fire (again).
3. The mirror across the room was staring at her weird.
Like... judging her.
She blinked. The mirror blinked back — except the version of her in the glass had golden eyes.
Golden.
Not sleepy brown. Not “moss in the sunlight” or whatever some weird poetry boy had once said. Just straight-up, glowing gold.
“Okay,” she whispered, rubbing her eyes. “Nope.”
She looked again.
Normal.
Brown eyes. Bed hair. Slightly crooked braid she half-remembered doing at 2 a.m. Her usual awkward, mildly chaotic self.
She got up anyway, feet cold on the wooden floor, and padded toward the mirror.
It was ancient. Cracked at the corner. Probably haunted. Had once belonged to her grandmother, who used to say things like “The gods are always watching” and “Never trust a man who wears gloves in summer.” Honestly, the second one had proven true more than once.
The mirror had never lied before.
But there it was — a faint glowing symbol burned into the glass:
A circle. Three stars suspended inside it.
Not a smudge. Not a trick of the light. It pulsed. Like it was... breathing.
“Oh, absolutely not,” Elira muttered. “I am not cursed. Or chosen. Or marked by destiny. I haven’t even had tea yet.”
Then came the voice.
“Elira!” someone shouted from downstairs. “There are soldiers at the door!”
And just like that, Problem Number Four arrived.
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