He was in his cell, waiting to be executed, and he asked as a last…See more.

He was in his cell, waiting to be executed, and he asked, as a last request, for something no one expected.

Not a priest. Not a final meal. Not even a message to be sent to the world he was about to leave behind.

He asked for a mirror.

The guard standing outside the iron bars thought he had misheard him.

“A mirror?” the man repeated, frowning. “That’s what you want?”

The prisoner nodded slowly. His hands were steady, resting on his knees as he sat on the narrow cot bolted to the wall. There was no tremor in his voice, no crack of desperation. If anything, he sounded… relieved.

“Yes,” he said. “Just a small one. Big enough to see my face.”

The guard hesitated. In all his years working in the prison, he had seen many last requests. Some were tragic, some pathetic, some absurd. But this—this was different. It carried a strange kind of weight, as if the request itself meant more than it appeared.

“I’ll ask,” the guard said at last. “No promises.”

The prisoner inclined his head. “Thank you.”

His name was Elias Varek, though the newspapers had long since reduced him to something else: The Hollow Man.

A name born from the stories surrounding him—stories of emotionless crimes, of calculated brutality, of a man who, according to witnesses, seemed to feel nothing at all.

No anger. No remorse. No fear.

The trial had been swift. The evidence overwhelming. The sentence inevitable.