Chapter 199: “Disappearance” (11) |
Seeing Sara Mary suddenly appear, Everly’s heart jolted.
In contrast, the Sara in the mirror looked like she had found some delicious prey. Her lips slowly curled upward, her bright red eyes fixed tightly on Everly, revealing a mocking smile identical to the one “Mirror Everly” had shown before.
“How interesting… this is the first time I’ve met someone who can stay conscious in front of my mirror. Little mouse, what’s your name?”
Everly didn’t answer. For her own safety, she quietly stepped back, hiding behind Natalie’s black cloak.
“Haha… it’s fine if you don’t answer. I’m always very forgiving toward beautiful people. And you have a face that perfectly matches my taste. I swear, I’ll cherish it well…”
As she spoke, inside the mirror, Sara’s eyes began to bulge outward unnaturally. Strange, snail-like tendrils seemed to extend beneath them. As her eyes grew larger and more distorted, something inside them seemed to rupture, spilling out a disturbing, fluid-like substance mixed with writhing, slug-like creatures—creating a scene like something out of a nightmare.
Sara’s face also began to change. At an unnatural speed, her facial features seemed to decay and collapse. The skin on her cheeks shrank and sagged, while numerous swelling lesions broke through the surface. As they expanded, they eventually burst, releasing foul-looking fluids along with swarms of flies.
Everly wasn’t sure if it was her imagination, but she could even hear the buzzing of wings near her ears. The sound felt so close, as if the insects might fly into her ears—or even into her mind—the next second.
It was the kind of horrifying sight that could drive an ordinary girl to the brink of madness.
A powerful soul, unwavering conviction, and a flawless, unshakable mind—these formed the strongest shield against psychic attacks.
As her thoughts settled into perfect clarity, the heavy pressure surrounding Everly—like something trying to drag her into an abyss—gradually dissipated. Even her cold breath returned to its normal warmth. When she looked again, the horrifying scene in the mirror had already vanished. Turning her head, she saw that in the real world, although Sara’s face looked somewhat gloomy, there were no signs of decay at all.
So that had just been a scare tactic…
“Bloody Mary, your opponent is me.” The small curse witch made a subtle motion as if turning around.
The black cloth swirled, smooth and light, shielding Everly behind it and clearly taking on the role of her protector.
Through the mirror, Everly saw Sara’s expression instantly darken.
“You’re going to help a human? When we are clearly of the same kind.” Sara M—or rather, Bloody Mary—glared at Natalie with venomous, blood-red eyes, her voice hoarse with resentment.
Natalie sneered. “I don’t consider a fallen evil spirit like you, one that has sunk into hell, to be my kind.”
Though her voice sounded no different from that of a little girl, it carried a heavy, undeniable pressure.
Bloody Mary seemed to have had a sore spot struck. The barely maintained normalcy of her features instantly twisted. “Ha, how ridiculous. Just a newly risen witch, and you dare interfere with my hunt!”
Seeing that Natalie was determined to protect Everly, Bloody Mary temporarily set the human aside and aimed her hostility directly at the curse witch floating in midair. She raised her left hand and snapped her fingers sharply.
“Little witch, today I’ll teach you properly—when facing someone stronger than you, you should learn humility.”
With Bloody Mary’s movement, the air above her left side suddenly rippled like water, forming several black waves. From within them, cone-shaped shards of mirrors emerged one by one. Their sharp tips tilted slightly, all aimed directly at Natalie in the corridor.
“Snap!”
With another snap of her fingers, the floating mirror shards shot forward like homing missiles, streaking through the air toward the witch in the narrow passage.
Good grief… Gate of Babylon?!
Everly was just considering whether to grab a mirror or a wooden board from the end of the corridor to block the incoming shards, but Natalie acted first. With a soft “whoosh,” the black dust cloth draped over her suddenly lifted, spreading like a curtain in front of them and catching all the incoming fragments.
“I’ll return those words to you,” Natalie’s slow voice came from behind the curtain.
The thin cloth should not have been able to withstand such a fierce barrage of mirror shards. Yet the moment the fragments touched it, the cloth began to rotate clockwise from its center outward. Layer upon layer, like overlapping petals, it wrapped tightly around the shards, binding them until they lost all their previous ferocity and were completely restrained.
Crack… crack-crack…
The sound of breaking glass rang out one after another. When the cloth unfurled again, the sharp mirror shards had been ground into a pile of glittering fragments. The cloth itself, however, was left tattered and riddled with holes.
But that was not all Natalie could do.
“An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.”
As the hole-ridden black cloth floated back into the air and settled over the unseen curse witch, the young girl’s voice rang out again—rhythmic and firm.
It was an ancient proverb from the Bible.
A simple, familiar phrase—yet in this moment, it sounded like a declaration of inevitable judgment.
As Natalie finished her incantation, Bloody Mary reacted as if struck by an invisible heavy blow. She let out a muffled groan, blood flowing from her nose and mouth.
On her body, several holes suddenly appeared in what had been intact sleepwear. Through those openings, the flesh beneath could be seen torn apart, bones shattered. Judging by the degree of collapse, even her internal organs had likely suffered serious damage.
Every wound mirrored the holes on Natalie’s body—yet each was several times more severe than the original damage.
This was the curse witch’s retaliation.
“Damn it, brat—you’ve made me angry!”
