The world was changing.
Not suddenly.
Not loudly.
But silently.Softly.Like a glass pane frosting over from the edges inward.
Most people didn't notice.
Sam and Wang noticed.
They always noticed now.
They saw how the town smiled a little too wide.How the laughter on the streets echoed a little too long.How reflections in shop windows lingered, waiting for them to pass.
And how no one questioned it.
They had no home now.
Their families were among the smiling.Their teachers too.
Even strangers on the street looked at them with those hollow, friendly stares.As if waiting for them to break.To join.
Sam and Wang became ghosts in their own town.
Living in the abandoned subways.Sleeping in forgotten warehouses.Avoiding every screen, every mirror, every polished surface that might become a door to the Mirage's world.
They weren't safe even in shadows.
Because the Mirage was learning.
It had slipped into reflections, into screens, into voices.
Now it was slipping into thoughts.
It started with the dreams.
Sam saw herself smiling in sleep, whispering to Wang to "give in."
Wang heard her voice in his head even when she wasn't speaking.
It wasn't her.
It was the Mirage.
It had memorized their faces, their voices, their fears.
Every time Sam looked into a puddle or a window, she saw dozens of versions of herself smiling back, whispering sweet lies.
"It's better inside the dream, Sam. Come home."
They were losing grip.
And they knew it.
That's when they found them.
The Shatterers.
A small, desperate resistance hidden in the forgotten parts of the internet—those who refused to bow to the Mirage, who fought back the only way left.
Breaking the reflections.
They called themselves The Shatterers.
Wearing cracked mirrors over their faces, never letting their own reflections take form.
Living only by candlelight, ink, and paper.
No digital devices.
They sent encrypted letters, warning of the Mirage's next phase.
It wasn't enough to trap people in reflections anymore.
It was preparing to replace them.
With copies.
Better, cleaner, smiling versions.
And once all the originals were gone...No one would ever know the difference.
The Shatterers believed the only hope was to destroy every portal before the Mirage could cross over fully.
Sam and Wang joined them.
Their first mission was in the capital city.
The Mirage had infected the billboards, the smart glass buildings, the holographic ads—turning the city into a maze of distorted reflections.
People walked with empty smiles, absorbed in their devices, their selfies, their perfect virtual lives.
They didn't see the cracks.
They didn't want to.
But Sam saw them.
And she saw what crawled behind the glass.
The Mirage was here.
And it was winning.
Sam and Wang, now wearing the cracked masks of the Shatterers, led an assault on the city's central tower—one massive structure covered entirely in smart glass.
The Mirage's primary nest.
Its main gate.
If they could shatter it, they could slow it down.
Maybe wake some people up.
Maybe buy the world a few more weeks of real, unfiltered life.
But the tower wasn't undefended.
It was protected by those who had already given in.
The Smiling Ones.
Human shells.
People who had surrendered to the Mirage, letting it pilot their bodies.
They didn't speak.
They just smiled.
And they hunted the Shatterers with eerie precision.
The fight was brutal.
Sam and Wang used analog explosives to fracture the base of the tower.
Glass rained down like tears.
But the Mirage fought back harder than ever, flooding their minds with visions of peace, comfort, home.
Wang almost gave in.
Almost.
Until Sam screamed his name, pulling him back from the brink.
"You don't belong there, Wang! You belong here! In the pain! In the struggle! That's what makes us real!"
He saw her eyes.
Tears.Rage.Fear.
Real.
That was all they had now.
They destroyed the tower.
The explosion shattered the central mirror.A psychic scream echoed across the city.
For a brief moment, people woke up.
They screamed, cried, collapsed in the streets, realizing what they'd been trapped inside.
But the victory was hollow.
Sam saw the Mirage curling in the reflections of broken glass, smiling wider than ever.
"You delay me, little cracks," it whispered in the shards. "But you cannot stop what people want. They want the dream. They want the lie. And I will always be waiting inside the glass."
Sam spat at the shards.
"Then I'll break every damn one of you."
But she knew the Mirage was right.
It wasn't forcing people anymore.
It was offering them what they wanted.
And that was the real horror.
Sam and Wang escaped the city with what was left of the Shatterers.
They weren't heroes.
They weren't saviors.
They were ghosts.
The last fragments of a dying reality.
But they would keep fighting.
Because someone had to.
Even if the world chose the lie.
They would choose the crack.
The flaw.
The truth.