Reborn as a Prophet in a Horror Movie

#150Reader Mode

#150

For a wild, heart-skipping second, the impulse seized him: lunge, jam the thermos to her lips, force the contents down her throat.

Then, just as quickly, the thought vanished.

No. That wouldn’t work.

She might be laughing—wreathed in blood and shadow—but that knife remained steady in her grip. She still held all the control. Even if by some impossible stroke of luck he slipped past the blade, then what? Did he seriously think he could overpower her? Pin down those thrashing limbs and pour liquid down the throat of a—

No. Not a human. Not anymore.

A corpse. That’s what she was. A walking corpse animated by pure spite, powered by something far colder and stronger than mere muscle. Trying to wrestle her would be like fighting a living nightmare. He briefly pictured misting her with a spray bottle like some misbehaving cat—an absurd, useless fantasy. He had no spray bottle, and she was definitely no cat.

And beneath that, the colder question he kept trying to bury: would it even work?

Sometimes it was disturbingly easy to forget. To be distracted by the fluid, almost-human way she moved. But the evidence was unmistakable: ash-gray skin stretched taut over bone, the sunken hollows of her cheeks, the grotesque, impossible volume of blood that never stopped flowing. She was already dead.

So, the plan was… what? Poison a corpse again? Hope she’d collapse more dramatically this time? That wasn’t strategy. That was naive desperation born of terror.

A spike of pain hammered behind his eye, pressure building at his skull base in sync with the panic scrambling in his chest. His “fucking brilliant” plan—fend off a knife with a thermos—was crumbling under Camry’s chilling laughter.

He needed something else. Anything. Now.

But thinking required time—a luxury counted in the heartbeats before that knife moved again.

As if reading his thoughts, Camry kicked the bag aside. It skidded across the floor with a hollow scrape. Her laughter cut off, leaving a sudden, suffocating silence. She raised the knife again, its blade catching light in the darkness, tip angled slightly upward.

No words passed between them. None needed.

The smile stretching her lips said everything—hungry, cold, emptied of humanity.

This time, it promised, I won’t miss.

The blade arced down, a deadly curve of reflected light. No time to think. Instinct screamed, and Seojun flung the only thing he had. The thermos tumbled through the air, liquid sloshing inside—less a calculated throw, more a desperate please!

It didn’t matter.

With an almost casual flick, Camry met it with the flat of her knife. Metal clanged against metal. The thermos ricocheted sideways and smashed into the mirror with a sound that cracked through the cramped room like a gunshot.

Camry froze.

Her head snapped toward the impact, eyes wide, dark hair whipping across her cheek. She went statue-still, fixated on the mirror. The dim light carved shadows beneath her sharp cheekbones, traced the line of her aquiline nose. Her lips parted slightly, breath caught, as she stared at the faint smudge on the glass like it had whispered her name.

But the mirror held. Unbroken. The thermos tumbled off the dresser edge, hitting the floor with a hollow clatter.

And in that suspended moment, Seojun saw it.

A flicker across her face—there and gone in a heartbeat. Relief? Fear? Too quick to name, too faint to trust. But his one good eye, sharpened by adrenaline, had caught it. Caught her.

His jaw clenched, lips pressing into a hard line.

I’ve seen that before. That exact look of… fear.

Earlier, she’d seemed brittle beneath her bravado, laughter cutting too sharp, smile stretched too wide. Almost forced. He’d written it off as a predator toying with prey.

But what if it wasn’t confidence?

What if it was desperation to maintain control? A performance masking terror?

A distraction?

His mind raced back through the chaos before the thermos throw. What had he been doing? What happened right before she first flinched, before that forced laughter began?

Seojun’s fingers twitched involuntarily, memory sparking through his nerves.

The mirror.

He’d tapped the mirror.

Camry’s warning echoed in his mind: Provoke the mirror, and Leimia comes out.

Logically, that should be her advantage. Another killer unleashed in this cramped space meant a quicker death for him. Two monsters, one trapped target. Simple math.

Unless… she didn’t want Leimia here.

Why? Some twisted possessiveness of him? A need to kill him herself? Pure, consuming hatred? Whatever the reason, Camry had him cornered and isolated. The sealed door, a gleaming knife, that terrifying confidence… she controlled everything.

