(TL Note: This chapter is pretty long)
The labyrinth revealed its true form, and countless windows opened along the expanded corridor.
From each and every one of them, snakes came spilling out, and scales glinting like eyes covered the floor.
Even touching just one would likely make defeat unavoidable.
Even understanding that, Senano did not retreat a single step.
“Hibari, we’re not done dancing yet.”
She spread her hands and stepped through the motions of an offering.
Her footsteps were the rhythm, her fingertips the flow of the dance.
Flames spread from her back like wings, tracing circles as they burned the snakes away.
The fire was not mere heat, but light itself carrying a prayer.
As a NARROW, its compatibility remained exceptional.
“That really is troublesome. …If I’d had that, maybe I wouldn’t have ended up like this. Why are you the only one who gets to have something that wonderful?”
“Talent.”
From that curt dismissal, it was clear that Shion had grown angry.
Her face had already strayed beyond the human, but the eyes of the snakes writhing within it instead expressed the girl’s fury.
“You don’t have anything like that.”
The snakes had no intention of staying silent spectators either.
The windows opened in the walls on both sides rippled all at once, and laughing human silhouettes peered out from beyond them.
They were victims who had been swallowed by this Aberrant Entity and fused into one with it.
No, by now, they should have been called accomplices.
Thousands of snakes spewed from their mouths and came twisting in like a vortex.
“Overwhelming me with numbers. How shortsighted.”
Without stopping her feet, Senano danced her way forward, splitting that vortex apart.
A single slash to the left, a spinning sweep to the right.
Her flaming wings mowed through the swarm of snakes and scattered shards of glass.
The snake-windows multiplied one after another, but Senano’s movements too grew ever more refined and fluid.
No matter how much she cut and burned, the corridor never fell still.
But her dance was an unbroken prayer.
With each beat of her offering, the flames intensified, melting parts of the windows and even forcing them shut, if only temporarily.
“I can’t let there be any more victims like you…!”
She stepped in with that cry.
Her flaming wings bloomed open like a giant flower and collided with the snakes pouring from the windows.
Blood, flame, and glass fragments scattered, and the entire corridor seemed to burst as it was swallowed by light and shadow.
Neither side allowed the other a decisive blow, and flame and snake remained deadlocked.
The sight of a human girl and an aberrant window, two completely opposing forces locked head-on against each other, was itself a battle between prayer and curse.
“Why do you keep resisting?”
The voice echoing from the windows was full of both curiosity and arrogance.
As though she were innocently observing an ant that had fallen into an antlion’s pit, Shion continued.
“The harder you try, the more tired you get, don’t you, Senano-chan? That NARROW of yours doesn’t work properly unless you dance, right? You’re all alone, so you have limits. But we have everyone here, and we’re infinite. So why are you fighting so desperately?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
She whipped up a vortex of flame and swept the snakes away.
Then, rushing toward one of the windows that now held nothing behind it, she kicked upward with her scorching toes.
“My hungry housemate is waiting for me back home!”
The window frame crumpled, and another window vanished.
But another immediately appeared behind it, and snakes came flooding out.
“That’s ridiculous.”
Shion spoke in a cold voice.
It was so cold and inorganic that it was impossible to imagine it coming from the same girl who had worn such a gentle air only a little while ago.
“Senano-chan. After becoming this person’s window, I realized something. There are just too many things in this world that human power can’t do anything about.”
“I knew that from the moment I decided to become an Enri Bearer.”
“That’s right. I thought that too. I became an Enri Bearer because I wanted to save people from unfairness. I wanted to become a champion of justice who could protect everyone. But does that justice really exist? Aren’t we just being kept alive by the whims of some vast existence, with all the effort we’ve made until now meaning nothing?”
A single eye appeared in every window all at once.
Red and bloodshot, swollen from crying, that eye was unmistakably Shion’s.
As snakes kept streaming from her like tears, Shion lifted her hand with puppet-like movements and held it out to Senano.
“Won’t you become a window too? You’re capable, so that person says they’ll prepare a good position for you. Hey, what do you say? I don’t think it’s a bad offer for either of us.”
