“You look pale, darling. Let me help you with that.” Mom’s voice echoed through Sarah’s childhood bedroom as she pulled out her signature blush compact. The same one she’d used on Sarah for dance recitals and school photos throughout the years.

Sarah caught her reflection in the vanity mirror – ghostly white, almost translucent. Her mother was right, as always. But something felt different today.

“I don’t think—” Sarah started to protest.

“Nonsense,” Mom interrupted, already swirling the brush in the rosy powder. “It’s your wedding day. We need that signature glow of yours.”

The brush touched Sarah’s cheek, and a jolt of electricity shot through her body. The room spun, memories flooding her consciousness – not her memories, but her mother’s. Years of carefully applied blush, each stroke containing a fragment of life force, youth preserved in pink powder.

“Mom?” Sarah’s voice quivered. “What is this?”

Her mother’s eyes, usually warm brown, flickered with an otherworldly iridescence. “The family legacy, sweetheart. Passed down through generations. Every mother to daughter, every brush stroke a gift of life.”

Sarah’s head swam with visions: her grandmother, great-grandmother, centuries of women, all wielding the same mystical compact. Each application stealing years from their daughters, preserving their own youth in an eternal cycle.

“You’re not—” Sarah stumbled backward, “You can’t be—”

“Two hundred and forty-three,” Mom said softly, still advancing with the brush. “That’s how many years I’ve carried this burden. And now, on your wedding day, it’s time to pass it on.”

Sarah’s back hit the wall. The mirror reflected two figures: her mother, eternally thirty-five, and herself, rapidly aging. Grey streaks appeared in her once-auburn hair, wrinkles etching themselves around her eyes.

“Please,” Sarah whispered, “not today. James is waiting—”

“James will understand,” Mom cooed, though they both knew he wouldn’t. Couldn’t. “Or he’ll find someone else. They always do.”

Tears streamed down Sarah’s increasingly weathered face. “I thought you loved me.”

“Oh, darling.” Mom’s laugh tinkled like breaking glass. “This is love. The purest kind. Sacrifice.”

In that moment, Sarah saw her choice with crystal clarity. The compact held generations of stolen time, preserved youth, and dark magic. She could take her mother’s place, steal another daughter’s life someday, continue the cycle.

Or she could end it.

With strength she didn’t know she possessed, Sarah lunged forward, grabbing the compact. Her mother screamed – a sound no human throat should make – as Sarah hurled the ancient artifact against the mirror.

Glass shattered. Powder exploded. Time itself seemed to fracture.

When the dust settled, two women stood amid the wreckage: one old before her time, one finally showing her true age. Both crying, both free.

“I do love you, Mom,” Sarah said, helping her mother to her feet. “Enough to save us both.”

Outside, wedding bells began to chime. Sarah smiled, touching her wrinkled cheek. She had chosen truth over beauty, love over power. Some prices were too high, even for the perfect blush.