Xu Hui steadied his breathing and raised the gun toward the mirror.

He saw himself in the glass also lifting the weapon, as if two people were aiming at each other across a battlefield.

The thought struck him so suddenly that his trigger finger trembled, forcing him to instinctively shut off the flashlight beam he'd been holding in his free hand.

With the light extinguished, darkness reclaimed the room. To his shock, a sickly green glow erupted behind the mirrored image of himself, casting an eerie verdigris across his own face reflected in the glass.

Xu Hui's eyes widened as he reflexively fired a shot into the mirror.

The bullet vanished through the surface without shattering it at all.

"Damn..." He stared at the mirror, disbelievingly firing another round - which disappeared identically into the glass. Switching on his flashlight, he circled the mirror stand three times, inspecting every angle until finding no trace of spent casings anywhere.

Pressing his palms against his face before letting them drop with a groan, Xu Hui reholstered his pistol and snatched up a chair still clinging to its legs. With a roar, he hurled it at the mirror - only for the wooden frame to collapse uselessly on the floor without so much as a crack in the glass surface.

Gritting his teeth, he dragged the entire mirror stand toward him, smashing it against the wall with enough force to dent steel. But not a single hairline fracture marred its flawless surface.

"This is a mirror?" Xu Hui spat out, hurling the chair aside as he doubled over on his knees, panting for breath like a drowning man.

After what felt like an eternity, he straightened and snatched up his flashlight, retreating toward the far corner where shadows seemed safest from that cursed stand. His back pressed against the wall, he finally exhaled - only to freeze mid-breath as absolute silence descended.

The room had become unnervingly quiet.

He didn't notice at first, fumbling for his phone which still showed no signal. A quick glance at the time made him stumble backward - it read exactly 12:00 AM.

"That can't be right," he muttered. Just minutes had passed since entering this building. With a grimace, he tucked the useless device away... until it suddenly flickered violently in his pocket.

The lock screen dissolved instantly, every app icon vanishing into black except for one blinking number: 60.

Within seconds, it changed to 59.

Xu Hui's eyes darted between the countdown and his own hands as he began counting aloud. When he reached sixty-one, the display showed 58. His pulse hammered against his ribs - whatever this was, it had exactly fifty-eight minutes before something terrible happened.

He nearly tossed the phone into the room but thought better of it. Instead, he turned toward the mirror again, staring at its dark frame as questions swirled through his mind: "Am I dreaming? A hyper-real nightmare?"

"Or just hallucinating from trauma?" He rose unsteadily, rationalizing this must be some kind of mental breakdown - otherwise how could bullets pass through an ordinary mirror?

His gaze drifted toward the window. Earlier it had opened easily enough. If he was stuck in a nightmarish loop, maybe jumping would wake him up. Even if it was just a hallucination, breaking that connection might still work.

Then something shifted in his perception.

The silence became oppressive - so complete he screamed into it and heard nothing return to his ears. Panicked, he stamped the floor until his feet throbbed from vibrations... but no sound emerged. The pouring rain outside remained maddeningly silent as he stumbled toward the window.

He yanked it open just in time for it to slam back against him with bone-jarring force. Catching the frame by reflex saved his skull, though not his forearms which absorbed most of the blow. Collapsing backward onto the floor, he gasped in pain - only now regaining hearing as his breath and the distant thunder began whispering through space again.

Peering at the window's glass surface, Xu Hui swore he saw hairline fractures from where he'd blocked it... but they vanished when he blinked. He rolled his aching arms, already planning revenge until his eyes caught something strange in the drawer beneath the mirror stand.

The small notebook was plastered to the back of a lower compartment with melted plastic. No more than an old child's sketchbook judging by the faded image of two red-kerchiefed children flying kites on its cover.

As he settled cross-legged against the wall, flashlight illuminating the yellowing pages, Xu Hui found only smudged ink stains on the first sheet. The rest was maddeningly blank - until something slid across the floor toward him like a living shadow, black as pitch and moving with unnatural speed.