Kill the Thirteenth Version of Myself Before Dawn

When Lin Wan stepped into the abandoned school grounds clutching a rusted school badge, a blood-red compass pointed straight to the coordinates where her older sister had disappeared. Under the moonlight, a bloodstained student handbook revealed thirteen rules: *Do not respond to the plaster statue's weeping / Never gaze into the eyes of the person in the mirror / Breathe in sync when the piano plays by itself*, anyone who breaks a rule becomes the vessel for a new curse.

Seven people trapped inside formed an alliance called the Night Watch. Lu Xingzhe, a brilliant young detective, found a Latin prescription hidden in the handbook's binding. The logo of a pharmaceutical company was etched on the inhaler of Cheng Xiaoyu, a frail girl with asthma. Fresh formalin dripped from the lab coat of Jiang Linchuan, a ghostly teacher. When modern student IDs surfaced in jars of specimens in the biology lab, they realized that the 217 teachers and students burned alive thirteen years ago were devouring reality through a fissure where the temperature differed by 17°C.

On the eve of the mirror world’s collapse, Lin Wan finally understood the inscription her sister had left on the back of the school badge: *The one who makes the sacrifice must hate enough to be willing to become a monster.* As the bells of dawn rang out, the piano keys froze the mirror's rate of consumption, while in the pupils of the survivors, rust-red rules began to rearrange themselves.