In the coastal town of Santa Rosa de Lima, where the air tasted perpetually of salt and memories, Isabella Buendía discovered an ancient mirror in her grandmother’s attic. The glass was crystallized with centuries of accumulated salt, creating delicate patterns that seemed to move in the dim light like living creatures.

“Abuela,” Isabella called down the creaking stairs, “what is this mirror?”

Her grandmother, Elena, climbed slowly to the attic, her weathered face creasing into a knowing smile. “Ah, mi amor, that mirror has been in our family since the great salt flood of 1847. They say it shows the end of days.”

Isabella scoffed, but as she wiped the salt-encrusted surface with her sleeve, the reflection that gazed back wasn’t her own. Instead, she saw streets flooded with crystalline water, buildings encased in salt like prehistoric insects in amber, and people frozen mid-stride in their daily routines.

“You see it too, don’t you?” Elena whispered, placing a warm hand on Isabella’s shoulder. “The mirror shows what’s coming.”

Over the next seven days, salt began falling from the cloudless sky like snow. The townspeople gathered in the plaza, their voices a mixture of wonder and fear. Don Francisco, the town’s oldest resident who claimed to be 157 years old, declared it was just like the stories his great-grandfather had told him.

“The sky is crying crystals,” he announced from his rocking chair, “just as it did before the great transformation.”

Isabella spent her days studying the mirror, watching as each vision it showed came true: the salt-encrusted butterflies that fell dead from the sky, the fishing boats returning with nets full of crystallized fish, the gardens blooming with flowers made entirely of salt.

“We must prepare,” she told the town council, her voice steady despite her youth. “The mirror shows not just an ending, but a beginning.”

The council members exchanged skeptical glances until Padre Miguel, who had been silent throughout the meeting, finally spoke. “In my ninety years, I’ve learned that magic doesn’t always wear the face we expect. Perhaps we should listen.”

Following Isabella’s guidance, the town began to adapt. They learned to harvest the salt, to build with it, to live within it. Children played in salt castles that grew naturally from the ground, while their parents learned to preserve food in new ways.

As the world outside gradually turned to salt, Santa Rosa de Lima became an oasis of life. The mirror’s predictions, once feared, became a guide for survival. Isabella discovered that when she played her grandmother’s old violin near the mirror, the salt crystals would dance and reshape themselves, creating passages and structures that the town could use.

“You see,” Elena told her granddaughter one evening, as they watched the sun set through walls of translucent salt, “endings are just beginnings wearing different clothes.”

The mirror’s final vision showed a town not destroyed by salt, but transformed by it - a gleaming city of crystal where the inhabitants had learned to thrive in their new reality. And as the last grains of normal sand turned to salt beneath their feet, Isabella realized that what they had feared as the apocalypse was actually a metamorphosis.

Santa Rosa de Lima became known as the City of Salt Dreams, where houses grew like crystal gardens and children were born with the ability to shape salt with their thoughts. The mirror, its purpose fulfilled, now hangs in the town square, reflecting not the future but the present - a reminder that even the end of the world can be beautiful if you know how to look at it.