Mirror, O' Malevolent Mirror!

It is with a most terrified and regretful sigh,

That I must tell a tale so brutal in nature and nigh impossible to believe.

A story unlike any you have ever heard,

No matter the village idiot or the elder village chief huddled at his seat.

Not a single fool or wiseman can tell you in gruesome detail about how they die.

The mirror,yes,the accursed and malevolent mirror that showed me my own horrible future.

An image not of mine own reflection, but rather a vision of what was in store.

A deplorable and sad sight I thought to myself when first I glanced.

A man being impaled by a shadow, a man I did not know, until I could not help but notice.

The voice was recognizable finally as my own, and the fear washed over me as the realization had come too late.

I was drawn into That Mirror of dreaded visions!

Knowledge of my own future was too vital to pass upon.

I saw myself as an older man which gave proof that I had many more years to live.

At the time I saw my fate, I had only weathered 25 winters after all!

I have since weathered 50 more...

I took the mirror from the woodland bough from which I happened upon it.

After many days of contemplation on what to do with what I thought was a gift, I decided to visit a nearby monastery in the town which I lived.

The monastery was several hundreds of years old, with a library that seemed vast and somehow older...

I made my way into the library and requested the oldest books of religion and magic, objects sinister in nature and otherwise things only believed but should never be or have been.

After many hours spent at study each day for one month, I found the book that told of this curious mirror, in tandem with another that told tales of its legend.

"Beauty. An object fashioned by Gods for great Queens and Kings. Untold riches to the owner of such a valuable thing."

These were just some of what the book described this mirror as.

Though the mirror was beautiful to behold, with a golden gilded rim and diamonds fit into enclaves carved into the base and crown of the mirror.

The images it displayed were terrifying, and grotesque.

I soon found the other bit of literature I had aforementioned.

Literature of an ancient arcana, that denoted tales of some who met their maker far sooner than they had planned.

What was interesting to me for so many years, was that the legendary tales all reported the deaths of the mirror's owners, as different from the visions that the mirror reported.

The study of the mirror took a toll on much of my younger years.

Those years are but a fraction of what I had spent on learning the mirror's true origin.

It was all a hoax...

The mirror was host to a lesser demon who had a gift for influencing those of a weak mind.

I know not how the demon came to be trapped in such an object but it utilized it's power through the reflections that passed it by.

Convincing the beholder that they were bound for dreadful things.

Until it finally drove each of them to the brink, seeking to defy the mirror and meeting their end through alternate means.

I am convinced this evil spirit, though of a lesser nature, seeks to be unleashed from it's supposed prison.

After so long, I now understand what must be done to prevent the unleashing of this hellspawn.

I leave this note upon my desk from which I sit in front of the mirror.

My reflection is now the only thing I can see, though while I frown grimly, it smiles back at me.

The spirit is the reflection, and it revels in the torturing of its beholders...

I take the dagger in my hand and show it to my reflection.

The faces are now turned...

I now smile at my reflection, who has a look of terror upon MY FACE that it wears.

I turn the dagger to my own chest and I shoved it deep until it punctured my heart.

The reflection screamed in agony for what felt like an eternity, while I choked though my own blood and managed a grin.

The mirror only lies to those not willing to accept their fate.

For one willing to meet that fate and watch it unfold in front of them.

The spirit reveals it's one true weakness.

That rotten runt of a demon is bound to the beholder, so long as they watch it die as they do.