Reborn as a Prophet in a Horror Movie

#147Reader Mode

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#147

The glass was cold against his fingertips, exactly as expected. But beneath that chill, something else pulsed… a faint, unexpected warmth. Behind his closed eyelids, a spark of light bloomed in the darkness. Regret knotted instantly in Seojun’s stomach, but it was already too late.

The darkness exploded—not just with light, but with a vision that crashed in and overwhelmed him. A scene of murder. A brutal stabbing between two people. He saw the slide of blade into flesh, saw blood misting the air like crimson spray, faces contorting in agony. Sweat gleamed on Camry’s forehead as she killed Leimia, before Camry herself collapsed, knees cracking against the floorboards, blood gushing from her mouth.

It happened fast. Violent. Chaotic. Far uglier than anything he could have imagined. No hesitation—just the terrible, immediate act of one life extinguishing another, all reflected in the mirror’s cold surface.

How could they hate each other that much?

The sheer speed and certainty in their actions as they destroyed each other terrified him. Fresh blood pooled on the floor, refusing to soak into the wood, making his neck hairs stand on end.

Then, as suddenly as it began, the reflection cleared. Blood, bodies—gone. All sucked into the mirror. Seojun’s eyes fluttered against the sudden emptiness. But something else ripped through him—a jolt, deep and fundamentally wrong. It felt like Leimia herself was tearing free from inside him, a phantom splitting as her form stepped impossibly from the mirror’s surface. The sensation was completely alien, a tearing not of flesh but of something deeper, leaving him hollow, scraped raw from within.

Warmth trickled inside his nose. Salt and iron on his tongue. Blood. A thin stream made its way toward his lip.

“Seojun.”

The call was soft. A gentle touch against his mind. But the voice was lower now, rougher. More hoarse than yesterday. The poison. The image flashed unbidden: Camry choking, vomiting blood mixed with bits of her own organs, eyes bulging, whites turned bright red as vessels burst.

“Seojun.”

Again. Closer now. It seemed to echo from just behind him.

In the blinding vision behind his eyes, the shadow began to move—Leimia, who had killed Camry. She strolled out of the room, fingers trailing lazily across her bloody chest as if wiping away dust. Her foot caught a small teddy bear on the floor, sending it tumbling down the hallway with a careless kick.

And she was humming.

The sound—disturbingly cheerful after the horror he’d just witnessed—made Seojun’s stomach twist, filling his mouth with dread.

His eyes stayed shut, clamped by instinct more than choice. Behind his eyelids, the strange light pulsed brighter with each horrific detail. His muscles screamed to pull away from the glass, but something invisible held him there. The light pinned him, demanding he bear witness. The sticky grime on his palm barely registered. Despite himself, driven by dark fascination, his fingers pressed harder against the surface—cold yet somehow radiating warmth.

The vision shifted. A man appeared in the mirror, his expression unnervingly blank.

His blonde hair hung longer than Seojun remembered, his eyebrows thicker, darker. His face had thinned, the subtle hollowing of his cheeks sharpening his features—the high bridge of his nose, the clean line of his jaw—giving him an older, unrecognizable air. Less like the boy Seojun knew and more like… a man. For a fleeting moment, the man’s eyes widened slightly, as if he too was startled by his reflection. A small spider crawled across his collar. On his shirt, faded white letters spelled out: “The Wizard of Oz.”

For the briefest instant, their eyes met—clear and blue, like a summer sky. Then, as if it was nothing more than coincidence, the man turned his head, offering only a profile, a glimpse of a dirt-smudged cheek.

“Huh?” The sound escaped Seojun’s lips before he could stop it.

And just like that, it vanished. The vision blinked out like a faulty lightbulb. The mirror’s surface went dull and gray, as if suddenly disinterested. Seojun blinked, lashes brushing his cheek. All he saw now was his own reflection—wide-eyed, stunned, his expression caught between disbelief and denial.

Who the hell was that?

The question echoed in his mind. But the answer was already forming, undeniable. The handsome features, the blonde hair… Johan. He knew no other young man with that specific mix of clean-cut good looks. It had to be Johan. But he couldn’t believe it. After witnessing Camry and Leimia’s brutal end, seeing their bodies seemingly absorbed by this strange mirror, Johan’s appearance left him even more confused. The only logical explanation felt increasingly wrong the longer he considered it.

