Mirrors, because they reflect the characteristics of objects, often hold special aning in mysticism.
So believe they do more than reflect light—they can also reveal the “unseen world.” Because of this, mirrors are often used as diums to communicate between the living and the dead, appearing in rituals like divination or spirit-calling. The common horror trope of seeing ghosts in mirrors stems from this idea.
In certain cultures, mirrors are also thought to reflect one’s inner self and reveal the true nature of a person. For example, in Islam, there is a belief that if a person’s inner nature is flawed, the mirror will appear clouded when they look into it, preventing them from perceiving the truth.
Additionally, in spiritual traditions, mirrors are said to have the ability to “absorb and reflect energy.” This is reflected in Chinese Feng Shui, where objects like bronze mirrors are used to protect hos, and Bagua mirrors are used to deflect negative energy.
In short, whether in mysticism or horror films, mirrors are highly significant and frequently used elents. And based on Everly’s experience watching horror movies, in stories involving mirrors, eight out of ten tis, nothing good happens when soone looks into one.
Because of this, the mont she sensed sothing was wrong, Everly’s first instinct was to avert her gaze.
However, even as her mind scread at her to look away—to stop staring and move away from the mirror—her body felt like a rusted machine, its joints stiff, its reactions sluggish.
The light on her chest pointed straight at the mirror. The bright beam, reflected back, once stabbed into her eyes so sharply that she could barely look at the figure within. But at so point, the chest-mounted light began to flicker like a dying candle, trembling weakly before dimming.
And so, under the influence of so unknown force, she stood there blankly, forced to clearly see her own pale face in the mirror.
The dim light cast upward from below shrouded the face in shifting shadows, giving an ordinary expression an eerie, unstable gloom. At the corner of that “Everly’s” lips hung a smile—full of mockery, glaringly obvious.
Strange… was she smiling?
Instinctively, Everly pressed her lips together, trying to smooth away that curve.
She quickly realized—the one smiling wasn’t her, but the creature in the mirror.
At that mont, her heart sank heavily. Everly understood that the situation had beco extrely dangerous.
The “her” in the mirror kept smiling. That strange, terrifying smile was like a vortex with a hypnotic pull—once seen, it trapped the gaze like a fly caught on sticky paper, unable to move away.
Even though her rational mind was still functioning, screaming at her not to look—that continuing to stare would bring danger—it was already too late. Far too late.
This was a trap laid long ago. The mont she ca face-to-face with the mirror, it was like an insect crashing into a spider’s web. The hunt of a supernatural entity against a human had already begun…
Her pale blue pupils dilated wide, unblinking, staring at the girl in the mirror with a mix of despair and strange fascination.
That “Everly” kept smiling. As ti passed, the smile seed to feed on fear and panic, growing visibly wider—spreading from a mocking smirk into a sinister, malicious grin. It stretched unnaturally, as if tearing at the corners of the lips, widening all the way to the ears.
At the sa ti, the longer she stared into the mirror, the more both her body and mind were subjected to a terrifying erosion.
She felt as if she had been sealed inside a box coated in wax—her joints sluggish, her limbs stiff. She couldn’t even close her eyes to avoid looking at the mirror, let alone open her mouth to call out to Natalie for help.
What was even more despairing was that, despite being trapped, her will to resist was steadily weakening under the mirror’s influence—growing thinner, more fragile…
“Call .”
Sowhere, as if from the void, a voice—seductive and eerie—whispered softly in her ear.
Crack!
With that murmur, faint cracking sounds began to echo one after another from her wrist. Through the mirror, Everly saw that the “Demon’s Eye” talisman she had worn for so long—a traditional protective charm from Turkey—was being crushed by an invisible force, shattering piece by piece into fine glass-like dust.
This charm had always seed unremarkable in the past, but only now, as it broke apart, did the suffocating sense of pressure and control intensify. Only then did Everly realize—it had been protecting her all along, silently and constantly.
And now… she had lost her “blue eye.”
