Chapter 24

Chapter 24: Mirror Scene

This room had not been like this before.

Yu Sheng reacted instantly. He remembered the way it used to look—empty, unfurnished, not even a chair. Just a single painting hanging alone on the wall facing the door.

Not this. Not a lived-in room with a mirror staring straight at the doorway.

Confusion—and a thin thread of unease—rose in his chest, but he didn’t sense danger.

He knew how vague that sounded. Still, after several near-death experiences that somehow hadn’t finished the job, he really did feel like he’d gained a crude ability to detect threats. And in here…

The room felt safe.

He hesitated in the doorway for a few seconds, then stepped inside.

Nothing leapt out from the corners. No pitchfork. No boiling pot dropping from the ceiling. The sunlight was gentle. The air smelled clean—no rot, no blood, no sour stench of something waiting to happen.

He checked the room carefully. After confirming the furniture was all ordinary, he finally walked up to the mirror.

In his experience, mirrors weren’t usually placed directly opposite a doorway. Feng shui taboos were one reason, and another was simpler: if you walked in at night, you’d scare yourself half to death.

But he didn’t know what traditions people followed in the Borderland.

All he knew was that this mirror facing the doorway made his skin prickle.

And not just because it had replaced Irene’s painting. There was something about the scene in the mirror that felt… off.

It was hard to describe. The reflection looked perfectly normal—showing the room exactly as it was. Yu Sheng studied it for a long time and still couldn’t pin down what was wrong. The longer he stared, the more he doubted himself.

Had something shifted by a hair—an object’s size, a position too subtle to notice?

Was the light wrong?

Or… was there something in the mirror that wasn’t actually in the room?

After a moment, Yu Sheng reached out and brushed a fingertip lightly across the mirror’s surface.

Cold glass met his skin—and then the mirror rippled like water.

The reflection shattered in an instant.

Yu Sheng jolted back half a step, eyes wide. In less than a second, the mirror turned into pure blackness. The room’s image broke apart and dissolved into rippling waves. Thick darkness—dark as ink—filled the entire frame, swallowing everything. It writhed and rolled, rising and falling like something breathing.

Then, slowly, something appeared within it.

Yu Sheng forced down his unease and leaned in. The darkness peeled back like heavy gauze, revealing a scene deep inside the mirror:

A doll girl—not Irene. A stranger—lay broken and scattered across ruins that no longer looked like anything recognizable. Her limbs were snapped. Her dress was torn. Her body was covered in wounds, as if she’d fought a brutal battle and finally died from sheer exhaustion.

Yu Sheng stared, shocked, trying to see more. It was as if the mirror responded to his focus. The viewpoint pulled back and tilted, revealing a wider world—

Ruins on a much larger scale. Classical pillars. Overhanging eaves. Everything collapsed into a muddy chaos steeped in darkness. Fragments of the doll girl’s shattered body lay scattered around, as if the scene itself were telling him one thing:

All of this had been destroyed because of that battle.

A line Irene had said earlier echoed in his mind:

A living doll is blessed. In the Otherworld, I’m stronger than those so-called investigators and spirit realm detectives…

“So living dolls really are that strong…” Yu Sheng murmured.

Even so, the doll girl in the mirror had died. Which meant something even stronger had killed her.

As the viewpoint shifted again, Yu Sheng finally saw it.

A massive shadowspawn. He didn’t know what it was—only that it was enormous, nearly ten times the doll girl’s size. Its outline was roughly humanoid, but twisted, overlapping wing-like shapes rose from its back. It had collapsed among the ruins, too. Part of its huge body had melted like mud, fused into the surrounding muck—and fused, grotesquely, with some of the doll girl’s scattered fragments. What remained was warped and broken beyond recognition.

Yu Sheng couldn’t tell whether its ruined form was damage from the doll girl’s attacks or if it had always looked like that. The thing already looked like an abstract nightmare.

But he could guess one thing: they had probably taken each other down.

Just as he leaned closer, the image rippled again.

Everything shattered and dissolved in a blink. The thick curtain of black surged up, then retreated, shrinking back into the frame. In an instant, the mirror returned to normal, reflecting the room as if nothing had happened.

Yu Sheng stared at the glass.

Then he tapped it. Touched it. Again and again.

Nothing.

What was that?

Maybe because he’d dealt with so many abnormal things in the last two days, his ability to accept the impossible had improved. Instead of fear, he felt a sharp, relentless curiosity.

Had that scene really happened?

Who was the dead doll girl?

What was the massive winged shadow that died with her?

Where were those ruins?

And why… had it appeared inside his house, right in front of him?

Yu Sheng’s frown tightened as another question slid into place.

Did what he’d seen have anything to do with Irene?

The dead doll girl wasn’t Irene. Even with her face ruined, the striking blond hair alone was completely different. And yet, the moment Yu Sheng saw her, he couldn’t stop thinking about the girl downstairs—sealed in a painting, watching TV like this was all normal.

After a moment, he shook off his thoughts, reached out, and tried to lift the mirror from the wall.

It didn’t budge. It felt solid, as if it had been cast into the plaster.

After a few attempts, Yu Sheng gave up.

He turned to leave, then paused and scanned the room again.

Everything looked the same. The mirror showed nothing unusual.

Yu Sheng frowned and closed the door.

Two seconds later, he yanked it open again, as if trying to catch the room off guard.

No change. Still the same.

He leaned his head in, suspiciously looking around, and realized he was starting to act like a lunatic.

After confirming, again and again, he finally stopped and went back downstairs.

Irene was watching TV at the table. Hearing him, she leaned toward the edge of the frame. “Huh? Yu Sheng, weren’t you going to sleep? Can’t sleep? I’m not telling bedtime stories…”

She looked carefree. Overly familiar.

Yu Sheng said nothing. He sat across from her and stared, serious, like he was trying to measure something.

That made Irene visibly uncomfortable.

“Why are you staring at me…” She shrank her neck. “I mean, I know I’m pretty, but you and a paper cutout don’t have a future…”

Everything Yu Sheng had prepared collapsed on the spot.

He coughed twice. “I’m talking business.”

Irene blinked. “…Okay?”

“Do you remember what the room looked like back when you were hanging on that wall?” Yu Sheng asked.

“I remember.” Irene didn’t even hesitate. “There was nothing. It was empty. You could see the door straight across, and the wallpaper—there was a corner where it was moldy and peeling, and you still never fixed it.”

Yu Sheng nodded. Good. At least that matched his memory.

“Second question.” He leaned forward. “Do you remember a place—ruins. Lots of classical pillars, collapsed stone walls, overhanging eaves. The whole place soaked in darkness. There was a doll girl—don’t worry about whether it was you—just some doll girl. She died there. Horribly. Arms and legs shattered, scattered everywhere…”

Irene’s shoulders crept up toward her ears. “That sounds terrifying.”

“Don’t worry about terrifying. Just tell me if you recognize it.”

“No,” Irene said immediately. No hesitation. No uncertainty.

Just a clean, flat answer.

“No.”