There was once a small town nestled between misty hills and crooked forests, where a curious legend haunted the dreams of its people — the legend of the Narcissist’s Circle.
Every spring, the townsfolk gathered at the old chalkboard in the village square, where someone — no one knew who — would draw the infamous rings. Thick, white, perfectly spaced circles spiraling from a center dot, with a single smaller orb poised near the edge like a punctuation mark.
Above the circles, always the same words:
“The Number of Circles You See Determines If You’re a Narcissist.”
It began as a joke. Children laughed, teens rolled their eyes, and adults scoffed while squinting at the hypnotic pattern. Some claimed to see seven circles. Others, nine. A few saw thirteen. One year, old Mr. Penley claimed he saw only one, the “eternal circle of the self,” and walked home chuckling, proud of his wit.
But over time, things shifted.
A strange thing started to happen to those who saw too few — or too many — circles. They began changing. At first subtly: becoming more absorbed in their reflections, talking only about themselves, ignoring others’ feelings. Then the change deepened, warping them into echoes of their former selves. Friends turned distant. Lovers grew cold. Empathy dissolved like sugar in rain.
Psychologists came, intrigued. They studied the drawing. It was, in its form, just circles. Optical illusion experts called it a “concentric trap for perception” — our brains see what they want to see, or perhaps what they’re afraid to.
But no explanation ever stopped the town from performing the ritual, year after year.
One rainy afternoon, a girl named Elia stood in front of the chalkboard. She had always ignored it, but this time, she stared longer. She counted slowly. One. Two. Three… up to ten.
Then she paused.
There, just barely visible between the outer rings, was an eleventh — a faint ghost of a line.
She blinked. It vanished. She stared harder. It returned.
And then… she saw her own face reflected in the blackboard, smiling at her — but she wasn’t smiling.
Elia backed away, heart pounding. The board remained still. Just circles. Just lines.
Or were they?
