The Vásquez family’s house always smelled of dampness and withered flowers. Mariana, a single mother, lived there with her seven-year-old daughter, Lucía. Since her husband abandoned them, Mariana had become cold, obsessed with the idea that Lucía **wasn’t really her daughter**.

—*”Mom, why do you always look at me like that?”* —asked Lucía, while her mother stared at her in front of the hallway mirror.

—*”Because your eyes… aren’t mine”* —Mariana responded, running her bony fingers over the girl’s reflection.

### **The Truth in Dreams**

Every night, Mariana dreamed the same thing: **an unknown woman** had taken the real Lucía from her and left *this little girl* in her place. She would wake up sweating, convinced that her daughter was a **deception**, an evil being who had taken her place.

One afternoon, while cleaning the attic, she found her grandmother’s old diary. Between the pages, a phrase was repeated:

—*”What game, Mom?”*

—*”One to know if you’re really mine.”*

Mariana took Lucía’s small hand and, with the edge of the knife, **made a cut in her palm**. The girl screamed, but her mother held her tightly. Then, she did the same to her own hand and **pressed their blood together against the mirror**.

Lucia’s blood **didn’t mix**. Instead, it began to trickle down, forming words on the glass:

*”IT’S NOT YOURS”*

### **The Final Cry**

Mariana, her eyes wide open, **plunged the knife into Lucía’s chest**. The girl fell to the ground, but before dying, she whispered in a voice that wasn’t her own:

—*”You are not the real Mariana either…”*

And then, **the mirror shattered into a thousand pieces**, revealing the corpse of the *real* Lucia behind the wall.

Mariana looked at her hands and saw that they were **dissolving into ash**. Because she had never been the mother… but rather **the spirit of a woman who died in that house years before**, condemned to repeat her crime for all eternity.