“I refuse.”
“I see… That’s a shame. I thought we could have made a really good pair.”
Shion looked as though she was sad from the bottom of her heart.
But that had nothing at all to do with Senano.
She cast aside her feelings and dealt with her as an Aberrant Entity.
That alone was the only way to protect the last dignity of the Enri Bearer Kagemori Shion.
“Look, more snakes are coming.”
This time, windows formed in the ceiling.
With dull, wet thuds, snakes dropped one after another.
Their numbers were gradually beginning to overwhelm the flames.
“…!”
NARROW had more than enough functionality.
Its compatibility was good too.
But Senano had limits.
She forced her leaden legs to move, and swung her arms through the pain shooting through her joints.
No matter how painful it was, her dance remained graceful and powerful.
“It’s pointless.”
Shion spat that out as she watched.
At that moment, it suddenly appeared there.
Whether Shion had let her guard down, or whether Senano had kept dancing beyond her limits, the cause was unclear, but it was true that she had bought enough time for it to appear here.
“—A mirror?”
Standing there was a large full-length mirror that should not have existed.
Untouched by dust, that mirror stood as though it had put down roots in space itself.
The moment Shion saw it, a strange sensation struck her.
“…?”
Her body slowly tilted forward.
As if she had no choice but to do so.
Before she realized it, she was giving the mirror a perfect bow.
“What is this…”
The mirror filled her bewildered vision.
At the lower part of that large, beautiful mirror, a pair of horribly emaciated, ragged legs emerged.
Crossing the mirror, crossing the boundary, those legs stepped out before Shion as she continued bowing.
“What is this? I don’t know this…! That person doesn’t know about this…!”
Driven by fear, Shion muttered under her breath.
Then, all at once, her body regained its freedom.
Shion instinctively jerked her upper body upright.
Her knowledge as an Enri Bearer was telling her that she must not keep bowing.
But as a response, it was far too late.
“…Huh?”
Standing before her was a woman wrapped in ragged hemp cloth.
With drenched hair and a wasted body, she looked so lifeless that one could have believed she was a mummy.
Most abnormal of all was that the woman’s face was her own.
“W-why…?!”
Something was wrong.
The moment Shion realized that, she sent snakes out to protect herself.
The snakes coiled around the woman’s legs and sank their fangs into her.
The woman did not resist.
She only stood there.
That was what made her so strange, so terrifying, so grotesque.
“One of Senano-chan’s allies!?”
“Even I don’t know what this is!”
Senano answered without stopping her dance.
Even then, she continued observing that mirror.
But even she had no information on this Aberrant Entity.
“Then this is—”
Just as Shion tried to ask, she clearly saw it.
The windows on the opposite side, within the range reflected by the mirror, all became similar full-length mirrors at once.
More full-length mirrors appeared, and women of the same form emerged from them.
One window after another turned into a mirror.
As though the world itself were being rewritten, the surroundings were overwritten by what the mirrors reflected.
The mirrors increased as if footage were being fast-forwarded, while the snakes and windows dwindled in number.
The Aberrant Entity that had been ruling this place until moments ago had its world stolen by a mysterious presence that had suddenly appeared.
All that remained was Shion, and the window inside her.
The shadow that had been smiling within it thrashed as though screaming in tears, continuing to pour snakes out from Shion’s body in great numbers.
“N-no.”
Shion cried that out suddenly.
“There’s… there’s something reflected in the window! A me that isn’t me…! Even though it isn’t a mirror! I…!”
Shion went wild and knocked down one of the full-length mirrors.
In the shattered fragments, countless Shions were reflected.
Every one of them was smiling at Shion for some reason.
As though relieved.
“No no no………………ah”
The raging Shion suddenly stopped moving dead still.
Then she stared at her own hands, opening and closing them as if checking something.
“I’m not the real thing anymore.”
The moment Shion said that in a voice that sounded both convinced and despairing, cracks like stained glass spread across her body, and it burst apart all at once.
What had once been Shion scattered all around them.
“…What is happening?”
Having witnessed everything from start to finish, Senano stayed on guard and looked at the mirror.
