FIELD LOG 13 — THE MAN IN THE MIRROR

Expedition Archive // Restricted Access
Recovered Documents Dated: December 2nd, 1911
Author: Alias Voss

The thing in my father’s study vanished before sunrise.

Not suddenly.

Not violently.

It simply… faded.

Like smoke dissolving into darkness.

By dawn, the crimson light spilling beneath the study door had disappeared completely, leaving behind only silence, scattered journals, and the lingering metallic scent that now seemed permanently soaked into the walls of the house itself.

Yet despite its disappearance…

nothing inside the house felt normal afterward.

Because something had changed.

Not the house.

Me.

I noticed it first in reflections.

At first I blamed exhaustion.

Days without proper sleep had left my thoughts fragmented and slow. Hollow Peak haunted every moment I spent awake. Sometimes I would catch myself staring absentmindedly at walls for several minutes while flashes of the Black Sun world drifted through my thoughts like half-remembered nightmares.

Ash falling across black towers.

The sound of chains moving somewhere beneath endless darkness.

My father screaming inside crimson light.

But the reflections began before the dreams worsened.

Three days after the thing appeared inside the study, I caught sight of movement in the mirror above the fireplace while passing through the sitting room late at night.

At first I thought someone stood behind me.

I turned immediately.

No one.

The house remained silent.

My mother had already gone upstairs hours earlier after another evening spent pretending we were not both terrified of what Hollow Peak had brought back with me.

I remember standing there in the darkness listening to the weak crackle of the fire while snow drifted quietly beyond the windows.

Then slowly…

I looked back toward the mirror.

My reflection was still facing the wrong direction.

The figure inside the glass stood motionless staring toward the hallway leading upstairs while I stood frozen beside the fireplace.

For one impossible second, neither of us moved.

Then the reflection slowly turned its head toward me.

I stumbled backward so violently I nearly fell into the fire.

The mirror returned to normal instantly.

Only my own terrified reflection stared back at me.

I did not sleep that night.

The following morning, I told myself exhaustion had finally broken my mind.

That explanation lasted until the whispers returned.

Not loudly.

Not constantly.

Small things.

Barely audible.

Sometimes while walking through empty rooms.

Sometimes emerging beneath the sound of rain striking the windows.

Sometimes from inside the walls themselves.

“The seal weakens.”

“The path remains open.”

“He still waits.”

The voices never sounded fully human anymore.

Too many tones layered together beneath each word.

As though dozens of voices attempted speaking through the same mouth simultaneously.

I stopped telling my mother whenever I heard them.

She already feared what Hollow Peak had done to me.

I could see it every time she looked into my eyes now.

Not openly.

Quietly.

Like she searched for traces of my father inside me.

The worst moments happened inside the study.

Even entering the room became difficult after the entity vanished.

The air always felt colder there regardless of how large the fire downstairs burned. Frost collected along the inside of the windows each night despite the rest of the house remaining warm. Several times I discovered new symbols scratched across the walls beside my father’s desk — symbols neither my mother nor I remembered seeing before.

Yet somehow…

I recognised them immediately.

Not from memory.

From the Black Sun world.

That frightened me more than anything else.

Because it meant part of that place remained inside my thoughts.

Or perhaps had always been there waiting.

I spent most evenings inside the study after that.

At first searching desperately through my father’s journals for answers.

Then eventually…

searching for him.

The journals changed the deeper I explored them.

Earlier entries described excavations, myths, forgotten civilizations and theories surrounding Hollow Peak. But the closer I moved toward his final writings, the more unstable the pages became.

Entire sections were rewritten repeatedly in different handwriting styles.

Some pages appeared burned around the edges despite no fire touching them.

Others contained symbols that physically hurt to stare at for too long.

And scattered throughout dozens of entries…

the same name appeared repeatedly.

AZRAKAR.

Sometimes written carefully beside eclipse symbols.

Sometimes carved violently into the page hard enough to nearly tear through the paper itself.

I found references to him everywhere.

“The Bearer beneath the Black Sun.”

“The Final Seal.”

“The Walker Between Worlds.”

One journal described Azrakar not as a ruler…

but as a prison.

I remember reading that line repeatedly while thunder rolled outside the house late one evening.

A prison.

Not a king.

Not a god.

Something created to contain the Black Sun itself.

Yet further entries contradicted this entirely.

Other texts claimed Azrakar served Nytherion willingly.

Some even worshipped him.

The contradictions drove my father nearly insane.

And slowly…

they began affecting me too.

I stopped sleeping properly entirely after that.

Every time exhaustion finally dragged me unconscious, the dreams returned worse than before.

No longer distant visions.

Places.

I wandered endless black corridors beneath impossible towers while ash drifted silently around me. Sometimes I heard chains moving in the darkness nearby. Other times I heard footsteps following just beyond sight.

And always…

the Black Sun watched overhead.

Not motionless.

Watching.

Aware.

The dreams began lasting longer each night.

Hours sometimes.

Long enough that waking no longer felt immediate afterward. Several mornings I found dirt beneath my fingernails and ash-like dust across my bedsheets despite never leaving the house.

Then came the voice.

Not whispers this time.

A single voice.

My father’s.

I woke shortly before dawn one morning to find someone sitting beside my bed.

At first I thought I was still dreaming.

The room remained almost completely dark except for faint moonlight spilling through the curtains across the floorboards.

The figure sat motionless in the chair near the window.

Watching me.

I could not move.

Fear locked every muscle in my body the moment the figure slowly leaned forward into the pale light.

My father’s face stared back at me.

Older.

Thinner.

His skin appeared cracked faintly beneath the eyes like fractures spreading through stone. Dark ash coated sections of his coat while faint crimson light pulsed slowly beneath the fabric near his chest.

But it was him.

Not the thing from the study.

Corvin.

His expression looked exhausted beyond words.

For several seconds neither of us spoke.

Then finally he whispered:

“You cannot stay here anymore.”

The voice sounded weak.

Broken.

Like someone speaking from impossibly far away.

I forced myself upright slowly.

“Dad?”

Pain crossed his face immediately after I spoke.

Not fear.

Regret.

“I tried to stop it,” he whispered.

The shadows in the room began moving unnaturally around him.

The temperature dropped violently.

Frost spread slowly across the walls while ash drifted upward from the floorboards around the chair where he sat.

“You have to leave before it finds you completely.”

The whispers returned instantly throughout the room.

NOT HIM.

NOT HIM.

NOT HIM.

My father looked toward the darkness near the bedroom doorway.

And for the first time since I had seen him beyond the threshold…

I saw terror in his eyes.

“Alias,” he whispered sharply.
“Don’t trust the reflections.”

The mirror beside the wardrobe cracked violently.

Something moved inside it.

Not a reflection.

A silhouette.

Tall.

Thin.

Watching us from within the glass.

My father stood immediately.

The crimson fractures beneath his skin brightened painfully while the shadows surrounding him twisted violently through the room.

“It’s coming.”

The mirror exploded inward.

Darkness poured from the shattered glass like smoke flooding across the floor while dozens of whispers screamed together throughout the house.

The thing from the study emerged slowly from the reflection.

Not fully human anymore.

Its limbs bent unnaturally beneath the darkness surrounding its body while fragments of my father’s face flickered constantly across its features like broken memories struggling to remain whole.

My father turned toward me one final time.

And in that moment…

I realised something horrifying.

He was fighting it.

Even now.

Across worlds.

Through the Gate itself.

“Run,” he whispered.

Then the darkness swallowed him completely.