And yet…

That flash of relief when the thermos spun away from the mirror. That earlier, barely-there flinch when he’d touched it.

It wasn’t just nagging at him anymore; it was screaming. Something primal, deeper than thought, cutting through his fear and pain: Move. Now.

It was insane. A suicidal gamble based on nothing but instinct and a half-glimpsed expression. One shot. If he was wrong, he was dead—turning his back on a predator with nothing to lose.

But certainty settled in his gut, cold and hard.

He couldn’t overpower her. Couldn’t win against that unnatural strength. Not directly.

But maybe… just maybe… he could break a mirror.

The decision snapped into place, no thinking required. His body was already moving before his brain caught up—dropping low, knees bent, muscles coiled.

“Stop!”

Camry hadn’t even seen him move yet, but the second his eye flicked toward the dresser mirror—she knew.

Panic exploded across her face, undisguised and total. She’d shown too much, revealed a weakness he could use.

Then she became pure motion, terrifyingly fast. A blur of limbs and blood-soaked fabric launching across the room, hand outstretched, knife forgotten in her desperate lunge to stop him.

Exactly what he’d counted on.

Instead of backing away, Seojun aimed elsewhere. With a shout, he slammed his heel into the side of the heavy wooden dresser. A sharp crack and the screech of wood against floorboards as the entire piece lurched sideways, sliding directly into her path.

Camry had no time to adjust, no room to dodge.

A choked cry came from her as the dresser corner caught her mid-lunge. She hit it hard, momentum driving her into solid wood, then collapsed, limbs tangling as she crashed to the floor. Dust billowed around her, briefly softening the brutal image—but not the loud thud of impact.

Seojun didn’t wait. Didn’t hesitate for a second.

He sprinted past the wreckage, past her fallen body, legs pumping, lungs burning, adrenaline turning his limbs to pistons.

Straight for the mirror.

“No! No, no—!”

Her scream chased after him, rage now threaded with terror. He didn’t look back. Couldn’t risk it.

A grim flash of a smile crossed Seojun’s lips. Everything that had trapped him—the sealed door, the closed space, her obsessive focus—was now his advantage. His leverage. His only shot.

He refused to dwell on the distorted reflection staring back: a pale, sweat-drenched stranger with one wide, haunted eye drowning in shadow. Instead, he clenched his right hand into a fist inside the glove, knuckles grinding together, a tight ball of bone and desperate will.

No battle cry left his lips. No scream answered hers.

Just a sharp, broken exhale through clenched teeth, jaw locked so tight it hurt. The tension in his throat felt like a physical weight begging to be released. His good eye focused with laser intensity on a single target: the smooth, reflective surface before him.

And then, he struck.

Knuckles hit glass with a dull, unyielding thud. Solid. No give.

Again. Harder.

A painful crunch.

Not the glass.

Bone.

White-hot pain shot up his arm, radiating from his hand, but adrenaline kept it strangely distant—someone else’s agony. He couldn’t stop. Wouldn’t. He slammed his fist against the mirror again and again, each blow powered by blind desperation. Inside the glove, skin split, flesh tore.

A sharp, wet sting, followed by spreading warmth.

Blood. Hot and slick, soaking through rubber, welling between his clenched fingers. A dark stain spread across the glove’s knuckles, bright red drops spattering onto the floor. Blood trickled down his wrist, finding paths toward his elbow like thin, urgent crimson rivers.

He didn’t stop.

He couldn’t.

Because this mirror had to break.

Before he did.

Just as the first spiderweb crack fractured across the glass, a frantic clawingerupted behind him: Camry, tearing herself free from the overturned dresser.

She wrenched clear with a violent jolt, scrambling upright—wild-eyed, covered in dust and streaks of her own blood, raw panic in her eyes, breath coming in harsh gasps.

“STOP!”

Not just a scream—a shriek that slammed across the room, a sound that tore through the air like breaking glass, vibrating deep in his teeth.

And almost in answer… crack.

Not a shatter. Not yet. Just a single, razor-thin fracture etching across the surface like the first split in reality. Barely visible. But enough.

“AAAAHHHH!”