Why would Johan, who should’ve been safe back in Wraithwood, show up in this creepy place? Maybe his heart was racing simply from the shock of seeing an unexpected face. Johan was always so mild-mannered, so reserved that seeing him here felt completely out of place. Maybe that old saying was right: live long enough and you’ll see everything.

Wait. A different thought cut through his confusion, sharp with suspicion. That mirror… it swallowed the corpses. That wasn’t the real Johan. It couldn’t have been.

Maybe none of it was real. The murders, the impossible appearance… Frowning deeply, Seojun glared at the mirror. Could this cursed object somehow tap into the mind of whoever touched it, reflecting desires or fears back at them?

Hold on, that would suggest that… unconsciously, I wanted to see Johan? Looking that messy?

If he wasn’t hallucinating, if his remaining eye hadn’t suddenly decided to fail, then… Heat flooded Seojun’s cheeks instantly, turning them bright, burning red like ripe fruit about to fall. His heart hammered against his ribs, loud and insistent, almost embarrassingly so. He pressed a hand flat against his chest, trying to get it to shut up, muttering that the horrifying visions had obviously just rattled him, that was all. That had to be all.

“Seojun? Are you okay?”

Camry’s voice interrupted his spiraling thoughts. Soft yet intrusive. His fluttering heart plummeted at the sound. She was watching him—hand pressed against his chest, frozen in place—with that careful expression people wear when they suspect you’re a madman about to crack. Seojun dropped his gaze to the floor, avoiding her eyes.

“Why are you staring at the ground like that? Find something?” The perfect politeness in her voice never wavered.

“Just checking if my liver fell out somewhere between those pills,” he said, the weak attempt at humor scraping against his dry throat.¹T/N: The Korean idiom “My liver fell out” (간이 떨어졌다) is a way Koreans express extreme fear or surprise. It’s like saying “I nearly jumped out of my skin” in English. When Koreans say this phrase, they’re basically telling you they were so terrified or startled that it felt like their liver—an important organ—dropped right out of their body from the shock.

“Your… liver?” Camry tilted her head, confusion crossing her features as her chestnut hair caught the light.

The awkward smile he forced felt like cracking porcelain. “Old Korean saying. Cultural thing,” he muttered, then let the expression collapse entirely. He fixed his gaze on a scuff mark on the floor, desperate to regain his composure. The silence between them thickened. Focus, damn it. This wasn’t the time to think about Johan or make terrible jokes. If what the mirror showed him was real, actually real…

Then the woman standing before him wasn’t Camry anymore. Not really. She was a ghost. Brand new. Freshly poisoned by her own coffee.

The same coffee she’s offering me right now. The thought sent a fresh wave of ice through his veins. No doubt about it. Camry’s an evil spirit.

His skin prickled with a thousand tiny needles of fear. She appeared so normal, so composed… just like April had. He’d encountered spirits before, but never one he actually knew in life. Never one whose living face was still burned into his memory.

Seojun shifted his weight, gaze darting everywhere but her face. His mind raced desperately. Trapped in a room with a ghost was bad enough—add in that creepy mirror and he was officially screwed. How the hell do I get out of this? Every exit strategy evaporated before it fully formed.

He forced himself to look up, to meet her eyes.

Mistake.

In that single glance, something cracked open between them. A terrible clarity rushed in. He saw what lurked behind her careful composure—that banked, simmering violence she couldn’t quite mask. And worse, he knew she saw straight through him too—the fear he was desperately trying to hide. The very act of concealment only made everything more obvious, like they’d both been stripped naked under harsh fluorescent lights.

“You know…” The words scraped his dry throat. “Sometimes I wonder if my life is uniquely terrible, or if everyone’s existence is this much of a nightmare.”

He couldn’t break her gaze, couldn’t look away, even as he took a stumbling step backward—directly into something cool and solid. Shit. The mirror. His words were just noise, a pathetic stalling tactic, but Camry answered anyway, her voice gentle.

“I think everyone asks themselves that question,” she said, lowering the thermos to the floor with deliberate care. Her lips curved into a faint, knowing smile. “So, Seojun. How exactly did you figure it out?”

