Two Beasts in a Shattered Mirror
"When the two greatest shadows meet,
The sky splits in silence,
And the earth weeps bloody glass.
There is no place for victory here...
For both are halves of a single broken soul."
— Inscribed on the wall of a dead world
• • •
The glass sky of the Mirror World cracked.
These were not ordinary cracks.
They were wounds bleeding black light, from which dripped crimson glass—the residue left after the explosion of the Liang fragment.
Each droplet that struck the ground birthed a new monster: not human-faced, but deformed bodies of bone and shadow, with eyes that bore the killer intelligence of Liang Jiuyong.
Mo Tianyin stood atop the highest hill, watching the chaos unfold.
He was no longer the omnipotent Lord of Mirrors.
He was now the warden of a hell devouring itself.
"You've come, Liang."
His voice no longer boomed.
It was a whisper slicing through the noise like a blade.
"To steal what's left of me?"
From a gate of black glass in the sky, Liang Jiuyong descended.
But he was no longer the "Heavenly Lord."
His black robes had melted into a skin of twisted horned mist.
His dark eyes had become twin voids of crimson glass.
In his hand: a blade of black flame formed from the scattered shards of red glass.
"Steal?" Liang laughed, his voice like the echo of a collapsing mountain.
"I did not steal, Shadow Lord. I nurtured the seed you yourself planted."
He raised the blade toward the sky.
"This world… was your greatest mistake. You made hell beautiful with your philosophy.
But I… I shall make it a true hell."
• • •
In Lower Yulong City, the ground shook.
Jin Lian and her men had taken shelter in the ancient city graveyard, where the twisted cypress trees were turning into black mirrors.
Jin Lian placed her hand on a trunk—
The reflection was not her own.
It showed:
Scenes from the Mirror World:
Mo Tianyin surrounded by beasts of crimson mist.
Liang walking on air, each step birthing red glass that split the ground.
Hills of bone dissolving into shimmering black lakes.
"It's collapsing," whispered Kai, trying to stop the bleeding from Duke's arm.
"Liang is killing the world itself!"
Jin Lian turned to the nearest mirror.
In its depths, she saw a boy:
Young Mo Tianyin, crying, hiding behind an old wooden door.
Not in the hut. In the Mirror World.
"It's not too late," she said, her voice oddly calm.
"Every hell has an exit…
If you see the child before the monster sees you."
• • •
At the heart of the dying world, the two shadows met.
Mo Tianyin did not attack. He defended.
Each time he raised his hand to form a wall of red mist, Liang's blade sliced through it—
Turning it into crimson glass that reflected Liang's sneering face.
"Do you see us?" roared Liang, crushing a hill of bones beneath his foot.
"I'm not merely your enemy!
I am a part of you!
The part that understands true power…
is to become the original beast!"
A swift strike.
Liang's blade pierced Mo Tianyin's shoulder.
But no blood came out.
Only gray mist—
Like a memory dissolving into the wind.
"What are you waiting for?"
whispered Mo Tianyin, his voice trembling for the first time in ages.
"To kill me?
I already killed myself before you arrived."
Liang rose above him, his red glass eyes aflame.
"Death? That would be mercy!
I want you to watch your hell become my personal domain!"
He raised the blade high.
The black flame shifted into a massive needle of crimson glass, ready to pierce the heart of the Mirror Lord.
Then—A voice.
"Stop!"
Not loud.
The voice of a child.
From a crack in the earth emerged Young Mo Tianyin,
Standing between the two towering shadows, his head barely reaching their thighs.
His large gray eyes stared at Liang—
Without fear.
"Leave him," said the child.
Liang froze.
A moment of genuine surprise.
Then he burst into laughter.
"This is your secret weapon?
A crying child?"
The crimson blade fell toward the child's head—
But suddenly, a hand of gray mist reached out from the wound in Mo Tianyin's shoulder.
Not to shield the boy—
But to catch the red blade before it struck.
"No!"
cried the full Mo Tianyin, his voice soaked with a pain the mirrors had never known.
"He is the last thing…
the last piece of my humanity!"
The crimson glass shattered in his ash-colored grip.
A silent white explosion swallowed everything.
• • •
Jin Lian awoke to screaming.
Not screams of pain—
Screams of astonishment.
She and her men stood in the middle of Lower City's square.
Around them, terrified citizens looked skyward.
The sky was no longer bloody or covered in smoke.
It was pale yellow,
Like the morning after a storm.
No sign of Liang's palace.
No Red Flower troops.
Only the ruins of a city awaiting rebuilding.
"What happened?" Kai whispered.
Jin Lian didn't answer.
Her eyes were fixed on something at the center of the square:
A small, broken mirror,
Like the one from the hut.
Beside it:
a piece of crimson glass, dulled,
and a fragment of shattered black flint.
She stepped closer.
In the glimmer of the broken mirror, she saw:
Liang Jiuyong, trapped in a realm of infinite black glass, screaming silently, his hands clawing at the walls of his eternal prison.
Mo Tianyin, a thin gray shadow, trying to repair the walls of his world with gray mist—but the cracks were growing.
And between them,
the child,
sitting on a giant shard of mirror,
trying to glue it back together with his tiny hands.
A high, piercing voice broke the silence:
"It's not over yet, Jin Lian.
The two hells are trying to rise from the ruins.
And the child…
waits for someone to help him mend the mirrors."
She turned.
No one there.
Above her, the pale yellow sky…
was beginning to crack once more.
Not to rain blood—
But to reveal other worlds, awaiting their rulers.
She picked up the two fragments:
The crimson glass,
and the black flint.
Two shards of a great broken soul.
Two keys to two hells…
Or to another kind of mercy.
The battle had ended.
But the true war—
to gather the fragments—
had only just begun.