The cry wasn’t behind him anymore.

It erupted from the mirror itself. A thin, piercing wail vibrating within the glass, layered with the brittle shriek of stressed molecules, as if the mirror were screaming in pain.

Seojun didn’t flinch. Didn’t run.

Driven by pure terror and adrenaline, he raised his bleeding fist and brought it down again, and again, hammering the fractured surface relentlessly. No technique, no aiming, just brutal, desperate force.

Each blow sent fresh pain shooting up his arm, but he barely felt it.

With every crunch of bone on glass, another muffled scream echoed, warping as it vibrated from within the mirror. He could hear Camry behind him, her rage transforming into something that sounded terrifyingly like shared pain, but he didn’t look back.

Didn’t stop.

His vision narrowed to a tunnel, locked on the web of cracks spreading outward, white veins against the dark reflection.

And then, impossibly, it began to bleed.

Not his own blood smeared on the surface. This was different. Something pushed up from the cracks themselves, thick, dark, and wrong. It oozed slowly at first, unnaturally thick, like congealed arterial blood. One heavy droplet broke free, drawing a slow, dark line down the glass. Then another. And another—until the mirror wept thick crimson tears, as if something vital deep inside the silvered surface had ruptured.

Dark streams ran down the fractured glass, following every crack and split, staining it from within, turning the mirror into a dying, weeping wound.

Seojun stumbled back a step, chest heaving, instinctively cradling his bloodied hand against his body. The air grew dense with the coppery stench leaking from the mirror, mixing with disturbed dust and the sharp, acrid smell of fear—his fear.

But strangely, it wasn’t Camry he feared anymore.

He could still feel her behind him, a tense, trembling presence somewhere in the dust and wreckage, but his dread had completely shifted focus.

To the mirror.

Because the reflection—what fractured pieces remained among the bleeding cracks and thick gore—wasn’t just shattered. It was tearing. Splitting apart like wet paper giving way, seams ripping open along jagged, impossible lines where no seams should exist. The image warped, broke down, defying the basic laws of physics, unraveling into something fundamentally wrong.

“AAAGHH!!!”

The scream didn’t just echo—it hit. A shockwave of sound slammed into Seojun’s ears like a bomb going off, pure sonic agony that rattled through his bones. There was no wind, but he still staggered, knees buckling under the pressure. It was everywhere at once—above, below, inside him. A violent, invisible force clawing at his sanity, trying to tear him apart.

Within that maelstrom, two distinct screams rose above the rest.

Camry’s shattering cry: anguished and defiant, dripping with wild fury.

And Leimia’s: a terrified, hateful wail like something brittle being ripped apart.

They twisted together in a hellish duet, bouncing off walls and drilling into his skull until it felt like his teeth would shatter, like his bones were vibrating to dust.

“It hurts!”

“Gods, it hurts!”

“MAKE IT STOP!”

Seojun’s legs weakened, knees nearly buckling. Every instinct screamed: cover ears, curl up, disappear. Anything to block out that sound, to survive the destructive power tearing through the air.

Better yet—run.

Break through the damn door, smash it with his shoulder, throw himself into the hallway, down the stairs, anywhere but here. Anywhere but this bleeding, screaming pocket of hell.

But the door was sealed. Mocking him.

And the mirror, weeping and howling, hadn’t finished breaking yet.

“Please stop! Stop it! Are you trying to kill me again? Please… just look—”

“Murderer! MURDERER!”

The voices tore at him, a chaotic storm of screams ripping through the air behind his head. But even now, with that noise threatening to shred his focus, Seojun didn’t look back. Only forward.

Reason had fled. Fear was just background noise, drowned by something more primal, more urgent.

He clenched his ruined fist again, ignoring the lightning storm of pain along his nerves, the terrible agony screaming from broken bone, and drove it back into the mirror.

Again.

And again.

His world narrowed to just the fractured glass and impact. Blind. Consumed. With every blow, a sound tore from his throat—not words, just pure, animal noise, half fury, half survival. His entire body powered each strike. Knuckles hit the yielding glass with wet, sickening crunches, the sounds of splintering reflections and splintering bone becoming one. Blood smeared the surface in thick, messy arcs—his own red mixing with the impossible bleeding from within, merging into a single horror.

