Divided Light
A girl discovers her electricity-wielding powers mask a fractured identity fighting to reunite.
by Julian · 526 words · ~2 min · told at the fireside
Aisha discovers she can conjure fire with her mind during an exam, but the sparks carry a terrifying message: she's not alone in her own body. A mysterious scarred reflection trapped behind her mirror speaks in her voice and an ancient other's, pressing against the glass as reality fractures around her. As the barrier between them crumbles, Aisha must confront her deepest memories.
Chapter 1
Aisha stared at the test in front of her. The question just didn't make sense. She knew the whole of her science topic, but if this question was asking what she thought it was then the answer would brake the laws of physics. The invigilator was coming down the aisle. Aisha shoved her smoking hand under the desk, her heart hammering against her ribs. She could smell the burnt paper, acrid and unmistakable, and somewhere beneath that, something else—something like ozone, like the air after lightning.
Suddenly sparks started to shoot from her palm and dance on the page, setting her paper on fire. Surprise lit up her face. What just happened? Her hand felt tingly and warm while the paper curled black at its edges. She looked down at the charred remains of her notebook, still smoking between her fingers. The sparks had stopped now, leaving only the acrid smell of burnt paper hanging in the air. Her breath came shallow and fast, her mind racing to find any explanation that made sense. But nothing did.
The sparks pulsed with a rhythm that matched her heartbeat, and she realized with a cold clarity that they weren't random at all—they were spelling something, tracing letters across the darkness of her small room. She didn't want to turn around.The message formed slowly, deliberately, each bright arc hanging in the air long enough for her to read: *TURN AROUND*. The wall beneath her palms had grown warm, almost alive, and she knew that turning around was no longer a choice but an inevitability.
She kept her eyes fixed on the wall, her hands pressed flat against the plaster as if she could push herself through it, but the sparks continued their work behind her, burning brighter now, more insistent, until the letters were so vivid she could see them reflected in the pale skin of her own forearms, glowing from underneath like something trying to claw its way out.The reflection's mouth moved, and she heard her own voice speak words she hadn't yet learned to say.She closed her eyes and turned.The face that looked back at her from the reflection wasn't hers—it was older, scarred, and wearing an expression of profound recognition, as if it had been waiting in that wall for years.
Chapter 2
The stranger's eyes held hers with the weight of something ancient and patient. Her mouth opened, but the voice that emerged was layered—her own beneath it, and something else entirely. The reflection's scarred hand pressed against the glass from the inside, and where it touched, the wall began to crack. She understood then that she had always been divided, one half trapped behind the plaster, waiting. The cracks spread like veins across the room, and the light pouring through them was the color of old photographs.
Her hands were shaking now, not from fear but from the recognition of her own continuity—the girl who had walked into this room and the woman who had been sealed inside it were finally, impossibly, the same. When she blinked, the reflection stepped through her breath fogging the glass its fingertips leaving trails of condensation.