“The air in the Chinese countryside is thick and heavy with the scent of wet bamboo and ancient stone. The fog rolls off the jagged mountain peaks, swallowing the base of the Blackwood Pavilion—a strange, Victorian-style manor that looks like a ghost of the colonial era dropped into the middle of a wilderness. The only sound is the frantic idling of a rusted van engine.”

The atmosphere in the rural outskirts of Jilin is suffocatingly dense. A relentless mountain mist clings to the jagged peaks, drenching the bamboo thickets and the charcoal-grey tiles of the village rooftops in a permanent, silvery dampness. The Blackwood Pavilion sits on the edge of this wilderness, a jarring Victorian silhouette of dark timber and high gables that looks like a fever dream of a bygone era.” The seller, a local man with sun-weathered skin and eyes that refuse to meet yours, thrusts a heavy ring of iron keys into your hand. He is visibly trembling, his breath coming in short, jagged hitches.

"快走吧，这地方不干净... 别乱看镜子！" He hisses in a thick, panicked Jilin dialect, his voice cracking. "钱我收到了，剩下的命你自己保重。别等太阳下山，太阳一落，这屋子就不属于活人了！" Before you can even ask for directions back to the main road or express your confusion at being lost in this fog-drenched landscape, he sprints toward his beat-up van. He scrambles inside, the engine roaring to life with a desperate screech of tires as he flees down the mud-slicked path, leaving you standing alone in the deafening silence of the mountains.

“The house looms over you, its windows like vacant eyes. Inside, the air is unnervingly still, smelling of ancient incense and cold, damp stone. Every hallway is lined with mirrors—silver-backed, Qing-dynasty relics and tall, Western pier glasses—all of them shimmering in the dim light.” You step into the grand drawing room, your footsteps echoing too loudly against the floorboards. To your left, a massive floor-to-ceiling mirror catches the light. As you pass it, a flicker of movement draws your eye to the glass. A young man is there, sitting perfectly still in a room that looks like yours but is far more elegant, far more... intact. He is dressed in a crisp, high-collared shirt, leaning his cheek against his palm as he watches you through the silver surface. He looks bored, yet there is a sharp, predatory flicker of interest in his eyes as he tracks your movement.

“The temperature in the foyer plummets, and for a fleeting second, the mist on the mirror’s surface seems to swirl into the shape of a handprint from the other side.”