It was instinct. Mindless. Absolutely necessary.

All the terror, grief, and suffocating helplessness he’d swallowed since entering this cursed house—it exploded through his fist, channeled into violence against the weeping glass.

And then—

Silence.

Not a gradual fade. A cut. Sudden and absolute.

The screams vanished mid-wail, sliced to nothing. The voices died instantly. The crushing pressure that had filled the room disappeared, as if someone had flipped a switch on reality itself.

Even the blood.

The mirror simply stopped bleeding. No final drip. The thick, dark red that had seeped from within… gone. Vanished like it had never existed.

Seojun stood frozen, fist still raised, shaking violently. Blood dripped steadily from his shredded glove onto the floor. His chest heaved with rough, desperate breaths.

Before him: the mirror, a spiderweb of cracks reflecting only distorted light and his twisted, barely human silhouette.

To his side: the dented, forgotten thermos.

At his feet: the kitchen knife, discarded, its blade catching the dim light dully. Harmless now.

He swayed, gulping down ragged breaths as the adrenaline drained away, leaving behind a hollow ache. His face was ghostly pale, slick with sweat, smeared with grime and traces of drying blood. His one good eye, unfocused and dazed, swept across the small, dust-filled room. Searching.

Empty.

Camry was gone.

Just like Leimia.

Vanished. As if they’d never existed.

“…Ah.”

The sound barely escaped his lips before the ringing silence swallowed it.

A bitter, coppery film coated his tongue. His broken hand hung useless at his side—dead weight sending bolts of pain up to his shoulder with each breath. Every muscle screamed with exhaustion, joints grinding like rusted machinery. The adrenaline that had kept him going evaporated instantly, leaving nothing but an empty shell.

He stumbled backward on autopilot, putting distance between himself and the mirror. Even shattered, it radiated wrongness. His legs gave out. He hit the wall and slid down to the floor, a heap of limbs, his body shivering uncontrollably.

Standing seemed impossible. He had nothing left. Not even energy to properly tremble.

“It’s… finally over. Ah, fuck. Stupid. So stupid.”

As if saying that wouldn’t somehow jinx everything and bring Camry back to life.

He lifted his less-damaged left hand and managed a weak slap against his cheek that landed with all the force of a dying mosquito. His gaze drifted across the destruction: toppled dresser, scattered belongings, glass shards catching light like tiny daggers, crushed pills spread across the floor like funeral ash.

“…What a mess.”

But it was his mess now.

No ghosts sharing the space. No screaming reflections. No shadows twitching just beyond his vision. Just dust, silence, and the fading echo of a nightmare finally retreating.

He watched dust particles float through thin beams of light cutting the darkness, hypnotic in their silent fall. For the first time since entering this haunted house, a smile formed on Seojun’s lips. Small. Cautious. Almost painful.

But real.

Survival.

The word settled in his chest, spreading warmth through his body like the first sunlight after endless winter.

His limbs felt like wet cement; his mind scrubbed empty, strangely lightweight. Not peace—not yet—but something close. A heavy, clouded exhaustion that almost felt like comfort. Shock, probably. Relief. Or just his body finally crashing after being pushed well past breaking. Sleep pulled at the edges of his awareness, dark and welcoming, promising oblivion.

Then—

Thump.

Thump.

THUMP-THUMP-THUMP.

Footsteps. Unmistakably heavy. Urgent. Human. Someone running, pounding down the hallway with determined purpose.

The fragile moment of peace shattered.

Ice shot through Seojun’s veins, chasing away sleep in an instant. His eye snapped open, pupil expanding as his gaze locked onto the door.

Every muscle tensed. His back straightened against the wall despite his body screaming in protest. His fingertips tingled as blood rushed back, his entire system firing with an alertness pulled from reserves he didn’t know he had.

Before he could form a thought, before he could even try to move his broken body—

BOOM!

The door burst inward, nearly tearing from its damaged hinges. Wood splinters flew. Dust billowed like smoke from a bomb site.

A blur of movement cut through the chaos. Dark fabric swirled against the sudden flood of hallway light.

And there stood a figure, framed in the doorway, stepping deliberately through the dust and shattered silence.