The mirror wasn’t flickering anymore.
It was humming.

Not audibly—no sound, no tremble. But every fur strand on Simba’s body stood at attention.
The air felt charged. Too still. Like the moment before lightning. Or the second after someone says your name, but before you turn around.

Then the light changed.

A soft shimmer bloomed across the glass, slow and deliberate.
Not a flash.
Not a ripple.
A peel.

And for exactly 30 seconds,
the mirror wasn’t a mirror anymore.

It was a window.

Simba saw it first.

A world beyond—familiar and wrong. The air moved differently. The sky was softer. And something glowed at the horizon like memory lit on fire.

He stepped forward, but the Root in his paw pulsed sharply, holding him in place.

Miss Nibble stood beside him. Silent. For once.

Goori stared, tail frozen mid-wag.

And the others?
They didn’t speak either.

Because each of them saw something different.

A field. A hallway. A pawprint made of light. A reflection of someone they’d lost. Or were about to find.

And then—

it closed.

The shimmer collapsed in on itself, silent and sudden, like a breath exhaled in reverse.

The mirror returned to glass.

Simba blinked.

He didn’t look at the others.

They didn’t look at him.

But they all looked at the same spot on the floor.

The crack was still there.
A little wider.
And glowing faintly at the edge.