In the autumn of the twelfth year of Yongjia, Shen Mo, an apprentice at the funeral home in Linyuan City, carries an ancient bronze mirror that cannot reflect his own image. Every day, he keeps company with the dead.
When storytellers across the city begin dying one after another under bizarre circumstances, each with a hair-thin cut on the neck and the same dying words on their lips, "The mountains and rivers in the mirror are about to shatter," Shen Mo is dragged into a mystery surrounding the Mirror Pavilion that stretches back three hundred years.
He discovers that he is the last descendant of the legendary Mirror-Eye bloodline, able to awaken fragments of the ancient treasure, the Mirror of Mountains and Rivers. But this power comes with a curse: no one of the Mirror-Eye bloodline lives past the age of twenty.
He is eighteen.
To uncover the truth of his origins and stop the mysterious organization known as the Mirror Pavilion from opening the Mirror Gate to another world, Shen Mo joins Lu Qing, a covert agent of the Ministry of Justice, on a quest to find the mirror.
From an ancient shrine in Qingzhou to the snowy plains of the northern frontier, from the Buddhist kingdom of the Western Regions to immortal mountains beyond the sea, nine fragments of the Mirror of Mountains and Rivers lie scattered across the world. Behind each one lies a deliberately buried piece of history, and someone willing to lay down their life to protect it.
And beyond the Mirror Gate lies not the legendary immortal realm of eternal life, but Mirror Spirits that feed on human fear.
When the final fragment is restored and the Mirror Gate swings open, will Shen Mo become the "sacrificial eye" the Mirror Pavilion desires, trading his life for a brief burst of power?
Or will he take up his parents' mantle as Keepers of the Mirror and, in the final two years of his life, fight for a chance at survival for both worlds?
Shen Mo raises the ancient mirror, which can finally reflect his face. In it, the ghostly image of a silver-haired woman smiles at him tenderly.
He hears a blessing sent from a distant time three hundred years ago, and the Mirror Spirits shrieking as they force their way through the gate.
"A mirror can reflect the world, or destroy it."
"This time, I choose to protect the world of the living."
