The rule is simple: she has to watch.

Samantha Jennings hasn't looked at her own face in years. A childhood scar—right side, eyebrow to chin—taught her to angle away from mirrors, tuck her hair, and build a life around not being seen. She's good at it. She's a barista who knows every regular's order. She runs before dawn so nobody sees the scar. She sleeps facing mirrored closet doors she never opens all the way, because from across a dark room, the line disappears.

Then the shadow appears in the glass.

He's behind her reflection. A dark shape with no face, no voice, no name. He shouldn't be there. He shouldn't be able to touch her. But when she looks at the mirror—only when she looks—his hands find her skin. His fingers trace the scar she's spent her life hiding. And the only way to feel him is to do the one thing she's built her entire existence around avoiding: look at herself.

She can't see him unless she faces the glass. She can't feel him unless she watches. Every touch requires her to stand in front of a mirror with both sides of her face exposed and her eyes open. For a woman who hasn't looked at her own reflection in years, this is the cruelest price imaginable.

It's also the only thing that's ever made her stop flinching.

He's getting closer. The glass is getting warmer. The boundary between the mirror and the room is thinning. And the question she can't stop asking—who is he?—has an answer she isn't ready for. Because he's not ancient. He's not a demon. He's a man. He lived six floors up. He held the door for her once. She said thanks without looking up.

She never looked up.

Now he's on the other side of every mirror in her life, and he's not going to stay there.