4

The next morning, Lin didn’t open his eyes right away. For a while, he just lay there on the couch, listening to the ambient groan of the old apartment settling into daylight. The buzzing of the refrigerator motor, the faint rustling of paper as a breeze crept through the cracked window, and somewhere in the distance, the irregular ping of construction equipment formed the background of his consciousness. Yet beneath all of it, he could hear something subtler, like the whisper of fabric dragged slowly across wooden floorboards, barely perceptible but undeniably present.

When he finally rose, the room looked unchanged. The record player sat silent and still, the vinyl left where it had ended the night before. The needle rested gently, though the last groove had long finished spinning. There was no more music, no more voice. Only the echo of it remained in his skull, haunting not just his thoughts but his senses—every color seemed muted, every sound oddly flat, as if the world itself had dimmed in the wake of her song.

He walked to the mirror.

Nothing.

His own reflection greeted him, pale, haggard, eyes rimmed with shadows. He leaned close, searching for any hint of movement, breath, or fog. But today the mirror was still. That, in a way, unnerved him more than any ghostly message. She had spoken. She had called. And now, silence.

The sense of absence was unbearable. He turned away quickly and began moving on instinct. A shower. A clean shirt. Coffee. The mundane rituals of the living. But it was all hollow, performative, like lines spoken in a forgotten play.

He couldn’t shake the certainty that she had been real. Not just a vision, not a symbol, but a person. Or whatever remained of one. She had spoken to him. And that meant she remembered.

By noon, Lin had packed his camera and returned to the opera house.

It was warmer today, the humidity oppressive. Storms gathered at the edge of the skyline, casting long shadows across the street as he climbed the fence again. The once-rigid warning signs now fluttered half-heartedly in the wind. He ducked through the same broken window, landing inside the ruins with a thud that kicked up a fresh cloud of dust.

Everything was just as he left it. The shattered seating, the red curtain like a wounded tongue, the bones of chandeliers clinging to the ceiling. But it felt different—charged, as if the air itself held breath. He made his way slowly toward the stage, boots creaking across the warped floorboards.

Backstage, the mirror waited.

It was the same one. He would recognize it anywhere. Not by the frame or the scratches, but by the feeling. The pull. It stood upright, propped against the wall, angled slightly to catch the light. Lin stared into it.

Stillness. His own face. And behind him—

Movement.

He turned quickly. Empty space. But in the mirror, it lingered—a blur of red, the flicker of silk.

Lin stepped closer. The glass didn’t fog. But there, faintly, etched into the dust at the mirror’s base, were symbols. Carved by a nail, a pin, a blade—something small and precise. Three characters. 他来了.

He’s come.

“Who?” Lin whispered.

The air didn’t answer.

He reached out, letting his fingertips brush the glass. It felt cool. But more than that, it felt deep—as if it were not a surface at all, but a veil. For the first time, he pressed harder, and the mirror gave—not physically, but perceptually. He leaned in, drawn forward.

And the world changed.

No light shift, no thunderclap, no swirl of magic. Just a blink.

Suddenly, the opera house was whole again.

He was standing backstage, but the rot was gone. The wood gleamed. The velvet was rich and dark. The chandelier above him shone with hundreds of lit crystals. Voices echoed from beyond the curtain—audience laughter, coughs, the rustle of programs. He turned, stunned, and saw figures in full Qing-era attire drifting past, speaking in low, refined tones. No one seemed to see him.

Lin turned back to the mirror.

She stood behind him.

Lian Mei.

Closer than before. She did not look at him. She looked past him, into the audience, her face serene and poised. Dressed in crimson, with golden thread dragons curling across her sleeves, her presence was so vivid it made Lin's breath catch. Her lips moved. Again, no sound. But this time, he could read them.

"Tonight, it begins."

And then the vision collapsed.

Lin staggered back, nearly tripping over a coiled rope. The mirror was a mirror again. The rot returned. The air was stale. But his chest pounded with the rhythm of someone who had been somewhere, not just imagined it.

He looked again at the writing etched into the base. It was still there.

“He’s come.”

Who was he?

Lin left the backstage corridor and returned to the grand hall. He needed air. But as he passed under the red curtain, something caught his eye.

A loose floorboard.

He crouched, pried at it with his fingers. The wood gave with a dry groan. Beneath it—darkness.

He pulled out his flashlight and leaned closer. A staircase.

Old, narrow, descending into what looked like black fog.

He hesitated for only a second.

Then descended.

Lin took the first step into the dark.

The wood beneath his boot groaned softly, not with age, but with the resignation of something that had not been touched in decades. The air shifted immediately. It wasn’t merely cooler down here—it was heavier. Denser. It felt as though the oxygen had been drained, replaced with a thicker substance woven from dust, memory, and grief. He could hear each breath echo against unseen walls, absorbed and returned to him thinner, fainter.

The beam of his flashlight stretched ahead in a narrow cone, illuminating cobwebs stretched across the low ceiling like ancient veils. The stairs wound downward in a tight spiral, the stone slick with a fine film of moisture. Lin moved slowly, one hand on the wall, the other gripping the flashlight tightly as he descended into the hidden gut of the opera house.

He counted the steps. Thirty-two.

Then he reached the bottom.

The chamber before him was not large, but its presence was immense. The walls were lined with faded red silk, decayed in places to reveal gray stone beneath. The ceiling was low, the air warmer than expected, and the scent—god, the scent—was unbearable. Not rot, exactly, but something more personal. Like old perfume clinging to a funeral dress. There were candles here, long burned to stumps, melted wax pooled like blood on the corners of a blackened altar.

At the center of the room stood a dressing mirror. Not cracked. Not broken. But clean. Its glass shimmered faintly in his flashlight’s glare, reflecting not just his image, but something behind him that was not there when he turned.

On the ground in front of it sat a wooden box, lacquered black, the gold inlay almost completely worn off. Lin crouched slowly, brushing away dust. The box wasn’t locked. The latch opened easily.

Inside lay a stack of old letters—rice paper folded precisely and bound with a thin red thread. And atop the stack, a single photograph.

It was her.

Lian Mei.

Younger. Smiling. Caught in the candid kind of moment that photographs rarely captured in that era. She stood beside a man, whose face had been meticulously scratched out. Their hands nearly touched. The background showed the dressing room of the opera house, pristine, filled with flowers.

Lin lifted the photo. The back was inscribed with a single date: October 11, 1890.

Underneath, the letters waited.

He opened the top one. The handwriting was elegant, precise, but the ink had bled in places. It began simply:

To the one who follows…

The letter read like a confession. A story told to no one. It spoke of betrayal, of art twisted into chains, of love used as bait. Of blood. And of a pact.

Lin’s breath caught as he read the final lines:

If you are reading this, you carry his shadow. You are not him, but you remember. And I remember you.

The pact remains. But it must be completed. It was written in silence. It must end in song.

Find me beneath the fifth mirror.

He read it again. And again.

The mirror before him said nothing. But something shifted within it.

A flicker. A figure.

Lian Mei.

She stood at the far edge of the room, not in reflection, but behind the veil of the glass. Her lips moved. This time, her voice came—barely.

“Do you believe me now?”

Lin nodded slowly. “Yes.”

She stepped closer.

“Will you help me?”

The weight of the letters in his hand seemed to press into his bones. He didn’t know what it meant. What she wanted. But something in him had already answered.

“Yes.”

She smiled.

And the mirror fogged with her breath, writing a single word:

Soon.

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