The reflection that wore my face stepped through the shattered mirror, its golden eyes drinking in the ruined facility like a man returning home after a long war. Behind it, more figures emerged—shapes that flickered between human and something else, their movements synchronized in unnatural harmony.
The heir screamed again as the creatures swarmed him, their hands plunging into his chest, his mouth, his eyes, peeling him apart layer by layer. Not to kill him. To understand him.
Anya's fingers dug into my arm. "We need to move."
But the reflection raised its hand, and the world froze—every flame suspended mid-flicker, every particle of dust hanging motionless in the air. Only we remained untouched.
"You finally made it," it said, its voice layered with echoes of every version of me that had ever existed. "Took you long enough."
The original Lu Chen groaned from where he lay bleeding on the floor. "Don't...trust it..."
The reflection smiled, revealing teeth too white, too sharp. "Oh, you poor, fractured thing. Still clinging to the idea that you were ever real."
It knelt beside the dying man and pressed a finger to his forehead. The original convulsed once—then dissolved into golden mist, absorbed through the reflection's skin.
Anya's gun was in her hand before I could blink. "What the hell are you?"
The reflection tilted its head. "The question isn't what. It's WHEN."
It snapped its fingers.
The facility unraveled around us.
---
THE FIRST LIE
We stood in a child's bedroom.
Pale yellow walls. A toy chest overflowing with stuffed animals. A nightlight shaped like a crescent moon casting soft shadows across a twin-sized bed where a small boy slept, his dark hair tousled against the pillow.
Li.
But not the heir. Just a child. Maybe five years old.
The reflection gestured to the sleeping boy. "This is where it began. Not with Mu. Not with the loops. With him."
A noise from the hallway—footsteps. The door creaked open, revealing a woman who wasn't Mu, but shared her sharp cheekbones and calculating gaze. She carried a tray with a glass of milk and a single blue pill.
"Time for your medicine, sweetheart," she murmured, shaking the boy awake.
Li—small, innocent, human—rubbed his eyes and obediently swallowed the pill. Within seconds, his pupils dilated, his tiny body going rigid as his irises flooded gold.
The woman smiled. "Good boy."
She turned toward the door—toward us, though she couldn't see us—and called out:
"Subject is ready for phase two."
The reflection sighed. "And so it begins."
---
THE SECOND LIE
The scene shifted.
A surgical theater. Li, now older, strapped to a table as a team in hazmat suits inserted something into his skull. Not a chip. Not a device.
A tooth.
Yellowed and ancient, threaded with gold wire.
The reflection pointed to the monitors displaying Li's brain activity. "They called it a neural catalyst. A bridge between human consciousness and..." It trailed off, watching as the child's screams turned to laughter, his golden eyes burning brighter with each passing second.
Anya made a choked sound. "That's not possible."
"Oh, it's worse than that," the reflection said. "The tooth belonged to something far older than Mu. Something that wanted to be found."
The surgical team stepped back as Li sat up, his movements fluid, predatory. When he spoke, his voice was layered with something ancient:
"Where is my vessel?"
The reflection snapped its fingers again.
THE THIRD LIE
Darkness.
Then—light.
We stood in a cavern so vast its ceiling was lost in shadow. The walls pulsed with bioluminescent veins, casting an eerie glow over the hundreds of stone slabs arranged in concentric circles. Each slab held a skeleton, their skulls all bearing the same unnatural modification—a hole drilled neatly above the left eyebrow.
And in the center, resting on an altar of black stone:
A single golden tooth.
The reflection approached it with something like reverence. "They worshipped it, you know. The first civilization. Fed it their brightest minds, hoping to birth a god." It turned to us, its eyes now fully gold. "Instead, they birthed me."
A sound echoed through the cavern—a child's laughter.
Li stepped from the shadows, but not the heir. The original Li. His eyes wide with terror, his small hands clutching a stuffed rabbit.
"Please," he whispered. "Don't let it in again."
The reflection sighed. "Too late for that."
It picked up the golden tooth—and the moment its fingers made contact, the cavern screamed.
---
The world shattered into fragments.
One moment we were in the cavern, the next we were back in the ruined facility, the heir's dismembered body twitching on the floor as the creatures continued their work.
The reflection stood over him, the golden tooth now embedded in its palm.
"It's funny," it mused. "All those loops, all that suffering, just to bring you here." It leaned down, pressing its forehead against the heir's. "To bring you home."
The heir's body convulsed—then went still.
When his eyes reopened, they weren't gold.
They were black.
And the reflection smiled.
"Now we can begin."
Behind us, the facility doors began to unlock.