It happened without warning.

One moment, Goori was chasing a dust mote with the grace of a flying sofa cushion.
Miss Nibble was mid-eye-roll.
Simba was muttering something about “interdimensional irregularities.”

Then everything…
stopped.

Not dramatically.
Not with a crash.
Just—pause.

The flickering mirror?
Still.
The shadows?
Frozen.
The dust mote?
Suspended mid-air, mid-sparkle.

Even the sound stopped.
And not like silence—like absence.
The world pressed its finger to its lips.

Simba looked around.

Everyone was moving. Breathing.
But none of their reflections were.

Each of them stood, in the glass, perfectly still—trapped in a frozen second, a heartbeat held too long.

Miss Nibble crept toward the mirror.
“So… this is normal,” she said, voice too calm. “Completely normal, right?”

“Are we stuck?” Goori whispered.

“No,” Simba said. But his voice didn’t sound convincing. “We’re not stuck. We’re… synced.”

Then, without cue or crack or warning—

The reflections blinked.

All of them.
At the same time.

And the pause broke.

Time stumbled back into place like it had tripped over a thought. The shadows moved again. The dust mote fell. The room exhaled.

Simba looked at his reflection.

It was back to normal.
But now, it knew he knew.