In the mirror, that sinister “Everly” was still laughing with delight—her body trembling, rocking back and forth, her lips stretched into a grotesque grin. She opened her mouth toward the real Everly outside the mirror—
Everly struggled desperately, but her body refused to obey. At this mont, it felt as though it had completely beco a puppet of the reflection, drawn by so overwhelming force. In sync with the figure in the mirror, her mouth opened, her tongue moved, her vocal cords trembled, forcing out a broken, halting call:
“Bloody… Mary…”
Bloody Mary—the infamous mirror-dwelling spirit, the legendary witch of blood. So this was the monster behind everything!
Everly’s eyes widened, her heart racing wildly as a surge of intense fear rose within her chest.
The mirror—the mirror! She had been wrong. The source of all the anomalies wasn’t the small activity room, but the mirror in the storage room!
“Hee hee…”
Suddenly, a gloomy laugh drifted out from the darkness behind her—distant at first, then drawing closer and closer, until it finally rang clearly beside Everly’s ear.
In the mirror, a finger with cracked, bloodied nails slowly rested on Everly’s shoulder. In reality, at the exact sa spot on her body, she felt a heavy, oppressive touch. A strong stench of decay rushed into her nose, so foul it made her want to retch.
Everly tried to lower her head, tried to brush the hand away—but she couldn’t move at all. All she could do was watch helplessly as more fingers climbed onto her shoulder: a second one, a third…
A freezing sensation seeped through the thick fabric of her clothes, sinking deep into her skin and bones beneath.
It was the aura of death—the temperature of a corpse.
“Call …”
A cold breath brushed against her ear again. The seductive female voice returned, weaving into her hearing in threads that seeped directly into her mind, leaving her consciousness briefly dazed.
“Woof!”
At her feet, Buddy the spirit dog let out a sharp, agonized bark, each cry stabbing into Everly’s heart like a blade.
That mont of pain brought a brief flash of clarity.
With growing despair, Everly realized that Bloody Mary was forcing her to perform so kind of ritual.
She widened her eyes and refused to blink.
Of course, she had heard of “Bloody Mary.” It was a popular urban spirit-calling ga among young people. The rules were roughly this: stand in front of a mirror at night holding a candle, stare into the mirror, and call the na “Bloody Mary” three tis to summon a terrifying spirit known as Bloody Mary.
The current situation was slightly different—the spirit of Bloody Mary already existed and did not need to be summoned. But the act it was forcing Everly to perform—calling its na—was identical to the rules of that summoning ga.
This made Everly realize that if she continued to obey the voice and called out the na three tis, so unknown ritual would likely be completed—and she would fall into a fate beyond redemption.
But no matter how clear her mind remained, her body felt completely severed from her will, as if it had beco nothing more than a puppet controlled by the reflection.
When the “Everly” in the mirror burst into wild laughter and opened her mouth again, her real body failed to resist. With a trembling voice, she echoed the call:
“Bloody… Mary…”
The second ti!
Everly’s pupils shrank, her heart pounding so violently it felt like it might leap out of her throat.
The mont the words left her lips, she could clearly feel the pressure on her body intensify. A bone-chilling cold spread in threads from her shoulders, creeping across her entire back.
Crack. The cross in her hand shattered without warning. At the sa ti, the last protective item hanging from her chest—a purple crystal pendant—suddenly slipped loose, fell to the ground, and broke into pieces.
She still had many other tools—offensive and supportive items, including the sacred vine—but it was useless. She couldn’t move her body, couldn’t control her voice. No matter how many tools she had, they ant nothing!
In the mirror, another grotesque, horrifying ghostly hand settled onto her right shoulder. The two hands pressed down with imnse force, like a steamroller crushing her bones, making her shoulder joints creak under the strain.
The stench of decay grew even stronger. From her shoulder, a mangled, rotting face slowly erged—flesh torn, crawling with decay.
That head leaned in with an unsettling intimacy, pressing close to her ear. Its lipless mouth exhaled a cold, foul breath as it whispered into her ear in a voice filled with temptation:
“Call .”
Everly’s eyes were wide open, straining against the discomfort, fighting with all her strength the urge to blink.
