MIRRORMUSHA or: How I Doomed the World with a Mirror (but did I?)

"So, what are you? A god, a monster, or a friend?"

"Are they mutually exclusive?"

"......Nope."

The soul of aMushafrom 7,000 years past is reborn every thousand years into different incarnations across human history, with a singular purpose: destroy a nigh-omnipotent demon namedYaldabaoth, who calls himself the "Lord of All Demiurges": the origin of all evil and disaster that has sought humankind's extinction since the dawn of time.

Sticks and stones don't work on Yaldabaoth. Swords and spears don't work either, and neither do guns and cannons, tanks or bombs, nor the splitting of atoms. The only thing that works against him is amirror, and those that usemirrorsto fight the eternal war against his demons are called theMirrormusha, secret and shadowed, wisps of robed men and women only recognizable as déjà vu.

Unrecognized by any government from past to the present, yet working behind the scenes and beyond national borders, theMirrormushahave protected humankind for thousands of years from theLord of All Demiurgesand his godspawns. However, none know how to defeat him for good, let alone how to find him – in fact, Yaldabaoth himself had long ago purged the knowledge of his existence from the world by slaughtering all those with memory of his being. The only person that remembers is the 7,000-year-old soul of the ancientMushawarrior, reincarnated this time as a North Korean girl named Kang Reza, who awakens with no memory of her past incarnations.

Reza defects to South Korea with her family, intending to live a happy life, but finds her entire family slaughtered one night by forces beyond her control. As she chances upon a mirror of her own with eldritch powers beyond comprehension, and encounters theMirrormushafor the first time, she must unlock the memories of her forebearers, expand the powers of her mirror, garner the trust of her fellowMushacrew, and lead them on a world-spanning adventure to vanquish Yaldabaoth once and for all.

But of course, the present is a different kind of country than ages before. Vast nations of opposing ideologies span continents from end to end; newfangled weapons of science point at cities of millions, enough to destroy the world ten times over; the world is ever teetering on the edge of oblivion, and humankind stands at a crossroads with Yaldabaoth puppeteering the strings. And that's not to mention that Reza has more troubles than she can deal with, for her own mirror is so rare and eldritch that it belongsoutsidethe ranked grades of mirrors of theMirrormusha, and possesses horrifying and unknowable goals of its own that corrupts her humanity and soul, threatening the world with a loss of its only warrior against the Lord of All Demiurges...

Mirrormushais an urban-progression-fantasy series with heavy elements of action, martial arts, wuxia, psychological and Lovecraftian horror, and school-life and slice-of-life. Follow for updates and chapter releases!

Also appears in the Jun 10, 2023 Community Magazine contest for the writing prompt, "Mirrors can't eat people."