Lily's door opened onto silence, and silence was the first thing that tried to kill her.
She came out standing on black glass. It stretched flat in every direction, polished to a depth that showed her own face looking back up at her, and above it hung a sky with no stars and no moon and no light source she could find, yet she could see. The air did not move. Sound did not carry. When she took a step the click of her heel died the instant it was born, swallowed before it could become an echo, and Lily understood with the cold precision she brought to everything that this was not quiet. This was a place that ate quiet things, and she was a quiet thing.
The spirit assembled itself out of her own reflection. It rose up off the glass wearing her shape at first, then shedding it, becoming a tall pale figure with a mouth and nothing else on its face, a mouth that did not move when it spoke.