The “Everly” in the mirror tilted her head slightly, affectionately brushing against the head on her shoulder. Her smile twisted further—more distorted, more eerie.
It was a smile of victory.
Because it knew—and Everly knew—that when it spoke, the real body would be forced to repeat whatever it said.
It would repeat the final words: “Bloody Mary…”
Everything was proceeding exactly as it expected. At least, it should have been. After all, the person standing before the mirror was just an ordinary human. Perhaps she had encountered a few unusual experiences, but she had no witch’s bloodline, and her protective charms had already been destroyed.
However—
“Natalie Salaman!”
The mont the girl opened her mouth and uttered the third call, the ghosts inside and outside the mirror simultaneously changed expression.
Because the na Everly shouted… was not part of the plan.
A na that wasn’t supposed to appear at all.
“…Huu.”
At the mont the words landed, a wind suddenly rose from nowhere.
Wherever that invisible wind passed, the black cloth draped over the wooden mannequin was lifted into the air, fluttering upward. Beneath it, there was clearly nothing—but when the cloth fell again, its center inexplicably bulged upward, forming the outline of a human figure mid-air.
The figure was small, only reaching Everly’s waist. Because of this, the four corners of the cloth hung loosely downward, touching the ground. At a glance, it looked like a four-legged octopus made of fabric.
“You checked it, right?”
The cloth’s four edges were too short to fully touch the ground. A gap remained between its lower edge and the floor—empty, nothing visible within. Yet it floated there in a semi-suspended state, like a ghost draped in a bedsheet from an old animation, gliding smoothly toward Everly.
A child’s voice spoke from within the cloth.
As “Cloth-Natalie” approached, Everly suddenly felt the crushing pressure on her body ease slightly.
At this mont, when she looked back at the mirror, the distorted reflection had already returned to normal. The monster clinging to her back had also vanished. The chest-mounted flashlight glowed a warm, gentle yellow, casting light onto the mirror and slowly dispelling the cold, oppressive chill around Everly’s body.
“Yes. I’ve figured it out—the culprit behind all of this is the ‘Mirror Witch’!”
Everly replied while forcefully blinking, letting the tears welling in her eyes fall.
—Yes, tears.
Just monts ago, at the critical point, she had used the physiological tears produced by her eyes to briefly sever the mirror’s control over her body and shout out Natalie’s na.
It had been the most dangerous crisis she had ever faced. Fortunately, Everly reacted quickly enough, deducing from subtle clues that the mirror’s control over her body depended on the condition of “maintaining direct visual contact with the reflection.”
The mirror image strictly controlled her actions, making it impossible for her to look away or close her eyes. However, there was one action it did allow—keeping her eyes open and staring at the mirror.
So from that mont on, Everly had deliberately kept her eyes wide open, suppressing the natural urge to blink.
She kept them open—so long that her eyes beca dry and painful, producing large amounts of tears. The excess tear film ford a translucent barrier, blurring her vision and partially blocking her view of the mirror, weakening the mirror’s control over her.
At the brink of ruin, Everly had managed to seize back control of her body—for just a mont.
She had won.
Now, reinforcents had arrived on the battlefield. Scout Everly could finally step back with her mission complete.
Everly shifted her body, intending to turn and leave this dangerous storage room, letting Natalie handle the aftermath.
However, the mont she moved, the flashlight beam reflecting off the mirror shifted as well. Behind her and Natalie, in a corner that had been completely dark just monts ago, the reflected light faintly illuminated a standing figure within the darkness.
No one knew when that figure had appeared.
She wore a sowhat ridiculous pink nightgown, most of her body swallowed by darkness. Her hair hung loose, her head slightly lowered. Her crimson eyes rolled upward eerily, staring unblinking at Everly and Natalie through the mirror. Her expression was blank—like a venomous snake waiting for the right mont to strike.
Having already investigated everyone related to the death case beforehand, Everly recognized her at a glance.
That figure was Sara—or rather, the “Sara Mary” who had been replaced by a monster.
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