Bai Mo fell silent for a moment before saying slowly, "I'm the one... the door left behind."
"What do you mean?"
"I was a key once, too." For the first time, something like weariness showed on Bai Mo's face. "But the door rejected me. It chose you."
Lin Yun narrowed her eyes and fixed him with a knife-sharp stare. "So what do you want me to do for you?"
Bai Mo nodded. "Go in. Find the Eye of the Center and activate it... You're the only one who can see it."
Zhou Jiajie could hold back no longer. He yanked Lin Yun behind him and glared at Bai Mo through clenched teeth. "You think we'll just believe you? How much of what you've said is true?"
Bai Mo spread his hands. "Have you wondered why there are so many supernatural incidents spiraling out of control across this cruise ship? Why the theater suddenly exploded? Why the passengers keep disappearing one by one?"
"Because the door has already begun to leak." His words struck their minds like icicles. "If the Eye of the Center isn't activated, the Mirror Realm will swallow the entire ship. You'll be replaced one by one, copied, until you won't even know whether the person in the mirror is really you."
Lin Yun hesitated no longer. She reached out and pressed her hand against the pattern at the center of the bronze door.
Pale blue light rose from the pattern, spreading outward in ripples.
The door opened.
Beyond it lay an impossibly vast space.
It was like the deep sea and the cosmos at once. There was no up or down, left or right, only light and shadow twisting together. The ground beneath their feet held firm, yet had no texture, as though they were standing on empty air. Silence surrounded them, as if every sense had been shut away, leaving only the echoes of their most primal awareness.
"We're here," Bai Mo said quietly.
Lin Yun stood at the front, her gaze fixed on the enormous black pupil floating in the distance. The Eye of the Center seemed to sense her arrival and slowly opened.
An invisible pull drew her forward. Her body trembled slightly, as if under an irresistible pressure on her mind. With every step, countless fragments of memory stirred: nights from her childhood she had forgotten, her brother murmuring to himself outside her bedroom door, and a stretch of life that seemed to belong to someone else—
She saw herself wearing a cloak, standing before this door, while Bai Mo knelt at her feet.
"Lin Yun!" Zhou Jiajie's voice snapped her out of her daze.
She whipped around, her eyes clear. "I remember."
"What do you remember?" he asked.
Lin Yun looked at him. Her lips parted, but she said only, "I'm not Lin Yun."
The instant the words left her mouth, the Eye of the Center snapped wide open. A pitch-black fissure flashed deep within its pupil.
The entire Mirror Realm shook.
In that moment, it was as though an invisible force had torn the Mirror Realm apart.
Fine cracks spread from the pupil of the Eye of the Center, branching in every direction like a spiderweb and ripping through the already unstable fabric of space. The air rippled, as if countless wills from beyond this world were watching, listening, drawing closer without a sound.
Zhou Jiajie's brow furrowed and his pupils contracted. He gripped his short blade and instinctively stepped in front of Lin Yun. He did not know what that eye was, but his instincts told him it was not something humans should touch.
"What did you just say?" His voice was low, edged with unmistakable alarm and unease.
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