Strangely enough, the mirror did not reflect Senano.
As though their role had ended, the mirrors shattered on the spot, one after another.
At the same time, the women standing before them also broke apart with shrill, piercing sounds.
In the corridor filled with high-pitched shattering and ash that had once been snakes drifting through the air, Senano stood there alone.
Something beyond her knowledge had happened, and then it had ended.
And then, at last, a crack ran through the final mirror.
At that moment, Senano clearly saw what was reflected in it.
Not the concrete corridor, and not Senano.
What was reflected there was an endless blue sky.
■
【Enri Agency Top Secret Record】
Aberrant Entity Code: EN-XXXX-JP
Common Name: The Mirror That Is (Aru Kagami)
Hazard Class: calamity-lord-class
Recognition Form: mirror-surface-type / self-inversion-type
■ Overview
At first glance, 『The Mirror That Is』 is nothing more than an ordinary full-length mirror, but in any human who comes into contact with it, it induces a compulsive impulse of etiquette: a natural urge to lower the head and bow.
Once this act is performed, a terminal body in the shape of a woman manifests from the mirror surface. The woman’s face is vaguely distorted, and because the observer perceives it as bearing “their own face,” it is presumed that no true face exists.
This terminal body is merely a “catalyst,” and the true nature lies in the mirror itself and its ability to dominate space and cognition.
■ Characteristics and the Core of Its Horror
・Self-Replacement
Anyone who peers into the mirror is seized by the illusion that “they are inside the mirror.”
As time passes, the real body is switched from “the human outside the mirror” to “the being inside the mirror.”
As a result, what remains in the real world is only an image, while the actual self is confined within the mirror.
・Duplication and Revolt
A captured human is reconstructed as a “terminal body that came out of the mirror.”
It perfectly imitates that person’s appearance, voice, and memories, but its will is subordinate to 『The Mirror That Is』.
For this reason, incidents of “trustworthy people being replaced” have occurred on a national scale, and in the past there was even an attempted overthrow of a nation’s government.
・Curse-Bond of Etiquette
So long as one does not act disrespectfully before the mirror, the terminal body does not attack immediately.
However, the moment one bows, it is recognized as “having rendered proper courtesy = having formed a contract,” and one’s mirror image is collected as payment.
Because of this, there is an inevitability that “anyone who bows will, without fail, one day be trapped within the mirror.”
・Mirror-Surface Expansion
『The Mirror That Is』 is not limited to a single mirror. It propagates to every reflective surface seen by the person who bowed.
Hand mirrors, window glass, water surfaces, metal plates—every reflection turns into a mirror, making escape impossible.
・Historical Cases
Several hundred years ago, in a certain small country, nobles and officials were successively replaced by “loyal shadows” and seized the core of state governance.
In the end, even the king himself was replaced, and the nation perished.
After that, it was determined that no response other than sealing was possible, as destroying the mirror still allowed it to reappear so long as any reflective surface remained.
■ Countermeasures
Direct observation prohibited: The first priority is not to look at the mirror. A powerful mental barrier is required in order to ignore the impulse to bow.
Reflection blockade: Cover all reflective surfaces with cloth or mud. Drain water surfaces, and apply measures such as annealing metal.
Combat against terminal bodies: They can be destroyed with ordinary weapons, but regenerate immediately. The source lies in the mirror itself.
Sealing: According to old documents, 『The Mirror That Is』 temporarily loses its power through “reverse courtesy” (turning one’s back to the mirror and refusing to bow), but the danger is extraordinarily high.
Absorption by ■■■■: Carried out in 1■■■. Absorption completed without issue. No abnormalities are observable in ■■■■ either.
■ The Core of the Horror
The horror of 『The Mirror That Is』 lies not in being an existence that kills by force, but in using human “etiquette” and “social order” to replace people from the inside.
Without realizing it, people lower their heads. Without realizing it, they are taken by the mirror. Without realizing it, a monster wearing their face has entered the world.
In other words, 『The Mirror That Is』 is an Aberrant Entity that makes one unable to trust even oneself, and the confusion it causes is enough to destroy even a nation.