His breath caught, lungs seizing. Every nerve ending in his body fired at once, a cold electric current racing across his skin.

“Your throat… it was poison?”

“You caught that detail too?” A quiet laugh escaped her, raspy and distorted—the sound perfectly matching the damage hidden in her voice. “Honestly, it would have been better if you hadn’t noticed anything at all.”

The edges of Seojun’s vision blurred and wavered. He blinked hard, fighting the dizziness as he forced words through his desert-dry mouth. “And Leimia? What happened to her?”

A stupid question. Pathetic. He already knew the answer; it sat like a block of ice in his gut.

“I killed her,” Camry said, her tone casual as if discussing a minor inconvenience rather than murdering her best friend. “Stabbed her myself. Things got… messy between us.” A small shrug. “Figured a permanent separation was best. Shame neither of us could actually leave this place afterward.”

The silence that followed was suffocating.

With deliberate slowness, Camry reached for the knife they’d discovered earlier—the one from the other room. She held it up, letting light glint off the blade. “With this.”

“That knife…No…”

Heat burned behind his good eye. Tears threatened. Trapped. Cornered like an animal. His brain screamed for escape while his body refused to move. He could already feel the phantom edge of metal against his skin. His hand trembled uncontrollably as he pointed at the knife, his finger a useless accusation hanging in the air between them. His face went numb with cold.

Camry nodded, one finger tapping thoughtfully against her lower lip. “That’s right. This is what I used on Leimia. Tried hiding it afterward in that creepy doll room down the hall.” A lazy half-smile played across her lips. “But somehow… it always ends up back next door. Strange, right? This fucked-up place has its own rules. Even dead, I can go anywhere I want in here.”

Her voice remained eerily calm as her fingers caressed the blade with the intimate tenderness of a lover.

“You don’t need to look so terrified, Seojun.”

But he couldn’t tear his gaze from the knife. In his mind, the mirror’s vision looped endlessly—the blade plunging into Leimia’s body, over and over. His throat closed up. His mouth turned to ash, tasting of nothing but fear and the metallic promise of his own blood.

“Why?” The question scraped from his throat. “Why kill me? If I somehow offended you… I’m sorry. Just tell me what I did.”

Even as the words left his mouth, Seojun cursed bitterly silently. Here he was, apologizing for becoming collateral damage in someone else’s psychotic break. How had he earned this hatred? He barely knew her! But his suspicion was dead-on.

Camry shook her head in disappointment. She waved the knife—a casual gesture that sent adrenaline surging through his veins.

“Offended me? No, Seojun. You didn’t do anything wrong.” Her voice dropped to an sultry whisper. “Actually… you must already know. I like you. A lot.”

The confession hung between them, twisted and wrong. If she’d said that while still alive—before trying to give him poisoned coffee—he might have believed her. But now? With his life hanging by a thread? His expression hardened into a glare. In this moment, Seojun couldn’t muster a shred of compassion for the thing standing before him.

Camry’s face crumpled under his gaze. “I’m telling the truth,” she insisted, voice suddenly raw with emotion. “Believe me. I really, really don’t want to kill you. I just… want you to be like me. Get it? After the mirror showed me everything… I finally saw clearly. I want you to feel this freedom.”

“Like hell I would!” he spat, the words tearing from him alongside a strangled laugh of disbelief.

She sighed—soft, resigned. “Well,” she said, that flicker of hope extinguished, “I don’t know how you figured it out. But I guess you won’t drink the coffee willingly now, will you?” Genuine regret colored her voice.

“Such a shame, Seojun. It really is.”

Her eyes flicked upward, just for a moment. Then her grip tightened on the knife handle, knuckles whitening. A smile twisted her lips—not the gentle one he’d known, but something primal and predatory. Deliberately, she lowered her chin, gaze boring into his, and whispered words that sent ice water rushing through his veins:

“To be honest… this way of killing feels much more… natural anyway.”

T/N: Normal crushes? Poor Seojun could never. He pulls in horror weirdos like he’s the main course at a haunted buffet. Guess that’s what happens when you’re hot enough to short-circuit even a tentacle monster’s brain. ƪ(˘⌣˘)ʃ