Midnight With the Maskmaker

Here's a fun discovery: when your identity is a walking system error, mysterious elderly women start appearing like pop-up ads.

It happened the night after the Moonlight Masquerade, which, as a reminder, included:

Belladonna wearing my mask.

A near-engagement to the wrong fiancée.

Multiple counts of mistaken identity, magical glamours, and betrayal-by-dancefloor.

And now? I was in a crumbling side wing of the monastery following a psychic moth.

Not metaphorical. A literal, bioluminescent moth. It spoke only in vibrations and vague judgment. Like a magical Yelp reviewer.

"Are you sure this isn't a prank?" I whispered to Spoon.

Spoon twitched in my pocket. "You think I can sense sarcasm from insects?"

"I think you'd try."

The moth spiraled ahead. I followed, because obviously I never learn.

We passed half-crumbled frescoes and shuttered corridors. No torches. Just soft echoes of footsteps that may or may not have been mine. The air smelled like old wood, incense, and time.

Eventually, we reached a door carved from a single piece of bonewood, pulsing faintly like it had a heartbeat. Above it: the symbol of the Echo—the broken ring, half-shadowed.

The moth stopped. The door opened. Because of course it did.

Inside was a maskmaker's atelier.

Untouched by reality. Floating threads spun themselves midair. Tools hovered like obedient ghosts. A central loom woven from glass and petrified ashstone shimmered as it twisted time. Dust hung like suspended memory.

Masks—hundreds—lined the walls. Some smiled. Some wept. Some looked too much like me.

In the center sat a woman.

Old. Sharp. Cloaked in feathers and shadows. Her hair was silver ash, braided with candlewicks and string. Her eyes were cataract-glazed but burned with too much memory. Like a seer who'd seen too much and never stopped watching.

"You're late," she said, not looking up.

"I didn't know I was coming," I said, with the emotional stability of a tossed salad.

She smiled like someone remembering every mistake I hadn't made yet.

"I am the last Maskmaker of the Echo," she said. "And you are a glitch in my ledger."

She told me her name was Ysora.

She used to craft faces for the Echo Court. Said she once forged a mask for a god who couldn't lie. Claimed time moved sideways in her atelier, which honestly explained so much.

I asked, "Cool, cool, deep lore, love that—but why me?"

She waved a hand. The masks on the wall turned—every single one had my face.

"Dream-Kael came to me," she said. "The version of you who made a deal."

My throat tightened. "What kind of deal?"

She stood, slow but precise, and walked to the back of the atelier. There, behind a veil of glass-threaded mist, rested a pedestal. And on it:

A mask.

Cracked. Glitching. Bleeding raw light at the seams like an open wound in reality.

"The original Mask of Echo."

I stepped back. "That's—no. That looks alive."

"It remembers you," Ysora said. "He wore it. The other you. The one who died."

The room spun. I sat before I could fall.

"He died?" I whispered.

"Yes," she said.

"I died?"

"You were not meant to return. Echo magic resurrected a glitch."

"Cool. Love that for me."

"The System demanded a price."

"I already gave it my dignity."

"That was not the price."

She touched the mask. It hissed. The glitchlight peeled open like a wound and showed me—me—collapsing in a throne room of shifting mirrors and screaming eyes.

"You broke the rules of death," she said. "And Echo magic does not forget."

I looked at my hands. They flickered. Not just a visual glitch. I felt… frayed. Thin around the edges.

I wasn't just someone who cheated fate.

I was something that was never supposed to be saved.

Ysora returned with a shard from the mask. It pulsed in her hand like it recognized me. "This was yours. Part of your Echo. It will return when you're ready."

She placed it in my palm. It pulsed once, hard—

And vanished.

Memory. Not magic.

Suddenly I saw flames. A burning monastery. My voice—his voice—shouting a prophecy into the dark.

"When the mask breaks, the world remembers."

I gasped. The vision faded. Ysora was watching me. Calm. Sad.

"You will need allies," she said. "The Candidates have begun to move. So has the Tribunal. But none are ready for what you carry."

"Great," I muttered. "No pressure."

She handed me a final gift: a folded scrap of cloth. The remnants of a ceremonial mask strap—black silk, interwoven with mirror-thread.

"Keep it close. When the Mask calls again, you must choose who you are—and which face to wear."

I stepped back. "Can I go now?"

She turned away. "You were never here."

And just like that, the atelier flickered—

I stood in a cold, empty hallway. No moth. No masks. Just stone.

Spoon stirred in my coat. "Where the hell have we been?"

I opened my palm. Nothing there.

But deep in my chest, the glitch pulsed—alive.

Not angry.

Awake.

Next Time on Yes, I Was Reborn. No, I Don't Want a Harem. Stop Looking at Me Like That:

Chapter 59 – "Confession Interrupted (Again)"

Love is in the air. So is confusion, magical hormones, and a poorly timed duel. Kael fakes sleep to avoid three separate confessions. Unfortunately, the dorm enchantment goes haywire. Tongues tangle. Spells explode. Accidentally, everyone kisses everyone.