The woman staring back at me was me.
Same nose. Same cheekbones. Same small scar above my left eyebrow from when I ran into a door frame at age seven because I was reading while walking. The basic architecture of my face was still there, recognizable the way your childhood home is recognizable even after new paint and new furniture.
But everything else had changed.
I am not a small woman. Back in my world,in my real world,I was sixty-six kilos of tired mother. Soft in the places three pregnancies leave soft. Worn in the places sleepless nights leave worn.
I looked like what I was: a woman who prioritized her children's plates over her own, who hadn't slept through the night in years, who couldn't remember the last time she looked in a mirror and thought good enough.
The woman in this mirror looked like a supermodel had stolen my face and decided to improve it.
My body was lean. Not skinny,lean, like a runner, like a dancer, like someone who could move fast and hit hard. The softness was gone. The tiredness was gone. My arms looked strong.
My shoulders looked straight. I was wearing a gown,golden, shimmering, made of something that flowed like water and caught light like fire. It draped over me in a way that suggested the fabric was expensive enough to have its own opinions.
On my head, a crown. Delicate. Spiky. Gold with purple gems that pulsed faintly, like they were breathing.
And my eyes.
My eyes were golden.
I leaned closer to the mirror. The woman in the reflection leaned closer too. Same movement. Same confusion. Same growing horror.
My eyes had been black. Dark brown, technically, the kind of brown that looks black unless you're in direct sunlight. I am Asian. My whole family has dark eyes. Dark hair. Dark everything.
These eyes were the color of molten gold. They glowed. Actually glowed, with a light that came from inside my skull, like someone had lit a candle behind my pupils.
And beneath the gold, a flicker of purple. The same purple as the rift. The same purple as the monsters. The same purple you don't want.
I looked beautiful.
Not pretty. Not attractive. Beautiful in the way a blade is beautiful, in the way a storm is beautiful, in the way something dangerous and powerful and utterly beyond human is beautiful.
The woman in the mirror had eyes that looked smart,not intelligent, smart, like she knew things she shouldn't, like she had already calculated every possible move and found them wanting.
That woman did not look like she changed diapers.
That woman did not look like she scrubbed crayon off walls or negotiated with toddlers over the definition of "five more minutes."
That woman looked like she could end the world and not break a sweat.
And she was me.
I know that woman in the mirror was me. I could feel her. The same thoughts in my head. The same panic in my chest. The same desperate, clawing need to find my daughters.
But at the same time, she wasn't me.
Hard to explain. Like looking at a photograph of yourself from a different life. Like hearing a recording of your own voice and thinking that's not how I sound. Same person. Different version. A version that had been... upgraded. Forged. Changed into something that glittered.
I was shimmering. My skin, my gown, my very self,all of it pulsed with a faint golden-purple light, like I was a chandelier that had learned to breathe. The light echoed off the diamond ceiling, off the golden walls, off the thousands of upturned monster faces.
I looked down at my hands. They were glowing too.
What the hell happened to me?
The shadow girl stepped forward. Her face was visible now,I could see her features in the mirror's reflection, or maybe the light had changed, or maybe my new golden eyes could simply see through whatever darkness had hidden her before.
She was beautiful. Not human-beautiful. Monster-beautiful. High cheekbones. Skin the color of twilight. Eyes that shifted between colors like oil on water. Her hair moved even when there was no wind.
"My Queen," she said, and her voice was softer than the other shadows, almost gentle. "Your legion is waiting for your command."
I frowned. The crown pressed against my forehead. The gown rustled around my legs.
"Waiting for what?" I asked.
The shadow girl smiled. It was not a comforting smile.
"For your signal, my Queen." She gestured to the horde below, the thousands of monsters still kneeling, still staring, still holding their breath. "Waiting to devour the human world. To tear down their cities. To drink their screams."
My blood went cold.
"To turn those pathetic humans into fuel for your legion," she continued, her twilight eyes glittering. "So that you may rule over the ashes of their civilization."
The chanting started again below. But it was different this time. Not the confused chanting from before. Not the questioning or the waiting.
This was a victorious chant. Triumphant. Bloodthirsty.
They thought I was going to say yes. They thought I was going to raise my hand and point toward Earth and say go.
Thousands of monsters, hungry for human flesh, waiting for me to give the order.
My daughters were on Earth. My daughters were human.
I did what any mother would do. I held up one hand. Palm flat. Fingers together. The universal sign for stop right there.
But my brain was still stuck in my husband's weekend routines, in the sound of basketball announcers yelling about fouls and timeouts, in the memory of him explaining the rules while I pretended to listen.
"Time out," I said.
And I made the T. The basketball timeout T. Both hands, one vertical, one horizontal. The gesture every referee makes when the game needs to pause.
The cavern went silent.
Not the silence from before. Not the "waiting for the queen to speak" silence.
A different silence.
The silence of every single creature in that room, thousands of monsters, hundreds of thousands of pounds of nightmare flesh, suddenly unable to breathe.
Their chanting stopped mid-syllable. Their growls cut off like someone had sliced through them with a knife. Their eyes,all those countless eyes,widened in confusion, then fear, then something that looked like pain.
They were choking. Every single one of them.