Silence has a frequency.
When I crossed over, I could hear it: a low hum that was not sound, but rather the memory of sound.
It was the moment after lightning, before the thunder remembered that it had to arrive.
I tried to breathe.
The air was cold and dry, like inhaling powdered glass.
Then I opened my eyes.
The Inverted City
I was standing in a street that looked almost exactly like Beijing.
Almost.
The buildings were reversed — their signs were mirrored and the letters were crawling backwards, as if language itself was unlearning how to be read.
The streetlights didn't shine outwards; they shone inwards, bending light towards their poles like inverted suns.
There were people here — hundreds of them — walking without making a sound.
They moved in perfect rhythm, repeating the same gestures: turning corners that led nowhere; glancing at watches that didn't tick; whispering to no one.
When I stepped closer, I realised that none of them cast shadows.
Their faces were blurred, yet every one of them had eyes that felt familiar.
One of them stopped.
They turned towards me.
And smiled with my mouth.
The Still Sky
The sky above wasn't sky at all; it was a sheet of mirrored glass.
Clouds drifted beneath my feet rather than overhead.
Somewhere in the distance, I saw an upside-down tower stretching infinitely upwards and downwards at once in the reflection.
The air shimmered when I spoke.
My voice didn't echo; it was reflected.
I said, "Hello?"
And from the distance came back the same word — perfectly aligned, yet one second late.
That's when I understood:
This world doesn't repeat reality.
It remembers it.
The Loop
I started walking.
The city folded in on itself, with the same corners and windows repeating like a film reel looping the same frame.
With each turn, I found myself back where I started.
In the middle of an empty intersection, there was a freestanding mirror taller than a person.
I looked into it and saw not the city, but my apartment in Hangzhou.
The same desk. The same mirror shard.
In that reflection, however, I was still sitting there with my eyes closed and not moving.
I touched the mirror's surface.
Ripples spread across it as if it were water.
From behind the ripple, my reflected self opened her eyes.
She looked at me and tilted her head slightly — a gesture I hadn't made — and whispered,
'You're late.'
Then the reflection stepped forward.
The Double
The world fractured into light and darkness.
When I blinked, she was standing before me — solid and breathing, her movements precise but delayed by half a heartbeat.
She looked identical to me, right down to the faint scar on my wrist.
But her expression was calm and knowing.
Mine wasn't.
"Who are you?" I asked.
She smiled gently. "Evelyn."
'I'm Evelyn.'
She shook her head.
'You're the echo. I'm the one who stayed."
The wind — if it could be called that — shifted, carrying whispers that weren't words.
I tried to step closer, but the ground beneath our feet distorted and melted into translucent glass. Beneath it, I could see shadows moving — faces pressed against the underside, silent and watching.
My reflection, Evelyn Prime, raised her hand.
Every shadow beneath the glass turned its head towards her.
'They remember you,' she said softly. 'But not as you are. Only as you were."
The Mirror's Heart
I felt my mind splitting in two: one part observing, and the other part inside the observation.
Each thought echoed twice before being completed.
The sensation of existence itself became refracted.
"Why am I here?" I asked.
Evelyn Prime tilted her head again.
'Because you looked too long.'
Her hand brushed the air and the skyline inverted once more, the buildings folding upwards and dissolving into streams of light.
From the collapsing horizon, silhouettes of people I had seen die emerged, replaying their final moments in a loop.
They turned towards me, their eyes hollow and their mouths moving silently.
My chest tightened.
The Vision Sense — my curse and my gift — was active again.
But this time, it wasn't showing me death.
It was showing me remembrance.
The Truth Beneath the Reflection
'Is this the afterlife?' I asked, although I already knew the answer.
Evelyn Prime smiled faintly.
'There is no afterlife. Only reflection. When the mind breaks, its image keeps walking. You're inside what your kind leaves behind."
She stepped closer until our faces were inches apart.
Her eyes were grey – my colour – but deeper and more metallic, like the inside of a mirror.
'You were never the first, Evelyn. And you won't be the last.'
She placed her palm against mine.
The instant our skin touched, the world dissolved into a thousand fragments — light, glass, memory, time — all folding into one another like collapsing waves.
As the fragments closed in, I heard her voice echoing inside my head:
'You think you crossed into this place.
But maybe — I crossed into you.'
When I opened my eyes again, the city had disappeared.
I was standing in a field of mirrored water, skyless and soundless.
My reflection stared back at me from the surface, and for the first time, it smiled first.