Wearing Sara’s face, Bloody Mary spat a mouthful of blood onto the ground. Under the beam of the flashlight, Everly could see her injuries rapidly healing at a visible speed. At the same time, Bloody Mary raised her left hand again, her expression dark, and snapped her fingers once more.
This time, realizing that simple physical attacks couldn’t harm Natalie, she used a different technique.
At the sound of the snap, invisible ripples spread through the air again. A massive mirror emerged from them, standing upright directly in front of Natalie.
The moment Everly saw its outline, she sensed trouble. After all, Bloody Mary was also known as the Mirror Witch, and her specialty lay in mirror-related magic. In countless stories, mirrors were often tied to concepts like “duplicates,” “another self,” or “real and fake” versions of someone—making them particularly difficult to deal with.
Sure enough, when the entire mirror fully emerged and clearly reflected Natalie—the black cloth floating in midair—the image in the mirror suddenly came alive.
It completely defied the laws of optics. Inside the mirror, the black cloth moved like a drifting jellyfish, stretching and shifting, before ramming violently against the mirror’s surface.
Crack… crack-crack…
With each impact, fine fractures spread across the mirror. Like a creature trapped inside an eggshell, the mirrored Natalie slammed against it again and again—until at last, the thin “membrane” separating reality from reflection shattered under the force.
It broke through the barrier of space, emerging from the shattered mirror. Its once two-dimensional form was granted a third dimension—an identical “Mirror Natalie” appeared before them.
One stood on the left, the other on the right, perfectly symmetrical, positioned on either side of the corridor like two ghostly jellyfish floating in the depths of the underworld.
The scene felt surreal, yet carried an indescribable beauty.
Unfortunately, the harmony lasted only a moment. The next second, Mirror Natalie suddenly let out a sharp screech and lunged at the real Natalie without warning.
“How amusing. Do you really think a fake like that can harm me?”
Natalie let out a cold laugh.
As she spoke, the hem of the black cloth stirred without wind. Countless gray-black flakes—like dust, or perhaps moths—fluttered out, their tiny wings beating softly as they gathered before her, forming a massive raven with a sharp, pointed beak.
A dreadful gray-black mist coiled around the raven. Its eyes glowed crimson, its form terrifying. It opened its beak with a harsh cry, then beat its wings and shot straight toward Mirror Natalie.
Rip—!
The raven collided with the mirror image. Its blade-like beak tore through the fragile cloth and plunged deep into Mirror Natalie’s chest.
At the same moment, the Natalie floating in front of Everly swayed slightly. An identical, massive tear appeared in her chest.
“HAHAHAHAHAHA! Beautifully done!”
Seeing this, Bloody Mary clutched her stomach and burst into wild, unrestrained laughter.
“This mirror’s reflection affects the original—if the reflection is injured, the real body is injured too!” Everly, having seen countless similar scenarios in films and TV shows, immediately grasped the principle.
This kind of enemy was extremely troublesome. If you attacked it, the damage it received would also be inflicted on yourself. But if you didn’t attack, it would charge at you relentlessly anyway. No matter what you did, it was a difficult situation.
As for the solution…
Everly glanced at where the mirror had been earlier.
She only knew one method—destroy the medium that summoned the creature.
For example, Mirror Natalie was a monster born from the mirror. Logically, destroying the mirror should make it disappear. Unfortunately, this situation didn’t follow that common trope. When the mirror image had broken through earlier, the mirror itself had already been torn apart and destroyed.
In that case, how to deal with the mirror image fell completely outside Everly’s knowledge.
She turned her hopeful gaze toward Natalie.
After all, this was a Curse Witch who had once toyed with the exorcist Wester as if he were nothing. Everly felt that dealing with a mere mirror creature shouldn’t be beyond her.
Sure enough, after hearing Everly’s analysis, Natalie let out a soft laugh.
“Now this is getting a little more interesting… Well, it makes sense. After all, she’s an old woman who’s lived for over a hundred years—she ought to have some tricks worth showing.”
With that, ignoring the furious Bloody Mary beside her, Natalie raised a hand from beneath the black cloth.
“I curse that the one my fingertip points to shall become lifeless wood, unable to move, bound forever by the shackles of time.”
The moment those words were spoken, both Bloody Mary and Everly froze in shock.
Because the finger beneath Natalie’s black cloth was clearly pointing at her own mirror image.
The source of a curse witch’s power was, after all, curses—her greatest specialty.
Almost the instant her voice fell, surging black mist engulfed Mirror Natalie.
Beneath the floating cloth of the mirror image, a yellowish wooden texture slowly appeared. Starting from the toes that touched the ground, it spread upward at incredible speed—first the soles, then the ankles, then the calves…
Before long, with a dull thud, the mirror image that had been floating in midair transformed into a familiar child-sized mannequin and fell to the ground.
Of course, Natalie was also transformed into a mannequin.
But unlike the immobilized mirror image, she clearly retained the ability to move.
“It’s been a long time since I moved around in this form… I almost miss it,” she said.
The tattered black dust cloth slipped down from above her head. Wearing a somewhat eerie smile, Mannequin Natalie turned her wooden head with a sharp click, a full ninety degrees. Her face—lined with thick fake eyelashes and exaggerated blush—faced Bloody Mary directly, her hollow eyes filled with an inhuman indifference.
“I’ve already seen your tricks. Now… it’s my turn.”