As long as Koia could remember, the mirror had always been in the caverns where she had made her home - propped ignobly against a wall in the room that had been a library since at least the time of her parents’ parents. She spent a lot of time in the library; reading was the only luxury afforded to her while she undertook her responsibility to the family.
Not that there was any family, not anymore. There was just her. Still, Koia stayed vigilant.
There were no records of the mirror in any of the books she’d read, which always struck Koia as weird. There were records of just about everything else - mostly contained within the pages of The Collected Journals of Octavius Esry, which took up a disproportionate amount of space on the shelf.
Sometimes Koia could see faint, mismatched faces - faces she didn’t know - in the broken glass. She dutifully made a note in her records every time it happened.
Other times, Koia would swear she could hear the mirror whispering to her, just quietly enough that she couldn’t make out the words. She didn’t make notes of those occurrences.