The teacher paused mid-sentence when all thirty children smiled at once. Miss Carter forgot what she had been saying. Not metaphorically. The thought vanished completely, ripped cleanly from her mind. She blinked at the classroom. Thirty children smiling patiently back at her. Waiting. “Sorry,” she muttered. “I just lost my train of thought.” A little boy tilted his head. “You lose things more often now.” Unease crawled through her stomach. Over the past few weeks, strange gaps had begun appearing in her memory. Missing conversations. Forgotten errands. Entire afternoons blurred beyond recognition. The principal blamed stress. The doctor blamed exhaustion. But neither explanation accounted for the dreams. Rows of children standing in darkness. Smiling. Watching. “You’re doing it again,” a girl whispered. Miss Carter realized she had frozen in place. “How long was I standing here?” No one answered. Instead, the children slowly opened their notebooks. Every page contained the same sentence written over and over in careful pencil: SHE IS ALMOST EMPTY. Miss Carter backed toward the door. Her reflection caught briefly in the classroom window. She stopped cold. The reflection wasn’t copying her anymore. It stood still. Smiling. While she moved. The children noticed her expression. One boy spoke softly, almost sympathetically. “It’s okay.” Another added: “The replacement is ready.” The reflection in the window raised one hand slowly. Not mimicking. Greeting. And for the first time all day, the silence finally made sense.