The voice started small. A whisper in the back of Nina's mind that sounded exactly like her own thoughts, except it said things she'd never think.
You're not good enough.
Nina paused mid-step on her morning jog. That wasn't her. She knew her own self-doubt, and this wasn't it. The tone was right. The voice was hers. But the thought was foreign.
They're all pretending to like you.
She shook her head. No. She had good friends. Real friends. That wasn't her anxiety talking—it was something else wearing her voice like a costume.
Over the following days, the hollow echo grew louder. It commented on everything. Her work. Her relationships. Her reflection in the mirror.
You're wasting your life.
Nobody would miss you.
You're just going through the motions.
The worst part wasn't what it said. The worst part was that it sounded so much like her that sometimes she couldn't tell the difference. Her own thoughts and the echo blurred together until she didn't know which was which.
She tried to argue with it, but how do you argue with your own voice? How do you fight something that knows exactly how you think, how you speak, how you break?
One night, exhausted, Nina stood in front of her bathroom mirror and spoke aloud.
Who are you?
The voice—her voice—answered immediately in her mind: I'm you. The part you won't let speak.
No, Nina said firmly. I know my thoughts. You're not them.
Then why do I sound exactly like you?
Nina stared at her reflection. Thought about all the times she'd had cruel thoughts about herself and called them truth. All the times she'd beaten herself down and called it realism. All the times she'd been her own worst enemy and accepted it as normal.
Because, she said slowly, I taught you to.
The hollow echo fell silent.
For the first time in weeks, Nina's mind was quiet. Not empty—just hers again.
She realized the voice had always been there, underneath. A shadow she'd created through years of self-criticism, fed by every harsh word she'd ever directed at herself. It had grown strong enough to speak on its own.
But it was still just an echo.
And echoes, Nina knew, eventually fade.
She just had to stop giving them something to repeat.
I am enough, she thought deliberately.
The echo tried to twist it, to hollow it out, but Nina spoke it aloud.
I am enough.
And this time, it was her voice. Really hers.
The echo had nothing to say to that.